The job market isn’t broken — our hiring methods are
Every hiring cycle seems to tell the same story.
Companies say they can’t find the right people.
Candidates say they can’t get seen.
Roles stay open while inboxes overflow.
It’s tempting to blame the job market. But the market isn’t the problem.
The issue is how hiring decisions are made.
Why traditional hiring struggles in a modern workforce
Most hiring systems are still centered around the CV. Titles, timelines, keywords, and past employers are treated as the strongest indicators of future success.
That approach worked when careers were linear and skills changed slowly.
Today, it breaks down.
People build expertise across projects, side work, open-source contributions, communities, and roles that don’t fit neatly into a résumé. Skills evolve faster than job descriptions. Potential often appears before it’s easy to label.
When hiring methods rely too heavily on static documents, they miss how people actually grow and work.
How today’s systems miss tomorrow’s talent
Hiring tools are often optimized to confirm what already looks familiar. They reward similarity to past hires and penalize deviation — even when that deviation signals adaptability or learning ability.
This means:
- unconventional career paths are filtered out,
- transferable skills are overlooked,
- early-stage talent with high upside never reaches a human conversation.
Tomorrow’s strongest contributors rarely look perfect on paper today. By the time their potential is obvious, they’re no longer available.
AI can help — if it’s used to reveal, not replace
AI shouldn’t be used to automate judgment or quietly rank people behind the scenes.
Its real value is in helping teams see more clearly.
When designed well, AI can:
- interpret experience in context instead of reducing it to keywords,
- connect skills across different domains and roles,
- surface candidates who don’t match a checklist but match the work,
- reduce noise so human judgment has space to operate.
The goal isn’t faster rejection.
It’s better understanding.
Making smarter hiring decisions
Smarter hiring doesn’t come from more data or more filters. It comes from better signals.
At Laidback, we focus on helping teams look beyond the CV to understand what candidates actually bring — how they think, what they’ve built, and how their skills translate to the role at hand. AI supports this by connecting patterns that are difficult to see manually, while keeping recruiters in control of every decision.
This approach leads to hiring that’s not only faster, but more intentional — decisions teams can explain, stand behind, and learn from.
Discovering true potential
Potential doesn’t live in a single field on a résumé.
It shows up in how people learn, adapt, and apply their skills in new contexts. It appears in the work they choose to do and the problems they gravitate toward.
When hiring methods evolve to recognize this, the gap between open roles and available talent starts to close.
The job market isn’t broken.
But discovering true potential requires new ways of seeing — and smarter tools to support them.