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Looks Good on Paper

Looks Good on Paper

By: Anita Chauhan
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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
  • The CV is the global currency for jobs. And it's fundamentally flawed.

    The CV is the global currency for jobs. And it's fundamentally flawed.
    Jul 8 2026

    There is almost no business process on earth that works the same way in every country. Payroll differs. Contracts differ. Even the working week differs. But post a job anywhere in the world, and the price of entry is identical: hand over a CV. In this episode, Willo co-founder and CEO Euan Cameron, in the guest chair for the first time in three seasons, makes the case that hiring's only truly global convention is also its most broken one. He tells the real founding story behind Willo: what it's like to be dyslexic in a hiring process built entirely around text, and the moment he realized millions of candidates were being filtered out by a format, not by their ability. From there, the conversation gets practical and pointed: the single biggest hiring mistake companies keep making, the bias that survives even inside proudly progressive teams, what six years of running a company that has never once asked for a CV actually looks like, and what changes first, and slowest, when an enterprise hiring team finally starts reading signal instead of paper.

    What you'll learn: → The founding story: how being dyslexic in a text-based hiring world became the reason Willo exists → Why past experience is the weakest predictor hiring teams still treat as the strongest → The "safe bet" bias that quietly survives inside even the most progressive companies → What actually breaks, and what quietly just works, when you remove the CV from your process completely → How Willo Insights turns overwhelming candidate volume into evidence, so the right person never slips through for being quiet

    GUEST
    Euan Cameron, Co-founder & CEO, Willo
    https://uk.linkedin.com/in/euanacameron

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

    LISTEN & FOLLOW
    Buzzsprout: https://looksgoodonpaper.buzzsprout.com/
    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@looksgoodonpaperpodcast

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

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

    If this episode changed how you think about a single step in your hiring process, send it to the person who owns that step, and follow the show so the rest of Season 3 finds you.

    Looks Good on Paper is a hiring and careers podcast hosted by Anita Chauhan and powered by Willo. In this episode, Willo co-founder and CEO Euan Cameron explains why the CV functions as a flawed global currency for jobs, why relying on past experience is the biggest mistake in modern hiring, which hidden biases persist inside progressive companies, and how Willo Insights helps enterprise hiring teams evaluate every candidate at scale using evidence instead of resumes.

    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
    31 mins
  • Athletes try out. Why don't your candidates?

    Athletes try out. Why don't your candidates?
    Jun 24 2026
    Every athlete who makes a team has to prove they can play. They run drills. They scrimmage. They perform under pressure while someone watches. But in hiring, we skip all of that. We scan a resume for six seconds, run a few conversations, and make a six-figure investment based on how someone talks about work they've done, not whether they can actually do the work in front of them.The companies still making this mistake aren't doing it because they don't know better. They're doing it because their entire process was designed around a different era of work, and most of them haven't audited it since AI started changing what "job-ready" actually means.Alan Boyer has been on both sides of this problem for decades. He's a former CMO and senior marketing executive at AT&T, Coca-Cola, and Equifax, a management professor and curriculum architect, and the founder of iThrive Learning Architects. His work sits at the intersection of corporate leadership development and higher education, focused on building the human capabilities that AI cannot replicate. In this episode of Looks Good on Paper, he breaks down why hiring is still built around conversation instead of demonstration, what human skills are emerging above traditional soft skills, and why the gap between graduate readiness and employer expectations is getting wider, not smaller.What you'll learn: why hiring based on conversational performance instead of job performance produces high washout rates, the executive referral bias that nobody talks about and why it puts hiring managers in an impossible position, why "teaching with AI is not the same as working with AI" and what that means for screening, what human capabilities are emerging above soft skills including cognitive power, systems intelligence, and global fluency, and how the gap between what job descriptions promise and what day one actually looks like is setting candidates up to fail.GUEST Alan Boyer — Founder, iThrive Learning Architects LinkedIn -> [GUEST LINKEDIN URL]YOUR HOST Anita Chauhan — Host, Looks Good on Paper LinkedIn -> https://www.linkedin.com/in/anitachauhan/In this episode: 0:00 Introduction 0:55 Alan's background across Fortune 500s and higher education 1:59 The biggest hiring mistake: relying on a broken process 2:26 The tryout analogy: why athletes perform but candidates just talk 3:11 AI is accelerating work and companies aren't keeping up 4:52 Where performance-based screening actually happens today 5:56 Human capabilities above soft skills: what AI can't automate 7:30 Hidden biases: cultural, regional, school, brand, and executive referral 8:15 What happens when a C-suite referral skips the process 10:07 What hiring looks like without CVs: chaos or clarity? 11:20 The resume isn't the villain. The process around it is. 12:36 How early careers candidates actually get seen 13:36 Graduate readiness: why companies say new hires aren't ready 14:53 Hiring doesn't stop after the contract is signed 16:12 Quick tips for screening early careers hiresLISTEN & FOLLOW Spotify -> https://open.spotify.com/show/0dbfz6y0tMq3crViHQD66H Apple Podcasts -> https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1625835562 All episodes -> https://looksgoodonpaper.buzzsprout.comPOWERED BY WILLO Hire humans, not resumes -> https://www.willo.video/looks-good-on-paperCONNECT WITH US LinkedIn -> https://www.linkedin.com/company/10170893If this episode changed how you think about hiring, share it with one person who needs to hear it.Most hiring processes evaluate candidates based on how well they present in conversation, not on whether they can perform the actual work the role requires. Performance-based hiring, where candidates demonstrate capability through structured tasks and real scenarios, consistently produces stronger hires and lower turnover than resume screening and behavioural interviews alone. As AI accelerates the pace of work, the human capabilities that matter most, including cognitive power, systems intelligence, and the ability to adapt to ambiguity, are not the same as the soft skills companies have traditionally screened for, and most hiring processes have not been updated to reflect the difference.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
    19 mins
  • The 24-Hour Promise

    The 24-Hour Promise
    Jun 17 2026

    The average time to hire in 2026 is 44 days. Taylor Genre's team at Beemac Logistics gives every sales candidate a final answer within 24 hours.

    Taylor is the Director of Recruiting and Marketing at Beemac Logistics, a multimodal transport and logistics provider based in Pittsburgh. She came into logistics recruiting from roles at ePeople, Healthcare, and ADP. In this episode, she breaks down why not paying people what they're worth is the most expensive hiring mistake companies keep making and how the cost compounds through turnover, onboarding, and lost trust. She names the bias hiding inside the word "overqualified" and how quickly it becomes ageism when you don't have the conversation. And she walks through exactly what had to change inside Beemac for the 24-Hour Promise to work: it wasn't the recruiting team that needed to shift, it was the hiring managers.

    GUEST
    Taylor Genre, Director of Recruiting and Marketing, Beemac Logistics https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-genre-95935b14a/

    YOUR HOST
    Anita Chauhan, Host, Looks Good on Paper https://www.linkedin.com/in/anitachauhan/

    LISTEN & FOLLOW
    Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/looks-good-on-paper/id1625835562
    All episodes → https://looksgoodonpaper.buzzsprout.com

    WATCH ON YOUTUBE
    → https://youtu.be/WR2j0lc4dG8

    POWERED BY WILLO
    Hire humans, not resumes.

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

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

    If this episode made you think, share it with one person who hires people. And subscribe — we're rewriting the rules of hiring, one episode at a time.

    If this episode made you think, share it with one person who hires people.


    The average time to hire in 2026 has reached approximately 44 days, with 81% of hiring managers reporting decision-making paralysis when extending offers. Meanwhile, 61% of candidates accept the first offer they receive, meaning slow companies lose top candidates not to better offers but to faster ones. Organizations that have built alignment between recruiters and hiring managers on decision speed, salary transparency, and candidate communication are consistently outperforming on both offer acceptance and retention.

    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
    18 mins
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