They Belong In A Museum: Jeff Waldman on Why Most Resumes Say Nothing At All

Anita Chauhan (00:17)

Hi everyone and welcome to this week's edition of the Looks Good on Paper podcast powered by Willo. Today I'm joined by Jeff Waldman, founder of ScaleHR, host of the Unmuted podcast, and someone who spent over two decades at the intersection of HR, technology, community, and leadership. Jeff is known for bringing people together — whether that's through advising growing companies, building practitioner communities, or pushing more honest conversations about how work actually works. He's deeply human in how he approaches talent and technology, and he's been a consistent voice for inclusion, accessibility, and practical progress in the HR space. He's also a friend of mine. Welcome, Jeff.

Jeff Waldman (01:02)

That was pretty good, actually. I'm not sure how I could have written it better! Thank you, Anita. Great to be here. It's great to be on the other side of it, because usually I'm the one in your seat.

Anita Chauhan (01:17)

You've built something amazing within the space, especially in North America. You run events around the world too — can you share a little about that?

Jeff Waldman (01:31)

Part of my career has always been about bringing people together to learn, to network, to get inspired. We have Social HR Camp, which I founded in 2012. We've run over 70 events now, soon to be in 16 North American cities — and we're expanding into Europe and other places around the world. It's all really grassroots, HR for HR, tackling what's top of mind right now, which is largely driven by AI. We also do HR in Tech Crawl in Toronto during Toronto Tech Week. Popular last year, we're bringing it back — and yes, we're bringing the buses back because people love them.

Anita Chauhan (03:06)

Why don't we jump in. Kicking it off with the first question: what's the biggest hiring mistake companies keep making even when they know it's clearly not working?

Jeff Waldman (03:23)

How much time do you have? This has been the constant thing that has plagued my entire career. Here's the problem: we still look at the signals and the things that have virtually nothing to do with future outcomes. Zero. We overvalue things like job titles — which get hacked to pieces now, so it doesn't matter what you're looking at. Brand name companies — must hire from Amazon or Google. Certain schools.

Because you're trying to bring down your risk or you're looking for ways out. And roles are moving too quickly, especially with AI. Those signals mean nothing now. Resumes, which we usually use as a starting point, really tell you where someone's been, but they give you no indication whatsoever of how they're going to do in your work environment.

The shift needs to be from experience matching — which is easy to do — to how they can learn, adapt, grow. All the things that really matter in a volatile business environment.

Jeff Waldman (05:28)

We've been conditioned to do it this way for decades — it's the easiest way. Really focusing on what matters, on the skills they can bring and how they're going to adapt and fit into your work environment — that's much harder to do. The resume can't give you that. I remember back in the day saying, I don't want resumes. I want someone to do a simple video, or just write me an email talking about how they would tackle a problem. That was prior to AI, but now it's much more difficult. And because of AI, it's even more important to do this stuff.

Anita Chauhan (08:47)

Moving on to question number two: what's a hidden bias companies unknowingly have even when they think they're being progressive in their hiring?

Jeff Waldman (08:51)

The consistent one for years: when people look at someone's career, they look for a clean career. They look at the gaps. Someone may have gone on mat leave for a year and gets docked because there's a gap. Or someone didn't move up the ladder each time they changed jobs — it was more of a lateral move. Who cares? That person changed organizations, they took on new challenges. Or someone changed jobs every 18 months. Well, the average tenure for most people today is 18 months or less.

Anything off the narrow, conventional background gets penalized, and that drives me nuts. My career is anything but a straight line up. And people like me can probably tackle any challenge thrown their way.

The other thing: we often confuse confidence with competence, or polish with quality. If someone has a polished resume, therefore they have a good chance of doing well here. That's a bias. And around diversity — diverse perspectives matter. I'm hard of hearing, I come from a different background. Someone may not really align with my way of thinking just because I'm different. And that diverse thinking is exactly what teams need.

Anita Chauhan (13:58)

Onto our third question: if you were to suddenly remove CVs from the current hiring process, what would that look like?

Jeff Waldman (14:12)

This is what scares people. Without a resume to spend seven seconds on, you've got other signals driving that first part. You would have to do things differently. Maybe it's solving an exercise — a real exercise like you'd encounter at work. Maybe it's a structured conversation about making different choices. What you really want to get at is how the person thinks.

There are ways to do it where you're actually starting from a place of getting into their brain versus a resume that can just be produced. Your hope is that they're being honest, because when you talk to them you can dig in deeper into their responses. You can see if they're being truthful. I want to see how people think. You can't get that from a resume. Absolutely not.

Yes, it does take more effort up front. But the payoff is a much better hire — and we all know what the costs are to hiring poorly. They're downstream, and we need to avoid that.

Anita Chauhan (18:07)

For a wildcard question: given that we know the CV is a poor signal, what other signals do you think are more important for hiring managers in 2026?

Jeff Waldman (18:17)

Something I absolutely love is some kind of case study where someone looks at a question and talks about how they would tackle it — whether that's done by video or written response, it doesn't really matter. And of course there's always a fear it's written by AI, but there are tools that can catch that kind of thing.

Those are the best ways to do it as a first signal. Hiring managers can't talk to a thousand people, so it needs to be scalable, short, upfront. But it's really asking them how they would do something, getting into their mindset as to how they would approach something — because that gives you a lot of insight into their thinking process. And then you decide whether that thought process will add value to your organization. A resume can give you some signals, but they're usually quite poor.

I've tried hiring people purely based on a resume, and I've tried a different approach, and I always find I get better quality information with the latter. It's more complicated, can be more difficult, but it's a mindset change and a behaviour change. Really ask yourself: what is the goal here? To get good information about how this person thinks. That is the core of it — because you'll be working with them.

Anita Chauhan (20:06)

Jeff, thank you so much. It's been a joy to have you on the podcast, and thank you for bringing people around the world together. I'm excited for the world to hear your thoughts.

Jeff Waldman (20:41)

Yeah, thank you very much for having me.