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Looks Good on Paper

Looks Good on Paper

By: Anita Chauhan
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Summary

Looks Good on Paper flips hiring on its head. Hosted by Andrew Wood and Anita Chauhan, we dive into why CVs and "perfect fits" are overrated. Through fun, insightful conversations with industry experts, we explore how skills, potential, and real experience should be the focus of hiring... not what looks good on paper.

Quick, candid, and packed with actionable insights, we’re here to rewrite the rules of hiring, one episode at a time.


© 2026 Looks Good on Paper Career Success Economics
Episodes
  • Hiring for judgment, not unicorns, with Natasha Lakhani of Super.com

    Hiring for judgment, not unicorns, with Natasha Lakhani of Super.com
    Nov 4 2026

    Hiring podcast for people leaders: Natasha Lakhani, SVP People and Talent at Super.com, on defining the role, hiring for judgment, and fair assessment.

    Natasha Lakhani’s profile reads as a clean line: Wattpad, Dyson, more than seven years at Weight Watchers Canada, and now Super.com. In this episode of Looks Good on Paper she tells the story the profile leaves out. She started in finance at Bose, did an MBA at Queen’s, and was told by a coach that she was a jack of all trades, master of nothing. That feedback pushed her to go deep, and she moved between companies because the mission and the challenge mattered to her.

    She also explains why companies keep making the same hiring mistake. They go looking for a unicorn without deciding what they need. For Natasha, the competencies that matter most are critical thinking and judgment, and judgment is what AI can’t take away. Her fix is to talk to the stakeholders the hire will serve before you write the job description.

    Then the three rapid-fire questions. On hidden bias, she explains the difference between “moving fast” and “moving fast with intention.” On removing the CV, she says you’d need a strong rubric and you’d ask candidates to show their work in the AI tool of their choice. She closes with the thing that will never show up on her CV: she’s a mom of four.

    What you’ll learn
    → Why a non-linear career is a strength
    → How to define a role before you hire
    → Why judgment and critical thinking beat a long requirements list
    → How rubrics and “show me” assessments make hiring fairer
    → How Super.com is building an AI fluency model

    Looks Good on Paper is hosted by Anita Chauhan and powered by Willo. Season 4 is about people being more than a CV: everything the document leaves out, on both sides of the hiring table.

    Chapters
    00:00 Intro
    01:06 The path her CV doesn’t show
    06:02 Q1: The hiring mistake companies keep making
    09:48 Q2: The hidden bias in progressive hiring
    12:58 Q3: What if CVs disappeared tomorrow?
    16:21 Building an AI fluency model at Super.com
    18:20 Wildcard: what wouldn’t show up on a CV
    19:39 Wrap

    GUEST
    Natasha Lakhani: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natashalakhani/

    YOUR HOST
    Anita Chauhan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anitachauhan/

    LISTEN AND FOLLOW
    YouTube: https://youtu.be/yZSpz7X4puw
    Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/looks-good-on-paper/id1625835562
    Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0dbfz6y0tMq3crViHQD66H
    All episodes: looksgoodonpaper.willo.video

    POWERED BY WILLO
    https://www.willo.video/looks-good-on-paper

    CONNECT WITH US
    Willo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/10170893/

    Enjoyed this one? Share it with someone who hires, and follow the show so you never miss an episode.

    Looks Good on Paper is a hiring podcast from Willo. In this episode, Natasha Lakhani, SVP People and Talent at Super.com, covers how to define a role before you hire, why judgment and critical thinking matter more than a unicorn CV, how structured rubrics make hiring fairer, and how Super.com is building an AI fluency model.

    Show Resources

    • Willo: willo.video - The most cost-effective way to screen candidates at scale. Interview candidates anywhere & at any time
    • CV Free Toolkit: cvfree.me/join - Break up with the CV and get everything you need to modernize your hiring approach with skills-based assessments
    • Anita Chauhan: linkedin.com/in/anitachauhan - Connect with the host
    Show More Show Less
    19 mins
  • Coherence bias and the four-question screening call, with Chrissy Oni of Stagwell Global

    Coherence bias and the four-question screening call, with Chrissy Oni of Stagwell Global
    Oct 14 2026

    Structured interviews, coherence bias and hiring beyond the CV.

    Most hiring processes are built to find people who interview well. Chrissy Oni, Talent Acquisition Director, Europe at Stagwell Global, has spent her career learning that this is not the same as finding people who will do the job well. She started as an estate agent, moved into agency recruitment, and went on to operations leadership at Assembly Global before taking on talent strategy and hiring across Stagwell’s media, commerce and communications brands in Europe.

    In this episode, Chrissy explains why so many mishires trace back to the interview itself. Companies invest in the process and in who the candidate meets, but rarely design the conversation to test for what the role will actually demand. Three months later, the feedback is always the same: they were great in the interview.

    Her fix starts well before anyone sits down with a candidate. Chrissy won’t work on a role until the hiring manager has given her a proper brief, and she coaches interviewers on what to ask, what not to ask, and how to score against an objective scale rather than a gut feeling about whether they’d enjoy a drink with someone.

    She also unpacks coherence bias: the tendency to trust candidates who speak smoothly and confidently, and to stop probing once an early impression is confirmed. Quieter candidates lose out, even when their skills are a better fit.

    Finally, Chrissy shares the four questions she asks in every screening call, why she treats the CV as a reference point, and how she turns the answers into a summary that gets hiring managers genuinely engaged before the interview.

    What you’ll learn
    → Why great interviews so often lead to mishires
    → How a proper hiring manager brief changes the whole process
    → What coherence bias is and how to interrupt it
    → The four-question screening structure Chrissy uses every time
    → How to write candidate summaries hiring managers actually read

    Looks Good on Paper is hosted by Anita Chauhan and powered by Willo. Season 4 is about people being more than a CV: everything the document leaves out, on both sides of the hiring table.

    GUEST
    Chrissy Oni: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrissyoni/

    YOUR HOST
    Anita Chauhan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anitachauhan/

    LISTEN AND FOLLOW
    YouTube: https://youtu.be/a-nT-e0oQPk
    Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/looks-good-on-paper/id1625835562
    Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0dbfz6y0tMq3crViHQD66H
    All episodes: looksgoodonpaper.willo.video

    POWERED BY WILLO
    https://www.willo.video/looks-good-on-paper

    CONNECT WITH US
    Willo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/10170893/

    If you enjoyed this episode, share it with someone who hires and follow the show for new conversations.

    In this episode of Looks Good on Paper, Chrissy Oni of Stagwell Global explains why candidates who interview well can still be mishires, how coherence bias favours confident communicators, and the structured four-question screening call she uses to assess talent beyond the CV.

    Episode Summary: Chrissy Oni of Stagwell Global on why great interviews make bad hires, coherence bias, and the four questions she asks in every screening call.

    Show Resources

    • Willo: willo.video - The most cost-effective way to screen candidates at scale. Interview candidates anywhere & at any time
    • CV Free Toolkit: cvfree.me/join - Break up with the CV and get everything you need to modernize your hiring approach with skills-based assessments
    • Anita Chauhan: linkedin.com/in/anitachauhan - Connect with the host
    Show More Show Less
    17 mins
  • Untrained Interviewers and the Culture Fit Myth, with Jay Guney

    Untrained Interviewers and the Culture Fit Myth, with Jay Guney
    Oct 7 2026
    Interviewer training, culture fit bias and hiring without a CV, with Jay Guney, founder and managing director of Dcoded.Most hiring processes put real effort into finding candidates and almost none into the person who interviews them. Jay Guney sees the result from the agency side every week. Many of the hiring managers his candidates meet have never had formal interview training. They are handed a candidate and asked to see if they're good, whatever that means for the role, and some walk out saying "thank God that's over, they seem like they can do the job." Sometimes it works out. It is rarely predictable, and candidates who gave up 30, 60 or 90 minutes often get no useful feedback in return.Jay has spent 13 years in UK recruitment. He founded Dcoded in May 2024 as a recruitment partner working exclusively in AI, data and engineering, building talent pools from chief data and AI leaders to ML engineers and data governance experts for SaaS, retail and consultancy businesses. Dcoded went for B Corp accreditation from day one, because Jay wanted to build an agency that challenges the stigma recruiters often carry.In this episode Jay unpacks the hidden bias inside "culture fit." Every client tells him candidates must fit the culture, yet three people in the same room will describe that culture three different ways, and without a definition it often slides into whether the hiring manager would enjoy a drink with the candidate on a Friday. He also explains why companies that ask candidates for their opinions often reject the ones who disagree, and why his own personality test results changed depending on whether he'd made a placement that day.On CVs, Jay describes placements where the client only ever saw a limited company name and a contract, and others made through blind candidate packs built from answers to questions agreed with the client in advance. As far as he knows, those hires are still in role. For his wildcard, he describes the AI tool he would give every hiring manager: one that plays two candidates, one you should hire and one you shouldn't, so interviewers can practise before they meet real people.What you'll learn → Why interviewer training is the most overlooked part of hiring → Why candidates deserve feedback after giving up their time → What "culture fit" really means, and how to stop it hiding bias → Why personality tests can mislead hiring decisions → How blind candidate packs can replace the CV → How AI could train hiring managers to interview betterLooks Good on Paper is hosted by Anita Chauhan and powered by Willo. Season 4 is about everything the document leaves out, on both sides of the hiring table.GUESTJay Guney, Founder and Managing Director, DcodedLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayguney/ YOUR HOSTAnita Chauhan, Founder, InGoodCo.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anitachauhan/LISTEN AND FOLLOWYouTube: https://youtu.be/w3L3LuFjasEApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/looks-good-on-paper/id1625835562 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0dbfz6y0tMq3crViHQD66H All episodes: looksgoodonpaper.willo.videoPOWERED BY WILLOhttps://www.willo.video/looks-good-on-paperCONNECT WITH USLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/10170893If this one hit home for someone on your hiring team, send it to them. Follow Looks Good on Paper wherever you listen so you get every Season 4 conversation.Looks Good on Paper is a podcast about hiring, hosted by Anita Chauhan and powered by Willo. In this episode, Jay Guney, founder and managing director of the AI, data and engineering recruitment partner Dcoded, explains why untrained interviewers are the biggest mistake in hiring, why "culture fit" hides bias when nobody defines it, and how blind candidate packs have led to placements without a CV. Season 4 asks what a CV leaves out, on both sides of the hiring table.Show ResourcesWillo: willo.video - The most cost-effective way to screen candidates at scale. Interview candidates anywhere & at any timeCV Free Toolkit: cvfree.me/join - Break up with the CV and get everything you need to modernize your hiring approach with skills-based assessmentsAnita Chauhan: linkedin.com/in/anitachauhan - Connect with the host
    Show More Show Less
    21 mins
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