Looks Good on Paper

LinkedIn is the Tinder of Recruiting - Joshua Sklüt (Episode 6)

• Andrew Wood (aka Woody), Anita Chauhan • Season 1 • Episode 6

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Joshua Sklüt, Chief People Officer and co-founder of MyStandard, joins us to discuss how traditional hiring methods are fundamentally broken. As the creator of the first employment and talent acquisition service built on Web3 technology, Josh argues that platforms like LinkedIn have become "the Tinder of recruiting" - focusing on superficial details rather than actual ability to do the job.

Josh reveals the biggest hiring mistakes companies make, from reactive hiring decisions driven by desperation to unconscious biases that limit talent pools. He shares powerful insights about how diversity improves business quality - not just for social responsibility, but for bottom-line results. The conversation covers why companies unknowingly perpetuate hiring biases even when they believe they're progressive, and how verification of candidates can transform the entire interview process.

The episode culminates with Josh's surprising hire story about bringing on a quadriplegic team member who became an invaluable employee, challenging preconceptions about ability and cultural fit. His wildcard response about abolishing resumes focuses on skills assessments as the only information that truly matters - a philosophy that drives MyStandard's encrypted, candidate-controlled platform where companies pay candidates directly for access to their verified professional data.

Resources Mentioned:

  • Joshua's LinkedIn: Chief People Officer and co-founder of MyStandard
  • MyStandard: Web3-powered employment platform giving candidates control of their professional data

Studies & Examples Referenced

  • Bertrand-Mullainathan Study (2004): American Economic Review research showing identical resumes with white-sounding names (Emily, Greg) vs. African American names (Lakisha, Jamal) resulted in 50% more callbacks for white applicants (Josh referenced this as a "New York Times study" in the episode, but the actual research was published in the American Economic Review)
  • Ivy League Hiring Bias - Example of companies that "only hired out of Ivy League schools" blocking 90% of qualified candidates
  • Quadriplegic Employee Success Story - Josh's experience hiring a wheelchair-using employee who became an invaluable team member, challenging assumptions about ability and cultural fit

Show Resources

Welcome to Looks Good on Paper, the podcast that's flipping the script on traditional hiring. We're your hosts. I'm Woody. And I'm Anita. And in each episode we dive into why CVS and the so-called perfect candidate can be misleading. We'll be speaking with industry experts to uncover how skills, potential, and real world experience should be the focus when making hiring decisions. We are here to challenge the norm and rewrite the rules of hiring. So let's get started. Hi everyone, and welcome to the latest edition of Looks Good On Paper, the podcast where we try about rethinking the hiring process, shifting away from CVS and traditional hiring methods to focus on skills, potential, and behaviors. Today we welcome Joshua Sklüt, chief People Officer, and co-founder of My Standard. my standard is the first employment and talent acquisition service built on Web3 technology and designed to give users ownership and control of their data. Josh, welcome. I'm so glad that you're here. I'm gonna throw it back to you and share a little bit more about yourself and like, honestly, just wanna hear a lot more about my standard and what you're building here Thanks. Yeah. Appreciate you Nita. Thanks very much. Yeah, my standard, as you said, is built on Web3, but basically what we are is a. A paradigm shift in how recruiting gets done. the current structure of recruiting, as we all know, is a big mess. LinkedIn, I call the Tinder of recruiting. Basically, you're looking at people's photographs, you're looking at their name, you're looking at where they went to school, you're looking at the jobs that they've had, none of which has any real relevance to their ability to do their current job. with our app, which is available in both app stores, you download the app, all your professional data is behind an encrypted wall. No one can see it. No one can touch it. no one can do anything with it until you give it permission to do that. that's true. Is that kind of talent relationship management that you're building in the future as well? Right. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, when you, when you put a job on LinkedIn as a company and you get 5,000 resumes, that's not sustainable, right? And as a candidate, you're not gonna get that job, right? If you're applying to a job in 5,000, other people apply to that job. It's not happening With our structure, since it's a very focused and targeted search, you're probably gonna have 15 or 20 people for that same job. You know that they're qualified because you put in the exact criteria that you needed for them. Right? Imagine the conversation you're having with somebody when you know they are who they say they are before the interview starts. It changes the entire conversation.'cause you don't have to worry, you know, that's, something up about their profile doesn't make sense or that timeframe doesn't work. If they're qualified and they're verified, that verification allows you to make a hire very quickly and not have to sweat the interview process to hope it works out. Wow, that's amazing. Thank you. totally different. Yeah. It's a great, it's a great way of looking at it too. I think it's great. Also, going back to the whole idea, it's like it's a long game when you're, working to fill it for like hiring. You're building these relationships over time and. know, like that's something for like a long burr and later on and you can go back to those people, even if you do hire them and they leave and you can keep building that relationship ongoing. That's correct. So this obviously works. Our first vertical is trucking and logistics, which we can get into as to why we did that, but. Picture this, premise. At the very high end, if you're like the CFO of of Pfizer, Okay. not on LinkedIn anymore. Why? Because you're getting attacked constantly by people bothering you. So that's, that happens, but you're probably also missing out on good stuff because there's probably good things that are being approached, but you're just not getting them. So imagine this, you download the app, you're behind the wall, no one can see you, and no one can touch you. And someone reaches out to you and says, Hey, CFO of Pfizer. why don't we get going now on our first question. With that being said, That wasn't even the first question. Wow. that wasn't the first question. It's just our lead in now we start the real homework. There you go. alright, so first question. What's the biggest hiring mistake companies keep making even though it's clearly not working? feel like companies making choices. They oftentimes make bad decisions because they're so far behind the eight ball on whatever that hire is. That they're willing to make certain sacrifices that end up costing them in the long run. meaning they don't make a hire in, candidates or, potential employees end up leaving in six months or three months or nine months, which ends up costing you a lot more time. I think companies should be more conscious of making proactive hires as opposed to reactive hires. So I think that's one of the biggest problems that as a head of TA in my former life, uh, I often found always try to make a hire in advance of a need as opposed to in a reaction to a need. 100% agree. The, whole idea of only hiring. when somebody leaves or on, you know, thinking about it on the day that you need to grow, the team is just so far removed. And also I think if recruiters aren't thinking about, talent mapping and for forecasting the heads that they're gonna need for the future and building a talent pipeline, that's where they get easily replaced by an app or admin or whatever. If they're not engaging with hiring managers and going. Hey, what are you gonna need in the next 12 months so I can start building the pipeline of people now? so yeah, totally agree. and to that exact point, building a pipeline and forming relationships with candidates often leads to other undiscovered things that you don't even know about yet. Right? Like if you're building a pipeline of, of managers, and you end up talking to someone, you're like, oh, you know what? I talked to this guy. He wasn't great for this role but. In my conversation with him, I learned that he's really good at this thing, this thing, and this thing that we could use in this other area to that exact point, which is a more proactive way of dealing with that. I don't think AI is gonna be able to replace that ability to make those decisions by any means. But if you're doing that and you're not just sitting there like as a recruiter or a head of TA waiting for like your hiring manager to be like, oh my God, what's, what? Are they gonna need me to drop everything to find? You're always gonna have a chance. Very few companies that are managing to do that right now. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for that. Let's move on to our next one. What's a hidden bias companies unknowingly have even when they think they're progressive in their hiring? Oh yeah. See that's the classic question, right? Like the New York Times a couple years ago did a survey. I dunno if you saw this article where they had two resumes, that they posted and they were the exact same resume. One was a, Caucasian or white surname and one was an African American surname Yeah. the white surname got 25% more interviews. the exact same resume with the exact same skills and the exact same. Uh, it it. So I think we are all victims of our own unconscious and conscious biases. and I think companies have a tendency to look at their workforce internally. And I've had this experience myself. And it's a very homogeneous group, and that's who they unconsciously want to see, continue to see. Whereas what they should be doing is looking for the opposite, right? Because the more diverse your workforce, and I'm not talking about DEI, I'm talking about business, the more diverse your workforce is, the better off whatever it is, whatever product you're selling or whatever service you're offering is gonna be. Why? Because you're gonna have different viewpoints that you don't necessarily have. Things that don't enforce your biases. Make for a better product, make for a better service. So I think that's one of the big mistakes is we've got, you know, The company I work for, they only hired out of Ivy League schools. Okay. So instantaneously 90% of the population was blocked out. So how do you combat that? Do you have to call it out on your teams? you have to address the outfit in the room. You have acknowledge, and this is from a leadership perspective, whether it's head of TA or CEO or whoever, head of CHRO, You have to acknowledge that this exists. You have to genuinely look at your team. You have to look at your org chart. You have to be like, this guy went to Brown, this guy went to Georgetown, this guy went to Harvard. Do we have anybody here that went to an HBCU? No. Do we have anybody here that went to a, second tier school? Maybe that's, you know, they got a scholarship there because they were underprivileged to begin with and they're brilliant, but they couldn't get into Harvard 'cause they didn't have the, you know, money to buy their way in or, or whatever it is. You have to literally accept that it's a reality. And that's not DEI because DEI, that's a whole other conversation. But as a construct, the premise is not diversity just for diversity's sake. It's diversity to improve your quality of your business. To open up more doors that you are normally not. If you have the same types of clients, you're limiting yourself in how much earnings, how much money you can make, how much you can grow. Absolutely. I do a lot of inclusive marketing talks. I am a marketer and Yeah. of things that we talk about is like how you can build strong, inclusive marketing teams from the inside out because you are gonna be marketing to a diverse group of people. So you wanna be able to speak to their needs, and you wanna be able to reflect within your branding and your marketing, all of your consumer base. Okay, and onto question number three, Hmm. and then you have Woody asking your wild card question, so. ready. What's the most surprising hire you've ever made, and how did their success defy what looked good on paper or vice versa? that's an interesting question. we hired somebody at, at a former firm. Um, so I'm a big proponent of disabled of, of hiring people of with disabilities. and people with disabilities, I do my own podcast and we've had guests on who support that. and we found that that's a very tough, uh, it's very hard for people with disabilities to get to find jobs. So, at a former company, we hired someone who was, quadriplegic, they were in a wheelchair. our office was wheelchair accessible, but we were really super concerned that they were not gonna be able to kind of fit into our culture. we ended up hiring them because they were brilliant. and on paper they looked great. we brought them into the office. It was almost as if within a couple weeks of the hire. It was a great play for us both, from a PR and a marketing perspective, but also from a, just a culture perspective. Within a couple weeks, you didn't even remember you forgot that this person had a disability because they integrated themselves so well into the team. That you got to the point where you're like, I can't believe we even considered not hiring this person. They were such an important team player. So that was a lesson I learned, which is again, which sort of led to what my standard has become, which is just because you see somebody on paper or you see their face or you see that they have some issue, do not discount their ability. Do not anticipate that they're not gonna be good at what they do, just'cause they have something that they have to deal with on their own. Right. and this person ended up being a, a wonderful employee. And that was a, a lesson I learned. And I think the important thing about that is, you know, we obviously talk about skills-based hiring and task-based assessments. if you're doing that, if you. Assessing somebody's skill or capability of doing the job using, you know, proper tasks, then there's no reason that you can't uncover that capability of that individual. The only thing that you have to be super conscious of is making sure that you give them the environment to be able to carry out the task effectively, like get rid of the other barriers and the reasonable adjustments are made to ensure that that person can, you know, get to the office. Safely easily without driving huge anxiety and all of that stuff, and then enable them to do the task on a day-to-day basis. And think about what it says about you as an organization from a culture perspective, from the top down. Right. We are inc. We, we appreciate differences. we support diversity. We are all about bringing people who are, to your point, the best at what they do, regardless of any other factors. Right? and we therefore. a potential client of that company, whatever the service or product they sell is, you're like, wow, these guys are, awesome. They got, these guys really care about their team and they really care about hiring the best people regardless. I mean, when you look at work environments, when you see, again, you know nothing against us, but like cis white men only, cis white men, you get an idea of exactly what that culture is about, right? You know who they are and what they're about, and you're literally cutting off your nose, spite your face, because. 80% of the of the possible business that you're looking at is gonna be turned away because they want to see something that looks like them or that respects them. And we see like. All of the people buying right now are looking to those things and looking at social responsibility and corporate responsibility, and they're looking at your teams. And I think from like the position of like, I'm typically one of, earlier on in my tech career, I was the first woman on the team and Right. on the team with lots of engineers. And I would avoid certain companies that had a vibe. And I think like, what does that say? Right? What talent are you missing out on if they're seeing this too? Absolutely. And with the access to information that we all have. It's really not hard to find out and, and dig, you know, one layer into the onion about what a, you know, company is. You can know, right? This company has this reputation for this. Oh, you don't wanna work there unless you're that, that's not good for them either, right? So they, everybody can, has the internet, right? Everyone can find anything you want to find. And to that same token, that's why I think the DEI conversation is interesting because if you're just hiring to fill a quota, then you're not doing it right. The culture should be inclusive from jump, not, oh my God, we need, you know, we need to hire a, a person of color, or we need to hire a woman just so that people don't think we're this. That by definition means you are that right. If you're not, if you're not thinking about it from the jump that we need to hire the best person for this job regardless of their background, then you're, then you're missing out on opportunity. Well, that becomes tokenism then, A hundred percent. And, and, and that's why that argument is so, is so specious to me.'cause as I'm like, what do you mean, you know? ODI is bad. That's because you're doing it wrong. Right? That's because you're looking at it the wrong way. it shouldn't be about that. It should be about hiring the person who's best for the job and looking at everybody through the same lens as opposed to, uh, you know, discounting people in advance. Thank you. Thank you Yeah. Yep. Witty, you're up. Drum roll. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna flip the question that you asked yesterday, Anita Let's, imagine that resumes or CVS were abolished and you never saw another one again. What's the one piece of information that you would want to keep or still get from the traditional resume? Probably just a skills assessment. you know, again, I don't think it matters. Anything matters. I think showing your address is bias. It does absolutely. yeah. So I'm agreement, like I think, I mean, look at our platform. There's no resume, right? And I think that's the first thing that made us unique in, in the space is you all the things that are traditional about a CV are, are gone. Including your name, including your address, and including any other aspect of your background. The only thing we're focusing on is your skills and experience. So therefore, and when I say experience, I don't mean where you worked, I mean what you did at that particular job. So I would definitely keep a person's skills because no matter what the job is, that's ultimately what's gonna be the decider, and that's the only thing that ultimately matters. it's also not about hiring people just for that particular skill set. What you're ultimately trying to do and what The biggest challenge I think, in the market now is, is retention of employees, keeping people engaged and keeping people interested. If you are always challenging them, they're gonna stay there longer, right? anybody who comes into a job just to take a job is gonna be gone in six months, and you're then going to have to, rinse and repeat the process of hiring, which takes months on its own. If you manage to focus, keeping a person engaged on the skills that they're good at. Keeping them en engaged on what they're supposed to be doing in that job, the potential of them being a long-term employee goes up dramatically Yeah. as long as they can focus on their background and their ability to do that thing, they're only gonna get better at it, and you're gonna have a better employee. So that's my answer. You know, especially in the modern world that we live, where there's good percentage of jobs are remote now, where a person lives, what neighborhood they live in. You know, specific background, irrelevant. So that would be the only thing, and that's what I think ultimately blind hiring is gonna, is gonna lead to eventually. Interesting. I think by the way, I, I agree. That's the one thing I would keep, I guess my sort of challenge or contest to that is that it's on my resume, the skills that I've written down are what I believe my skills are not necessarily what the truth is. Right. So it's like. your. Your level of No. Agreed. And, and one of the things we're gonna be offering in my standard down the road are skills assessments and tests Amazing. your own terms. So when a company reaches out to you, you know, they pay a little bit more money because your, profile's a little more robust. Absolutely. Yeah. Nice. Thanks, Josh. Good answer. Thank you. Thanks. good and on the spot. Amazing. thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. That's it for our questions. That's a wrap for us. we appreciate your time and your viewpoint and we think what you're building is really cool. Thank you very much. Love it. Thanks, Josh. you ever since for tuning into another episode that looks good on paper. Uh, we'll catch you, uh, in two weeks and, uh, see you all soon. So thanks for tuning in to Looks Good on Paper. We hope today's conversation helps you rethink what really matters when it comes to hiring. Don't forget to subscribe, share with your network, and stay tuned for more insightful discussions that are shaking up the entire hiring process. Catch us next time as we continue to challenge the status quo. Until then, remember, it's not what looks good on paper, it's what they can do.

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Andrew Wood (aka Woody)

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