The Next Generation: Hiring without CVs

Our host, Global Partnerships Lead, Nate McLaughlin, chatted to Co-Founder at Vizzy, Chris Woodward-Jones and Founder & Director at Global M, Nick Waller, to get their takes on hiring beyond the CV and the ways in which we must adapt to hiring the next generation.

Watch the full recording here:

In today’s rapidly evolving workplace, the traditional CV-based hiring process is being challenged as outdated and ill-suited to meet the demands of modern talent acquisition. The focus is shifting towards a more holistic, inclusive, and candidate-centric approach. We’ve unpacked key insights from the session which you can read below:

It's important to evolve with the CV

It’s easy to agree that there is no solid replacement for the CV, and particularly amongst the more traditional companies, CVs are still very much the norm when it comes to recruitment. Amongst a lot of companies in the technology sector for example, we are starting to see a significant shift towards alternative tools that provide profiles to embody the person’s skills and personality as a whole.

By prioritising specific academic backgrounds and work experiences, the traditional CV may unintentionally exclude promising candidates who don’t fit conventional moulds. For example, younger generations, particularly Gen Z and the upcoming Gen Alpha, are looking for a more transparent and authentic hiring process where they can express their values, ambitions, and unique capabilities. This means enabling businesses and candidates earlier in the process to form better connections and a more meaningful understanding of one another.

Blend candidate experience with AI

A strong candidate experience is integral to any hiring process. By engaging candidates through interactive assessments, accessible application processes, and transparent communication, companies can create a hiring experience that attracts and retains top talent. However, this candidate-centric approach must also align with business needs. For CV-less hiring to be sustainable, companies need systems that support their recruitment teams through efficiency-enhancing technology. The most successful hiring frameworks will balance candidate experience with streamlined tools for recruiters, creating a win-win scenario for all involved.

Of course, the candidate experience comes with the right balance of tech, which is why it’s always important to diversify your tech stack to hire more effectively. Assessment platforms such as Arctic Shores for example, provide companies with tools to evaluate candidates’ abilities and personality traits beyond the standard CV checklist. This offers a more interactive and engaging approach for candidates to demonstrate their strengths in areas like problem-solving, creativity, and adaptability.

It’s also crucial to remember that certain tools will often lend themselves to certain roles.  Video CVs, for example, will arguably favour the more people-facing roles such as Sales. The choice of tech in your hiring process therefore needs to align with the roles you are hiring for and the culture of the company. By focusing on your candidates, you will naturally prioritise the types of AI you have in your process, which will in turn, shape your employer brand.

While tech cannot fully replace human assessment, it can dramatically enhance the hiring process by reducing recruitment time, lowering bias, and highlighting candidates who might otherwise be overlooked. Systems that incorporate AI should be employed with careful consideration, balancing efficiency with the goal of obtaining genuine insights into each candidate. As businesses adopt AI, they must avoid using it in ways that reduce individuality and instead harness it to elevate the candidate experience and support a fair and insightful hiring process.

Utilise the right tech to embrace DEI

Removing CVs from the equation encourages a broader range of candidates to apply and enables hiring managers to evaluate a candidate's true potential. It can also foster a sense of inclusion by embracing each candidate's unique identity and story, helping organisations to build genuinely diverse teams. To be able to hire diverse and inclusive teams, it’s important to understand more about the people that you're interviewing sooner, which most of the time, that CV does not enable.

Ultimately it's about giving freedom and flexibility to the candidate to be able to celebrate someone’s name or background and leveraging the technology that allows that. You need a platform that enables candidates to be themselves, which means implementing the most effective tools to facilitate this. Creating an environment where people feel they can bring their authentic self means that you will understand them more, something that AI alone cannot arguably fully cater for. 

The key for DEI success is understanding and not just treating DEI like a metric. Creating a culture of transparency as a business to portray to the outside world what it is that you want to achieve with your hiring is likely to help generate better interest from candidates.

The rising importance of soft skills

The prominence of soft skills has been on the rise for a number of years now. Skills such as communication, adaptability, teamwork, and emotional intelligence are key indicators of a candidate’s fit within an organisation. Tools that allow candidates to showcase these skills in action—whether through video interviews, written responses, or interactive assessments, help companies better assess soft skills in context, fostering a more holistic approach to evaluating talent.

Organisations have increasingly recognised that strong interpersonal and adaptive skills are essential, especially in remote or hybrid work environments. Therefore, identifying these soft skills in a candidate requires a more authentic, personal approach that can get to know the individual on a human level.

Final thoughts

The movement towards CV-less hiring is more than a trend—it represents a shift in how businesses value and understand talent. 

Moving away from CVs opens doors to more diverse, inclusive, and authentic hiring practices. By focusing on the candidate experience, technological innovation, and the amplification of soft skills, organisations can identify talent that aligns with both their current needs and future vision.

Thank you to our speakers and everyone who joined the webinar! If you'd like to connect with our speakers, you can find their details below:

Chris Woodward-Jones, Co-Founder at Vizzy

Nick Waller, Founder & Director at Global M

Nate McLaughlin, Global Partnerships Lead at Teamtailor

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