Like it or not, the world has changed. How we hire needs to change too. Obsolete ways of working drive organisational obsolescence. That is, dinosaurs die out.
But what does the screening function of the future look like?
We talk to Andrew “Woody” Wood, Chief Customer Officer at Willo in Episode 12 of The View to get his take.
CV-free: Resumes are yesterday’s crutch
Like many people we’ve been speaking to recently – Estelle McCartney, Chief Explorer at Artic Shores, as one example – Woody is bullish about moving on from CVs. For several reasons:
- CVs aren’t good indicators of success
“72% of candidates admit they’ve lied on a CV” Woody points out. “It’s marking your own homework.” The point is, it’s practically impossible to gauge somebody’s true skills and potential on something they’ve written about themselves.
And even where candidates aren’t lying or exaggerating, humans are notoriously bad at self-assessment. Imagine if you hired at random from everyone who self-selected as a good fit. Chaos.
- CVs are unfair
Your ATS and your brain work similarly, looking for patterns and making best-guess assumptions accordingly. But the quality of those assumptions hinges on the quality of the data ingested.
A CV isn’t good data. So instead of looking at skills and potential, you’re making screening decisions based on info that bears little relationship to actual on-the-job success. Often biased decisions, based on stuff like education background, career gaps, and spelling mistakes. If you care about ED&I you need more evidence for screening decisions than CVs.
- CV-based hiring creates a race to the bottom
The explosion of AI means CVs are even more redundant than they were. The rise of the AI-enabled candidate means recruiters who were already busy are literally swamped. Reliance on CVs exacerbates the issue, because AI means candidates can generate a CV and application that exactly matches your JD with almost zero effort.
So you double-down on AI tools to help, and candidates double-double-down, and it becomes a race to the bottom. As Woody puts it, “AI just ends up assessing AI.”
AI-ready: using tech where it helps, not harms
According to Willo’s Hiring Trends 2025 report, 40% of companies already use AI in hiring and plan to increase use in 2025.
But the report also finds that 53% of recruiters who’ve adopted AI are already planning to change the tool they use. And 9% don’t think AI should be used in recruitment at all. Yes, that’s still a minority, but it’s more than double last year’s 4%.
AI has huge potential to transform how hiring happens. But rushing headlong isn’t the way forward. Talent leaders need to take a sensible, measured approach to integrating AI – not blindly launch onto the hype bandwagon.
If your processes suck, whacking AI on top doesn’t solve anything. Scrub-up your process, then explore which tools can genuinely add value to how you want to work. Not just whatever’s new and shiny.
People-first: tech as a springboard for human connection
Recruitment conversations often centre on increasing automation and improving efficiency. Understandably big priorities. But recruitment is the most people-centric profession out there. Let’s not lose sight of that.
Tools to enhance efficiency are excellent. Necessary. But they’re valuable because they free space for recruiters to add more human-to-human value. Those are the moments where you make the biggest difference to hiring outcomes. To your hiring decisions. To your employer brand.
As you start to evolve your processes, keep people-first as your lighthouse priority. Be relentlessly, ruthlessly human. Your candidates – and your managers and your C-Suite — will thank you.
Joining the dots with video screening
If you’re reading this thinking ‘I’d love to ditch CVs but there’s zero way that’ll fly with managers’, that’s common. Woody talks about the “comfort blanket” of CVs for hiring managers who, let’s remember, aren’t experts in hiring. For most, recruitment is already an extra burden that’s outside their core competency zone.
Yes, managers want the right person in their teams. But they’ve also learned the ‘shortcut’ of hiring someone with five years at a competitor. It’s like the old adage, nobody gets fired for using IBM.
To start moving the business away from CVs, you need other tools that deliver the same (or better!) outcomes. That’s where video screening comes in.
Willo’s video screening software — which powers Tribepad Video Screening — gives much richer insights into candidates, with a fraction of the hassle.
✅ Start moving away from CVs
✅ Understand candidates better, faster, earlier
✅ Slash time-to-hire
✅ Decimate manual admin
✅ Deliver personal, engaging CX that wows
✅ Build a fair, inclusive process
✅ Make manager collaboration easy
If you’re facing resistance to the whole CV-free thing, consider integrating video screening as a pilot – Early Careers is often a good start. Then use your results to snowball momentum.
It can be hard to hang onto, especially when recruitment is so often treated as overhead. But remember you’re the expert. You add most value to the organisation when you use your expertise to steer change, especially in watershed moments.
The fact is, hiring conditions have fundamentally changed – and the ways we hire need to change too. Recruiters can be the pioneers of what needs to happen.
Tribepad is the trusted tech ally to smart(er) recruiters everywhere. Combining ATS, CRM, Video Interviewing, and Onboarding, our talent acquisition software is a springboard for fairer, faster, better recruitment for everyone.
Trusted by organisations like the BBC, Tesco, NHS Professionals, and Subway, 30-million people in 16 languages use Tribepad.
