Description: Julia Arpag is the founder and CEO of Aligned Recruitment, where she helps high-growth tech companies build exceptional teams. With over a decade of global recruiting experience, she's known for her people-first approach and genuine advocacy for both clients and candidates.

In this episode, Julia talks with host Anita Chauhan about the "culture fit" trap that leads to homogenous teams, why she bakes skills assessments into every single role she recruits for, and why she only works with clients whose values genuinely align with hers.

She also shares a refreshingly human practice: when candidates make it past the first interview and get rejected, her team picks up the phone and calls them instead of sending an automated email. "It's a more human way to honor them as a human."

Plus, Julia tells her favorite hiring story from her own household: how her husband pivoted from nonprofit to tech with zero industry experience on paper and landed his dream job anyway.

Key moments:

→ The biggest hiring mistake: defaulting to "culture fit" and hiring people who look and act like you

→ Why skills assessments should be standard for every role, not just engineering

→ "It's just robots hanging out and then the humans are involved at some point"

→ Why Julia turns down clients whose values don't match hers

→ The case for calling candidates to deliver rejections

→ How Julia's husband broke into tech without the "right" resume

Connect with Julia: LinkedIn and Aligned Recruitment

About Looks Good on Paper: Looks Good on Paper is a podcast powered by Willo exploring what actually predicts success in hiring, and what just looks good on paper. Hosted by Anita Chauhan.

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

Hiring isn’t broken — it’s over-engineered. In this episode, Jim Berrisford (VP of Partnerships at Willo) unpacks why poor communication, AI noise, and “more tech” are quietly making hiring more complex, not better.

What you will learn:

• Why communication gaps derail the entire hiring journey
• The hidden risk of using technology before understanding process
• How over-engineered recruitment hurts candidate experience
• What removing CVs could realistically look like in modern hiring
• Why human-centric AI (not decision-making AI) will win in the future of work
  
  

☘️ Guest Bio
Jim Berrisford is Vice President of Partnerships at Willo and a leader in talent and HR technology, with experience spanning agency, in-house talent, and recruitment tech. He has spent years working at the intersection of recruitment, innovation, and workforce transformation, helping organizations rethink how they attract, assess, and support talent in an increasingly AI-driven hiring landscape.

📄 About Looks Good on Paper
Looks Good on Paper is powered by Willo, a podcast that explores modern hiring, talent strategy, and the future of work — going far beyond resumes, buzzwords, and surface-level signals.

🕘 Chapters
00:00 — Intro & Jim’s background in recruitment and HR tech
02:20 — Biggest hiring mistake: lack of communication
03:30 — Why “new tech” isn’t the real fix
05:00 — AI noise vs assisted intelligence in hiring
06:30 — Hidden bias and ongoing self-checking in hiring
09:20 — What happens if we remove CVs from hiring?
12:50 — Over-engineering recruitment systems
14:30 — Human-centric AI and the future of hiring
16:40 — Final thoughts on tech, nuance, and the hiring journey

📌 Pinned CTA: Enjoying the episode? Follow, rate, and share Looks Good on Paper — it helps more talent leaders discover smarter, more human approaches to hiring.

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

Resumes are totally out of date — and AI has only made the problem worse. In this episode, Jeff Waldman (ScaleHR) explains why most hiring signals fail, and what to look for instead if you actually want better hires.

This week's episode, we're talking about:

• Why job titles, brand names, and polished CVs don’t predict performance
• How AI-generated resumes are increasing bias and bad hiring decisions
• The hidden bias around “clean” careers, gaps, and job hopping
• What to use instead of resumes as a first hiring signal
• How to assess how candidates think, not just where they’ve been

⚖️ Jeff Waldman (ScaleHR)

Jeff Waldman is the founder of ScaleHR, host of the Unmuted podcast, and a longtime builder of HR communities around the world. With over two decades at the intersection of HR, technology, leadership, and inclusion, Jeff has advised growing companies, hired thousands of people, and led grassroots HR events across North America and beyond. His work focuses on practical, human-first hiring in an AI-driven world.

📄 About Looks Good on Paper / Willo

Looks Good on Paper is Willo’s podcast exploring how hiring actually works — and where traditional systems fall apart.

⏱️ Episode Chapters

00:17 – Introduction to Jeff Waldman & ScaleHR

01:31 – Building global HR communities

03:06 – The biggest hiring mistake companies keep making

06:38 – Why resumes are outdated artifacts

07:48 – AI resumes and “it belongs in a museum”

08:50 – Hidden bias: gaps, job hopping, and “clean” careers

12:42 – AI, bias, and the importance of prompting

14:01 – What hiring looks like without CVs

16:01 – Accessibility, flexibility, and candidate choice

18:20 – Better hiring signals for 2026

20:09 – Final reflections and wrap-up

⭐ Enjoying the show?

Follow Looks Good on Paper, leave a rating, and share this episode with a hiring leader who’s still relying on resumes — it helps more than you think.

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