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 hiring the person with more years on paper. But the people who get hired because of it, and who can't do the job, cost far more than a well-designed screening process would have.
David Hiford, Lead Talent Acquisition at Hitachi Rail, has recruited across New Zealand and the UK and watched companies make this mistake with striking consistency. In this episode of Looks Good on Paper, he challenges the assumption that experience and competence are the same thing, and explains what you should be measuring instead.
What you'll learn:
→ Why experience is a poor proxy for competence and what replaces it
→ How to design screening that measures capability rather than tenure
→ The true cost of hiring for years on paper rather than ability to do the work
GUEST
David Hiford — Lead Talent Acquisition, Hitachi Rail
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidhiford/
YOUR HOST
Anita Chauhan — Fractional CMO, co-host
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/anitachauhan/
CHAPTER MARKERS:
00:00 Intro
00:35 Introduction
03:20 Biggest Hiring Mistake
08:08 Unknown Hidden Bias
12:37 Most Surprising Hire
15:54 Wildcard: Spotting Potential That Doesn't Follow The Rules
17:31 Conclusion
18:28 Outro
LISTEN & FOLLOW
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/0dbfz6y0tMq3crViHQD66H
Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1625835562
All episodes → https://looksgoodonpaper.buzzsprout.com
WATCH ON YOUTUBE https://youtu.be/k8SrugxcidY
POWERED BY WILLO
Hire humans, not resumes → https://www.willo.video/looks-good-on-paper
CONNECT WITH US
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/company/10170893
If this episode changed how you think about hiring, share it with one person who needs to hear it. And subscribe — we're rewriting the rules of hiring, one episode at a time.
Experience and competence are not the same thing, and treating them as equivalent is one of the most common and costly mistakes in hiring. Years in a role measures persistence and availability, not the ability to produce outcomes in a new context. Competency-based screening — structured tasks, situational questions, work samples — consistently predicts performance better than tenure-based filters.
Show Resources
