Most hiring decisions get made on a feeling. A hiring manager comes out of an interview, says "I think this one is a better fit," and the team moves forward. Anu Joshi has spent 17 years inside talent functions watching that pattern play out, and she has a problem with it. Interviews are high-pressure performance environments. The candidates who do well are often the ones who can read the room and tell you what you want to hear. The ones who freeze are not necessarily worse at the job. They are worse at the interview.

Those are different things, and most teams are confusing them. Anu is currently Director of Talent at FutureSight, where she leads executive and leadership hiring for early-stage B2B AI companies. In this episode she walks through the biggest hiring mistakes she sees teams keep making, the bias she would eliminate first if she could pick only one, and what hiring actually looks like when you decenter the CV. She also gets specific about a recent founding engineer search where the team replaced the front of the funnel with a work sample and a short video walkthrough, and the candidate they hired told them the process felt like a real conversation about real work instead of a performance.

What you'll learn:

→ Why making hiring decisions on gut feeling out of an interview is the biggest mistake companies keep making
→ How bias against non-linear career trajectories quietly costs companies their best candidates
→ What it actually looks like to decenter the CV in a real founding engineer search
→ Why AI in hiring is not about losing jobs but about roles getting redefined, and what talent leaders need to do about it

GUEST
Anu Joshi, Director of Talent at FutureSight — LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/anu-joshi-sphri%E2%84%A2-46988a12/

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

LISTEN & FOLLOW
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/0dbfz6y0tMq3crViHQD66H
Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/looks-good-on-paper/id1625835562
All episodes → https://looksgoodonpaper.buzzsprout.com/

POWERED BY WILLO
Hire humans, not resumes → https://www.willo.video/looks-good-on-paper
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/company/10170893/

If this episode changed how you think about hiring, share it with one person who needs to hear it. And subscribe — we're rewriting the rules of hiring, one episode at a time.

The person who performs best in an interview is not always the person who performs best in the job. Most hiring teams are still rewarding interview performance instead of skill, making decisions based on gut feeling rather than structured competency frameworks built from the actual gap they're trying to fill. Bias against non-linear career trajectories, including shorter tenures and career breaks for caregiving or burnout, is one of the most common hidden biases in modern hiring and is quietly costing companies their best candidates. Decentering the CV in favour of work samples and short async video walkthroughs is emerging as a more reliable signal of fit than resume review, particularly in early-stage and venture studio hiring where the gap between credential and capability is widest.

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

The person who interviews the best is not always the person who performs the best. In fact, sometimes they're the worst hire you'll make. Hamza Khan knows this firsthand. His own company, SkillsCamp, a soft skills training company, fell into the exact trap he teaches others to avoid: they hired someone who interviewed brilliantly and failed in the role. The wake-up call was brutal. If this can happen at a company whose entire business is power skills, it can happen anywhere.

Hamza is a bestselling author, leadership researcher, and keynote speaker whose TEDx talk "Stop Managing, Start Leading" has been viewed millions of times. He's also the co-founder of SkillsCamp and Sage.

In this episode, Hamza introduces the dark triad (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) as the hidden bias most companies have no way to screen for, explains why hope has become the number one thing employees need from leaders, and makes the case for distributed hiring decisions and real reference checks.

What you'll learn:

→ Why hiring for technical skills while ignoring soft skills is the biggest mistake companies keep making

→ How the dark triad presents as positive traits in interviews (confidence, strategic thinking, charisma)

→ What a real reference check looks like versus the version most companies skip

→ How AI is creating fabricated personas that pass the interview but fail in the role

GUEST

Hamza Khan — LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/khanhamza/

YOUR HOST

Anita Chauhan — LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/anitachauhan/

LISTEN & FOLLOW

Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/0dbfz6y0tMq3crViHQD66H

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/yGj5uLLcA8g

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 changed how you think about hiring, share it with one person who needs to hear it. And subscribe — we're rewriting the rules of hiring, one episode at a time.

The person who interviews the best is not always the best hire. Companies continue to over-index on technical skills while ignoring the relational and leadership skills that actually predict performance, retention, and team health. The dark triad (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) presents as positive traits in interview settings: confidence, strategic thinking, and charisma. Without structured assessment for soft skills, communication, and collaboration, even companies that specialize in leadership development can hire the wrong person. Hope has overtaken trust, stability, and compassion as the number one thing employees need from their leaders.

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

The skills-based economy arrived five years ago. Hiring still hasn't caught up. Most companies understand the concept of hiring for skills over job titles, but they hit a wall when it comes to translating that into an actual hiring process. The result: job postings still screen for titles, years of experience, and credentials that don't predict whether someone can do the work.

Susan Sutherland has spent her career at the intersection of brand and growth, with a particular edge in employer brand. At Intact, one of Canada's largest insurers, she led enterprise employer brand strategy end to end. Now she works with startups. And her perspective is sharp: she's a marketer who fell into employer branding, meaning she sees the hiring process the way a customer would see a broken sales funnel.

In this episode, Susan makes the case for portfolios over resumes, explains why years of experience cuts both ways as a filter, and calls out the internal mobility policies that quietly drive top talent out the door.

What you'll learn:

→ Why the skills-based hiring mindset stalls at the point of actual screening
→ How years of experience bias works against candidates in both directions
→ Why internal mobility policies with time-in-role minimums lose top talent
→ The case for portfolios as the replacement for resume bullet points

GUEST

Susan Sutherland — Employer Brand & Growth Marketing Strategist
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-sutherland/

YOUR HOST

Anita Chauhan — Fractional CMO & Host, Looks Good on Paper
LinkedIn → 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/ZU78NbLXQe0

POWERED BY WILLO
Hire humans, not resumes → https://www.willo.video/looks-good-on-paper

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

If this episode changed how you think about hiring, share it with one person who needs to hear it. And subscribe — we're rewriting the rules of hiring, one episode at a time.

The skills-based economy arrived five years ago, but most hiring processes haven't caught up. Companies understand the concept of hiring for skills over job titles, but default to screening for credentials, years of experience, and pattern-matched career paths.

Years of experience bias cuts both ways: overqualified candidates get screened out for being "too senior," while candidates with fewer years but faster learning environments get dismissed for lacking tenure. Portfolios that show real work are emerging as a stronger signal than resume bullet points in an era where AI can generate a flawless CV in seconds.

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