Praveen Tomar on Data-Driven Hiring: Why CVs Don’t Cut It Anymore
Guest: Praveen Tomar
Host: Tim Freestone
Podcast: Objective Hiring
Modern hiring is broken—and Praveen Tomar has some ideas on how to fix it.
In this episode of Objective Hiring, Praveen, a Data and Automation Specialist, joins Tim Freestone to unpack the flaws in traditional recruitment processes and offer a data-driven alternative.
“Hiring is still largely gut-feel based. Not a lot of things get measured.”
Praveen points to the CV as one of the main culprits. In his view, it’s an outdated instrument loaded with irrelevant and biased signals—gender, ethnicity, education pedigree, and more.
“A CV reveals so much unnecessary personal data. Name, marital status, religion—even a photo. None of this tells you if someone can do the job.”
Instead, he suggests approaches like anonymised hiring and structured video screening.
“In UK civil service, personal details are stripped out entirely. Even company names and universities are hidden to avoid bias.”
And to identify true motivation and capability?
“We asked candidates to record short videos answering real-world questions. You’d learn more from that three-minute video than from reading 20 CVs.”
He says this approach reveals not just communication and reasoning skills but also a candidate’s genuine intent.
“The way someone answers—how they approach a problem, how clearly they speak—tells you more than a list of job titles.”
Praveen also shares how his teams use open-ended, scenario-based video questions as the first screen. No coding. No resume screening.
“Just tell us how you’d approach this challenge. The exact answer doesn’t matter—what matters is how they think.”
He advocates focusing on learnability, communication, and ethics as much as technical skill.
“I’d rather hire someone with strong intent and problem-solving skills than someone who just ticked off keywords on a CV.”
For organisations relying solely on resumes, he sees a missed opportunity.
“You might reject a great candidate just because they left off a buzzword or didn’t polish their CV. That’s a loss.”
He encourages hiring managers to look beyond surface-level filters and offer more ways for candidates to express themselves.
“Informal chats, webinars, real examples of past work—these show you the person, not just their profile.”
Throughout the episode, Praveen and Tim highlight the need for hiring to evolve.
And for companies looking to bring objectivity into their process, platforms like Alooba offer data-backed hiring assessments that measure skills directly—without the bias.
If you want to make hiring fairer and more effective, this episode is a must-listen.