Looks Good on Paper

Early-stage founders make the same hiring mistakes with striking consistency: they hire for the role they can describe rather than the work they actually need done, they over-index on pedigree because it feels safe, and they underestimate how much the first five hires shape everything that follows. AI has made this harder. When every candidate can generate a polished application, traditional crede...

What if your best hire lists 4 years on paper, but delivers 8 years of outcomes? Miovision’s Global Talent Acquisition Manager Justin Krulicki ,  breaks down why tenure and industry bias are quietly derailing your hiring process, and how a 90-second video intro can beat a CV before you even read it. In this episode you’ll learn: - Why “years served” is a weak signal, and what better metrics to use...

Culture fit is one of the most expensive myths in hiring. When companies screen for fit, they tend to screen for sameness — people who think, communicate, and look like the people already in the room. The result is a team that gets along well and runs out of new ideas fast. Culture add is the alternative. The idea is straightforward: hire for the perspectives, skills, and approaches your team is a...

If you're getting 1,000 applications for a single role, the problem isn't that you have too many candidates. The problem is that your hiring process has no filter — and no real signal about what you're actually looking for. High application volume feels like success. In reality it usually means your job description is vague, your employer brand is attracting everyone including nobod...

After a decade embedded in the Toronto tech ecosystem — including time as Executive in Residence at MaRS — Daneal Charney has seen every version of hiring go right and go wrong. The patterns that produce great hires aren't mysterious. Most companies just don't have the patience or the process to consistently follow them. The fundamentals that work are the ones teams abandon first when th...

What happens when 9 of Canada’s top hiring leaders get brutally honest about bias? During Tech for Canada Conference, we captured raw, unfiltered insights from executives at Microsoft, Deloitte, True Search, and more. From “pedigree bias” to companies getting “completely blindsided” by famous names, these behind-the-scenes conversations reveal the hidden forces sabotaging your talent strategy. The...

Years on a resume is not the same thing as the ability to do the work. It's one of the most persistent assumptions in hiring — and one of the most expensive. A candidate with 15 years of experience can be deeply incompetent at the thing you actually need. A candidate with four years can be exceptional. The experience proxy persists because it's easy to defend. Nobody gets fired for hirin...

If your hiring decision includes any version of 'I could see myself having a drink with this person,' you have a bias problem masquerading as an instinct. Affinity bias doesn't feel like bias when it's happening. It feels like good judgment. The result is teams that get along well, think alike, and produce predictable work. Which is fine until the market shifts, the problem cha...

Swipe right on the right credentials, hope for a match, and call it recruiting. LinkedIn has turned talent acquisition into a pattern-matching exercise — and most people playing it aren't finding what they're actually looking for. The infrastructure problem runs deeper than behaviour. The systems connecting talent and opportunity were built for a labour market that no longer exists, opti...

The candidates most companies are sleeping on aren't hard to find. They're just being filtered out by job descriptions designed to attract the people who already have the job, salary bands that haven't moved with the market, and sourcing strategies that fish in the same three ponds. The gap between companies paying 70K for a role and companies paying 500K isn't always budget. I...

Nobody reads job ads the way companies write them. And the best candidates — the ones not actively looking — aren't reading them at all. The job ad as a recruiting tool had a good run. It's over. The companies still investing in job description craft and job board spend as their primary sourcing strategy are fishing in a shrinking pond, competing for the same pool of active candidates wh...

The rules of hiring were written for a different era, by people who needed to manage risk at scale, not find the best person for a specific job. Most of those rules are still in place — and most of them are quietly producing worse outcomes than the alternatives. Degree requirements for roles that don't need degrees. Interview processes that test presentation rather than capability. Reference...

Most hiring processes were designed without neurodivergent candidates in mind — and it shows. Timed assessments, unstructured interviews, rigid communication norms: the standard screening gauntlet systematically removes people whose brains work differently, regardless of whether those people would be exceptional at the actual job. AI tools are supposed to make hiring more objective. For neurodiver...

The candidate who looks perfect on paper — right school, right company, right titles — is often not the right hire. Not because the credentials are irrelevant, but because the process of selecting for credentials filters out the things that actually matter: adaptability, judgment, the ability to do the specific work in the specific context. This is the founding argument of Looks Good on Paper. And...

In this episode of the Recruitment Reality Podcast, I am joined by Artimese Braddy Lawrence, Coordinator of Human Resources at Tyler ISD, the largest school district in Northeast Texas. Artimese discusses the broad range of recruitment responsibilities in the school district, from hiring teachers to custodial staff and bus drivers. Within the educational sector there are some unique challenges, in...

In this episode of the Recruitment Reality Podcast, I am joined by Joe Atkinson, Founder at PURPL, a peer-to-peer learning platform built by talent acquisition for talent acquisition professionals. They specialize in upskilling recruiters with practical, time-efficient & industry relevant training. The episode delves into Joe's journey from his passion for startups to identifying a gap in...

In this episode of the Recruitment Reality Podcast, I am joined by Robert Garner, Director at Abstraction Labs, a recruitment website design & development firm. We discuss his transition from a career in recruitment to becoming a software developer and eventually starting his own web design business. Robert shares his diverse experiences, from selling recruitment advertising and working in med...

In this episode of the Recruitment Reality Podcast, I am joined by Ahva Sadeghi, CEO/Co-founder at Symba, an innovative onboarding and talent management platform. She highlights how Symba has grown from its initial conception of remote internships to focusing on new hire readiness in order to allow individuals to be productive from day one. She shares insights into the challenges faced during the...

In this episode of the Recruitment Reality Podcast, I am joined by Dace Straupmane, a Talent Acquisition Manager at SmartLynx, an aviation lending company (think of them as the B2B ‘Uber of aviation’). We discussed SmartLynx’s unique business model and recruitment strategies, specifically how they have had success attracting global talent by valuing candidate’s potential over experience. This has...

In this episode of the Recruitment Reality Podcast, I am joined by Yasmin Castle, a Talent Acquisition Specialist at Ideagen, a global software company based in Nottingham built for regulated and high-compliance industries. We discussed Ideagen’s hiring methods, early career programs, and the challenges of global recruitment with the varying market trends in the UK and India.  One of Ideagen’s ear...

In this episode of the Recruitment Reality Podcast, I am joined by Rosa Hilmi, the co-founder and managing director of Stellar Select, a niche recruitment consultancy specializing in the lending sector. Rosa shares her insights and experiences in the industry, highlighting the importance of having a strong USP and niche focus in a tough market. Rosa emphasizes the need for recruiters to prioritize...

In this week's episode of the Recruitment Reality Podcast, I had the pleasure of speaking with Sean Allen, a prominent figure in the talent acquisition community. Sean, who is currently the head of talent acquisition at The Very Group   shared his extensive experience in tech recruitment and his role in fostering a vibrant talent community. Sean's journey in recruitment spans over 15 yea...

In this episode of The Recruitment Reality Podcast, I had the pleasure of talking with Harvey Bass from Stascom about how he has maintained his business over 30 years. In this episode, we focus on how 'old school' methods are exactly what you need to keep your business alive. Harvey talks about: The importance of using the phone How to remain persistent and polite Why he has his team in...

In this episode of The Recruitment Reality Podcast , I had the pleasure of talking with Justin Plagis from Packaly.  Join us as we discuss how Justin and his team have scaled their business across multiple cities and countries. Following their € 2.6 million seed funding, their team has expanded their last leg delivery service into more than 125 cities! Listen to this episode to hear exactly how th...

In this episode of The Recruitment Reality Podcast , I had the pleasure of talking with Mark Gibbons from Tunstall.  Join us as we discuss how to recruit for secret but mission-led brands! In this episode, we discuss:  🔸 Promoting a powerful business mission: Craft a compelling mission that attracts top talent and fosters engagement. 🔸 Managing candidate expectations: Learn effective techniques...