Recently, our CEO, Euan Cameron, joined a webinar hosted by Jeff Waldman, founder of ScaleHR, on a topic that's been simmering for months but has recently reached a boiling point: what happens when resumes stop being reliable indicators of talent?
Jeff framed it perfectly at the start: "Hiring teams aren't struggling because they're bad at hiring. They're struggling because the environment has changed faster than the tools can handle."
That sentence landed hard in the chat. Because it's true.
The Pattern We're All Seeing
If you're in hiring right now, you've felt this:
Application volumes have exploded. Roles that used to receive hundreds of applications now receive thousands. AI-assisted resumes, one-click submissions, and mass-application tools have made it trivially easy to apply, which means everyone does.
Signal clarity has collapsed. More applications don't equal better candidates, they mean more noise. Recruiters are spending more time screening, and not because they're slow or lack discernment, but because it's harder to know what to trust.
Confidence has eroded on both sides:
- Candidates feel invisible in bigger pools.
- Recruiters second-guess their shortlists.
- Hiring managers ask for "one more round" because early-stage signal doesn't give them conviction.
What we’ve been seeing, through our work with talent professionals and hiring teams alike, is that this isn’t just a temporary blip. We’ve all suspected for a while that the resume isn’t doing what it’s meant to, and while it is not fully broken, we can all agree that the conditions it was built for no longer exist.
Missed live webinar? Watch the full recording below. Euan Cameron and Jeff Waldman cover signal collapse, live poll results, and what high-performing hiring teams are already doing differently.
What Signal Collapse Actually Looks Like
During the webinar, we ran a poll: What's your biggest hiring challenge right now?
The results told the story:
- 38% said: "Too many applications, not enough qualified candidates"
- 29% said: "Can't tell who's real vs. AI-assisted"
- 21% said: "Recruiters overwhelmed, confidence dropping"
- 12% said: "Process is slow because trust has eroded"
These aren't separate problems, they're symptoms of the same root issue: weak signal.
Here's how it compounds:
- Qualified candidates get lost in larger pools. Despite rising volumes, strong candidates are buried. Decision confidence drops. Quality of hire declines.
- Teams add "authenticity checkpoints" to compensate. Extra interview rounds. Reference checks earlier in the process. Skills tests to verify what resumes claim. Each adds friction and time.
- Speed gets prioritised at the expense of what matters. Faster hiring often means lower quality, reduced fairness, poorer fit, and weaker employer brand outcomes.
- Pressure on lean teams drives unhealthy trade-offs. Over-automation replaces judgement, and bias is amplified. Hiring becomes machine-first rather than human-led – the antithesis of the work talent professionals do.
- Trust and brand credibility erode. Candidates feel the uncertainty, and rejections feel arbitrary. Further down the pipeline, retention suffers. Employer reputation suffers as clarity and transparency decline.
One participant in the chat put it bluntly: "We're spending more time on screening overload and admin than on actually evaluating talent."
That's the cost of signal collapse.
The Question That Changes Everything
Midway through the session, Jeff posed a question that stopped the conversation:
"If resumes stopped working tomorrow, what would you do?"
The chat went quiet for a moment. Then responses started flowing:
- "Focus on skills tests and live interviews"
- "Ask role-specific questions upfront"
- "Use video to see how people communicate"
- "Rely on work samples and portfolios"
- "Structured behavioural interviews with real examples"
These answers indicated that no one said they'd be fully stuck without resumes.
Everyone had ideas. They just hadn't given themselves permission to act on them yet, because resumes are still "working," even if barely. But that question forces a critical shift: from designing for convenience to designing for confidence.
If you knew CVs wouldn't give you signal, you'd build your process differently. You'd ask better questions earlier. You'd surface capability through demonstration, not documentation. You'd prioritise comparable, structured responses over polished prose.
So why wait?
What High-Performing Teams Are Already Doing
During the Q&A, we heard from teams who've already made this shift. Here's what they're doing differently:
1. They've Stopped Over-Relying on Resumes
According to our 2026 Hiring Trends Report:
- Only 36.6% of employers view credentials and learning history as reliable indicators of talent
- 40% are actively moving away from resume-first hiring
- 10.1% have largely replaced resumes with skills-based and scenario-driven assessments
One participant asked: "If a team wants to validate authenticity earlier without adding friction, what's the smallest change that makes the biggest difference?"
Our perspective? Stop asking for inputs that don’t predict performance.
If CVs aren't giving you confidence in someone’s ability to do the job, stop leading with them.
Ask more specific, role-relevant questions upfront. Yes, you'll get fewer applicants. But you'll get more qualified candidates, and that's the entire point.
We don't want all of the candidates in the world applying to our roles. We want the right candidates. Signal > volume.
2. They're Introducing Structured Screening Earlier
The smallest change I've seen work: move screening upstream. Instead of "send us a CV" as the starting point, ask targeted questions earlier in the process:
- For a customer success role: "Describe a time you turned an unhappy customer into a brand advocate. What did you do, and why did it work?"
- For a marketing role: "If you had £5,000 and 30 days to build awareness for our product, what would you do?"
- For a software engineer: "Show us a piece of code you're proud of. Why does it matter, and what would you improve now?"
These questions can't be answered by AI alone. They require specificity, lived experience, and role-relevant thinking.
The result? Fewer applicants. More qualified candidates. Clearer signal.
3. They're Giving Candidates Format Choice
Another question from the session: "Are you suggesting changing the format? Video responses vs. written?"
The method to try?: Letting candidates vote.
Offer video, written, or demonstrable exercise formats and see which path converts to hires. Different roles and organisations benefit from different approaches. There's no one-size-fits-all, but what we've seen at Willo is this: when candidates have choice, engagement increases. When recruiters have comparable, structured responses, regardless of format, confidence increases.
Structure creates fairness at scale. It's not restrictive. It's what makes equity possible when you're hiring in volume.
4. They're Keeping Humans in the Loop
One of the clearest findings from our Hiring Trends Report: 79% of teams insist final hiring decisions must remain human-led.
And here's the kicker: 0% believe automation should handle every stage of hiring.
AI is embedded everywhere now, with nearly 65% of respondents having increased their use of AI tools mainly for volume management, summarisation, and early-stage screening. Despite this, no one trusts it to make the decisions that matter most.
The best teams use AI to support human judgement, not replace it. AI brings structure and insight. Humans bring conviction, context, and accountability.
Where you draw that line matters. And the teams getting it right are being very intentional about where humans show up in the process.
5. They've Reassessed Their Tech Stack
"If the problem is weak input, not bad tools, what should hiring teams prioritise when evaluating their stack?"
Despite tools being the problem in many cases, having a good hiring system and stronger (more effective) signal actually does start with tools.
A lot of tech stacks aren't fit for purpose anymore. ATSs that make candidates create accounts before submitting a name and email. Systems so overcomplicated that recruiters and candidates both hate them. Tools that add friction instead of removing it.
The right tools streamline your candidate journey and help you build a proper funnel. The wrong tools amplify bad signals and make everyone's job harder. If your tech stack is working against you,if it's slow, complex, or creates unnecessary barriers. Modern, forward-thinking, simple tools make everything else easier.
Three Principles for Signal-First Hiring
If you take nothing else from this webinar or this post, take these three principles:
1. Confidence Comes From Clarity, Not Volume
Better decisions start with better signals. High application volume creates noise, not insight. Confidence improves when teams see how candidates think, communicate, and perform, not how well they've polished a document.
Ask yourself: Where in our process do we currently have the weakest signal?
2. Structure Reduces Risk at Scale
Consistency isn't restrictive, it's what makes fairness and speed possible at volume. Structured questions and comparable signals reduce uncertainty, bias, and second-guessing.
Ask yourself: Are we designing for convenience or confidence?
3. Trust Is Built Into Process, Not Promised
Trust doesn't come from good intentions. It comes from design. Transparent, consistent processes improve candidate experience and recruiter confidence. Fair infrastructure restores trust on both sides of the hiring table.
Ask yourself: What would we need to change if we couldn't ask for resumes?
What to Do This Week
Don't wait for resumes to fully stop working, begin designing for it now. Here are three practical plays you can implement immediately:
1. Add one role-specific question to your application process. Not a generic prompt. A targeted question that surfaces signal about capability. Track which responses convert to hires, and double down on what works from there.
2. Review your last 10 hires. What signal actually predicted success? Was it the CV? The interview? The skills test? The reference? Once you know what works, build your process around that signal.
3. Audit your tech stack for simplicity. If your tools create friction for candidates or recruiters, that's your starting point. Modern tools should streamline and be assistive in your work, not overcomplicate things.
The Opportunity Ahead
This moment, the shift from resume-first to signal-first hiring, is an opportunity.
An opportunity to:
- Restore clarity where volume has created noise
- Rebuild trust on both sides of the hiring process
- Use AI to support decisions, not replace them
- Embed fairness into hiring through intentional design
- Turn compliance into a source of speed and confidence
The teams pulling ahead aren't panicking about AI-generated resumes or application inflation. They've accepted that the old system is degrading and they're building for what comes next. They're asking better questions. Surfacing better signal. Making more confident decisions.
Increase Hiring Confidence with Willo
We built Willo to restore clarity where volume has created noise. Our platform helps organisations screen and surface authentic talent through structured async interviews that give you comparable, unscripted responses, in formats that let candidates show capability on their terms.
But we're not stopping there. We're building tools to help teams move beyond resume-first hiring entirely. Tools that verify authenticity, surface stronger signal faster, and protect human judgment at every stage. Less noise in. More truth out. Faster, fairer, confident hiring decisions, at scale.
If you're ready to see how Willo helps teams rebuild hiring around better signal, we'd be happy to show you: book a demo
