00:00 – Welcome to The Score: Nicola and Caroline introduce the episode and guest, Chris Watkins.
01:22 – Ice Breaker: Chris shares unusual (and pointless) questions candidates have faced, like “Jaffa Cakes, yes or no?”
02:39 – Recruitment then vs. now: From fax machines and filing boxes to LinkedIn and AI-powered screening.
05:38 – Hiring graduates vs. executives: Why assessing potential is key for grads, and strategic vision matters for leaders.
09:34 – The Skill and Will framework: How balancing capability with motivation creates stronger hires.
11:09 – Hiring under pressure: Scaling companies and how to avoid shortcuts that damage candidate experience.
13:12 – Trends in talent acquisition: AI, automation, and the rise of in-house recruitment teams.
15:28 – What companies still get wrong: Overvaluing big-name CVs and undervaluing soft skills.
18:29 – The best hiring advice: Chris shares his tip for startups looking to scale: hire slowly and hire for tomorrow.
20:24 – Science or Fiction? Quick-fire round separating fact from myth in hiring and assessments.
24:38 – Final takeaway: Why alignment of values, culture and long-term thinking are the keys to successful hiring.
Nicola Tatham (00:00)
Welcome to The Score, where we make sense of hiring trends, we sort science from fiction and find out what's new in talent acquisition from the top experts in the field. I'm Nicola Tatham, Chief IO Psychologist with over two decades of experience designing fair, predictive and science-backed talent assessments. I'm here to cut through the noise and talk about what actually works in hiring.
Caroline Fry (00:22)
And I'm Caroline Fry, Head of Product. I spend my time turning smart assessment ideas from Nick into tools that work, scalable, inclusive, and ready for whatever AI throws at us next.
Nicola Tatham (00:32)
So each episode we're joined by a guest to unpack a big question in hiring.
Caroline Fry (00:37)
Because talent deserves better than guesswork.
Nicola Tatham (00:39)
Today we're joined by Chris. Chris is a people and talent management consultant and he's been in recruitment and talent acquisition for over 20 years. Chris currently helps startups and scale ups to find the leaders that will take them to the next level of growth. So hi Chris.
Chris Watkins (00:57)
Hi Nicola, hi Caroline.
Nicola Tatham (00:58)
So, before we dive into our slightly more serious questions, we always like to start this with our favourite one. So what's the weirdest interview question you've ever come across? So given your background, might be something that you were asked as a candidate, but equally might be something that a hiring manager once asked you about a potential hire or maybe an interview question that you overheard and made you shudder slightly.
Chris Watkins (01:22)
I think probably the latter one really, suppose 20 years experience, you could write a book on dos and don'ts on interview questions. But the best one that comes to mind was an MD that we see a lot of work for early on in my career. And he would throw out very random questions to kind of just see people's reaction. So they might be hiring in product, in sales, in marketing. And halfway through a question, he would interrupt and go Jaffa cakes, yes or no.
And then five minutes down the line in another business critical interview, he might go Superman or Batman.
And he literally gave them no warning. And it was just to see how they reacted, whether they questioned it or whether they just went with the flow and then could easily fall back into their pattern of the competency question asked beforehand. yeah, very first time we heard it from a candidate, we were a bit perplexed about Jaffa cakes. Yes or no.
Nicola Tatham (02:18)
Well, it's a definite no to Jaffa Cakes if that helps, whether I'd get the job or not, but no. Well, hopefully times have changed and are still changing. I'd like to have seen the validation data on those particular questions. If you can get hold of that, we'll have a look at it.
Caroline Fry (02:21)
Same here. Yeah.
Chris Watkins (02:23)
Yeah, exactly. The metrics would be very interesting for sure.
Caroline Fry (02:39)
Yeah, speaking of the times that have changed, Chris, you have worked in recruitment for over 20 years, as Nic said at the top of this call. If you think back to your very first hiring gig, what's something that would completely surprise that younger version of you about how you work now?
Chris Watkins (02:54)
Goodness me, I technology is obviously at the forefront of 80 % of your day-to-day interaction with assessment, with process. If we go way back to 2004, where I started my sort of recruitment career, there was no CRM, there was no applicant tracking systems. We had this probably meter by meter box on everyone's desk. And we're talking like a hundred million turnover recruitment HR consultancy here. So not just a sort of small two man band. You would interview your candidates. You would write your notes. You would put them in this twirly box. Requirements would come through for your clients either on, you know, volume hiring or just one off. And a hundred people in the office would run around spinning their desks, spinning their boxes, going through their alphabetical order cards.
Coming up to you, I've got Caroline Fry here. She's a head of product and that's how candidate details were kept. There was no GDPR frantic. there's no, yeah. So sort of at the start of my career, there was no LinkedIn. LinkedIn is now obviously a tool that is every recruiters go to to kind of sensor check, do research, head hunt approach, map markets, again.
Caroline Fry (03:57)
I was gonna say. Sounds frantic, absolutely frantic.
Chris Watkins (04:16)
So talk of 20 years ago, you you'd get a job from a client and you would put an advert for say, 1200 pound a month in the local London Evening Standard or Birmingham Post. And you would sit and wait by the fax machine for the CVs to come through. And likewise, when you were then sharing a CV or a candidate with a client, you would call the client, right, Nicola, I'm about to send you four CVs. I want to fax them to you now. So that was my first kind of 12 to 18 months.
And then the internet got big and emailing and, you know, sort of spreadsheets and that type of stuff evolved.
Nicola Tatham (04:54)
Would you go back?
Chris Watkins (04:56)
I think it was great grounding.
It was good for your memory, but then I suppose you had all the candidate data in your head. It was lost pretty quickly once you left that business or it went with you. So for a succession planning to kind of share that data with your team became quite difficult. But yeah, great, great learning.
As you said, it was a kind of HR consultancy. So I sort of did my HR qualifications there. And then obviously it was very recruitment biased. So yeah, a of recruitment as well.
Nicola Tatham (05:03)
Okay, so Chris, you've obviously worked across graduate recruitment, volume, and now exec hiring. How does your approach shift when you're looking for a VP compared to an early career hire?
Chris Watkins (05:38)
Yeah, great question. And I think if we look at the grad element first, you're very much looking to assess, I suppose, their raw capabilities. They haven't got loads of tangible experience that they can pull competency examples to showcase. So you're very much testing their desire to be successful, their desire to fail quickly. How can they process feedback? So you're setting up scenario based questions to sort see how they evolve and mature through that versus the VP level, there is an assumption that they're capable of doing the role. If you've been doing something for 20 years, you don't lose that skill set overnight. So you'll then start to look and assess their, I suppose, strategic vision, flexibility, adaptability to the culture. So you'd be pushing them on questions around a deeper conversation towards, can you align with the leadership vision?
How do you build teams? How do you influence people? So you're still assessing their desire, but in a much deeper level.
And I think you could take it one step further at a VP level. I think that's when there's sort of references and confidential and open research become much more important to hire. As you say, somebody who doesn't lose that skill set overnight, but just because they've worked for one business and had a 10 year successful career doesn't automatically mean they're going to transfer to a new culture, a new vision and be successful. yeah, hopefully that gives you some idea.
Nicola Tatham (07:16)
So that's really interesting. I guess one thing that you did sort of hint at then, you know, is that strategic vision, flexibility and adaptability are really key at that sort of VP level of hiring now.
Do you feel like we've seen a shift in the last 20 years in terms of what we're looking for from leaders or have we not really seen much change?
Chris Watkins (07:36)
I think we have seen change. I think it's been subtle and I think different environments would maybe contradict that. But I think 20 years ago, even 10 years ago, maybe five years ago before COVID and the whole remote working workforce came into place, there was a job description. It was a round hole and you went looking for a round candidate to fit that job description at a leadership level.
Whereas I think nowadays when you're hiring at a VP level, you're trying to look at outside of the job description. And I think kind of talent partners, they're much more connected to the business's needs. So rather than just saying, here's a job description, Chris, can you go and find this candidate for us? Okay, I need to understand how the role is going to evolve more. How is this person going to add value to the revenue, the product, the stack.
So I think there's a much more strategic overview when you hire, rather than just this is the job description, we've got to go and find a carbon copy of this. There's much more about, how is a person going to grow?
Nicola Tatham (08:39)
Yeah, it's that, that word: evolve and grow that you've just used. It just feels so pertinent right now, relative to only when you first started out.
Chris Watkins (08:47)
I think so and businesses are pivoting and changing so quickly through geographical economic pressures. And so I think sort when you're hiring at senior level, they have to be adaptable. They have to be strategic. They have to be able to pivot super quickly. That's not on a CV. That's not on a job description. So you've obviously got to pour the resources in to support your decision making process.
Caroline Fry (09:12)
I what I hear when you talk about that senior level, like obviously from your perspective, it's a lot higher touch. You have to put in a lot more sort of bespoke work versus what we might expect at scale where like obviously, you know, the sorts of technology we have at Sova can help, but I know you use the skill and will framework and I wanted you, you could talk us through how that works in practice in this kind of scenario.
Chris Watkins (09:34)
Yeah, absolutely. So I think, you know, this skill is very much about the capability. And the will is about the desire to succeed. So I think when you're hiring at any level, but if we talk about mid to senior and above, you're never going to get somebody that hits 10 out of 10 on the requirements, because if they do, they're get bored super quickly, and you're going to be back to square one, you want to stretch them. Okay, so let's let's bring you in, let's align to the job description.
You're probably going to hit six or seven points out of 10 for argument's sake. So let's assess those capabilities. You've got tangible bits of experience that you can give us evidence of But then we move to the will. So maybe the three or four bullet points that you haven't got, what is your desire to align and motivate yourself to respond to the stretch? How do they respond to failure? What are they enthused about? Why would they want to come and join us? And I think more and more senior level hiring is following the skill and the will because you can test the kind of skill, but actually it's almost important with the will, what are they going to do to succeed in maybe their, their gaps in their repertoire or their armory that they have? How quickly can they educate themselves? And how quickly can a business support that person to get up to scratch.
Nicola Tatham (10:57)
Thank you. I understand that you scaled Swappie from 350 employees to 900 in a year. Sounds quite high pressure. So when you are in that kind high pressure growth mode, how do you stop shortcuts from creeping in to the hiring process? Because it's tempting to do that to get bottom-down.
Chris Watkins (11:09)
A gray hairs, a lot of gray hairs. It is, I mean, it's all consuming. So it becomes a mix of technology to enable you to be successful. But then it's a mix of headcount and labor. So, you you're building a huge internal talent team, an onboarding team, a background check team, to really enable you to kind of put candidates through a very simplified process. And I think that process that we talk about a lot in volume hiring or quickly is let's not over complicate a process. Let's make it swift, let's make it easy, make sure everyone is online and on board to it. Within that process if we can use tools, assessment tools, applicant tracking tools to streamline it may make the candidate experience better. So even if they are not successful in a role, they've had a three step process that has been fair and equitable to everybody.
So it's difficult, but as you say, I think it's a balance between using technology to empower a quicker and smoother process, give more visibility to the interviewees and interviewers coupled with having really good internal recruitment partners that know what a simple process is and they can execute on that process quickly.
Nicola Tatham (12:42)
I'm interested to just pick Chris's brains on what's a trend in talent acquisition right now that you think is worth paying attention to.
Caroline Fry (12:45)
Yeah, I was going to ask that too, because when you talk technology, obviously from my perspective, that is the future trend. That's obviously, you know, especially in the world of AI at the moment, not wanting to lead you specifically down AI, but future trends are all tech for me in our space right now. What are you paying attention to right now?
Chris Watkins (13:12)
Lots of things. I think you're right, technology, AI is influencing how you can map markets, how you can write job descriptions, how you can use an assessment matrix. It's definitely making it simpler. But to your point, Nicola, you've got to make sure you're not using it and relying upon it solely. I think a lot of trends in the marketplace are moving away from the traditional, need to grow and hire. And use recruitment agencies for that or rely upon recommendations.
A lot of tech businesses, you know, across the States, across Europe, certainly in the UK, are investing heavily in internal recruitment teams and then technology and AI to facilitate that internal recruitment team. By hiring internally and using the right technology to enable that, you can own a much better cultural journey.
Again, we go back to the earlier conversation around hiring is much more than just looking at a job description. An internal talent partner is going to be much more built into the vision of a business. How is that role going to evolve? How does it fit into job families? And then using technology to kind of support you on that. As you said, whether it be LinkedIn and AI to assess CVs. So if you're getting, you know, 500 CVs through a week for a low level role.
You know, there's certain platforms you can use to kind of spit out the best 50. But again, how much reliance are we putting on that? So you still need a human person to check and bring that human touch to hiring.
Caroline Fry (14:49)
We've discussed in previous episodes as well, the AI enabled candidate, obviously, you know, scales up the quantity, like you say, of applications per day. And we get to a point where AI is meeting AI, where the recruiters are using AI to filter, but the candidates are using AI to apply and actually the real person and the real company within that both get lost. So I think that caution is absolutely vital.
Chris Watkins (15:12)
Agreed. Yeah, agreed.
Caroline Fry (15:15)
So on the flip side of looking at future trends, is there anything that we haven't addressed yet that you think in hiring that we're still getting wrong? Maybe at any level, senior or junior?
Chris Watkins (15:28)
I think we touched upon it briefly earlier, but I think just putting too much reliance upon hiring somebody because they've come from a really good business that has a great reputation. And I think an assumption that they've been successful and they're going to be successful again. And I think just really ensuring that candidates are aligned to business strategy. What's their mission? How do they understand the business?
I think we need to put more time into softer skills. So when you're bringing somebody on to sit on the board or C-suite level, how are we testing their soft skills, their interactions with the other SLT, and maybe pushing them on something called the T-shaped questions. So if you think about a capital T, the downwards strand, that is their vertical. So let's say you're head of product, you're the downward T.
But if you're a leader in a business, how the cross bar on the top is all your other functions. How can you influence those other functions? How can you set those other functions up for success? And I think a lot of interviewing at a senior level is still focused on talk to me about your role and responsibilities. What are you really good at? And it's like, actually, how does that person fit into a bigger SLT team to set the business, to set other functions up for success? And that's played much more of a part in my personal assessments over the last couple of years than traditional, you know, we need a VP or a CRO or, you know, head of product, you know, you've got to delve a bit deeper.
Nicola Tatham (17:10)
And I guess a lot of your startups are probably working quite remotely as well. So it's trying to create that really good sort of SLT when, you know, people probably only see one another once a month or something, which changes the dynamic.
Chris Watkins (17:24)
Agreed, yeah, you've got those kind of water cooler conversations that people talk about, you know, super important. But then I think, you know, when people are in the office, you know, some people call it drive bys, you know, you might be in a focus zone of getting a project and meeting a deadline, you've got people running past your desk, know, Nicola, Caroline can grab you for five, it derails you completely of what you're doing. And it's never five minutes.
So you got to manage your time carefully there. And then I think you've got to enable an environment for social interaction. So you still got to invest as a business. If you're to go down the more remote route, I think you've got to invest in individual departmental team socials. And then you've got to do three or four big company wide collaborations every year to bring people together. So that human touch once again remains and you're not just a face at the end of a screen.
Caroline Fry (18:17)
I was thinking more broadly then of your experience, you know, as we've talked about decades long. What is the best hiring advice you've ever received?
Chris Watkins (18:29)
Best hiring advice I've ever received. Hire slowly. Hire slowly and route calls assessment. So again, you know, a lot of startups, they are not just targeted on revenue, they are targeted on headcounts and sometimes loads of money lands in the bank account. We're going to hire super quickly without talking about organizational development, how the business is going to look in two years, how that role is going to evolve.
So I think focusing on that, why do we need to hire this role? Just because someone lands a job description or there's a pain point in a business, or actually, know, if we hire another headcount here, it's going to solve everything. Actually you might have the skills in the business already. Are people at capacity? Is there a middle manager that's actually ready for that promotion? Have you given the opportunity to flourish and to showcase their skills? Is it a safe environment for that middle manager to question leadership? Be comfortable in that innovation. So I think it's just setting hiring managers up and founding teams to kind of really understand why do they need to hire.
Is it critical? Have we not got the skills internally before we start that external search?
Nicola Tatham (19:44)
So it's not rushing in, organs blazing, it's doing analysis upfront, who do I really need? What have I already got? How's this going to help on this journey? What's my next milestone that I'm trying to achieve and how do I get there?
Chris Watkins (19:51)
Yeah, totally. Totally. I mean, you you've both worked in startups and businesses for many years, you know, a bad hire can impact culture and so many things. And sometimes you might get to the last hurdle of, you are you ready to offer or I'm not sure. If you've got niggles, it's best to go back to the drawing board as painful as that might be. And it might delay the process by another month. Getting hiring right is absolutely critical. So I would I would always say do not rush.
Nicola Tatham (20:24)
So next up, we've got a little segment that we call Science or Fiction. So we'll read out some bold claims about assessments, AI, everything in between, leadership, hiring, and you tell us whether they're backed by science or just industry myth. So...
No pressure, but we're counting on you to separate to really separate the facts from the fluff here.
Chris Watkins (20:45)
I'll do my best Nic there.
Caroline Fry (20:48)
Chris. Science or fiction, AI can now identify better candidates than human recruiters.
Chris Watkins (20:57)
That is a difficult one, isn't it? I would probably say, yeah, it the human recruiter. I want to stand up for the human recruiter, but I would say that, you know, science plays a big part in assessment nowadays. So I would say science as much as it's going to really hurt me to say that.
Nicola Tatham (21:00)
Says the human recruiter.
Caroline Fry (21:01)
Yeah, I was gonna say, I think you're gonna fly the flag a certain way. Yeah, maybe the human recruiter supported by the AI becomes superhuman. Something like that.
Nicola Tatham (21:24)
Yeah, and it depends on the recruiter as well, doesn't it? There's always going to be exceptional human recruiters and people that are less exceptional.
Chris Watkins (21:33)
Yeah, think on a good recruiters, human recruiters are like sort of vertical experts, not sort of jack of everything. But then they should still be using kind of AI to support them nowadays as well.
Nicola Tatham (21:47)
Yeah, just like, you you use the spinning wheel with your cards in back in the day and we've now moved on significantly from there. It's all just about progression, isn't it?
Chris Watkins (21:55)
Yeah, totally. You know, we should be using AI, as you said, to kind of narrow down, you know, a huge shortlist. You know, I had a sort of close contact recently, post a role on LinkedIn and literally within five days, they had like over 400 CVs of which, you know, 90 % of them weren't right. Using AI to filter out those 99 % poor quality profiles has just saved that individual probably a week in labor. Going through of CVs. So yeah, it's using it intelligently.
Nicola Tatham (22:24)
Yeah. Okay. Next one. Hiring for culture fit is more important than hiring for skills.
Chris Watkins (22:34)
I would agree. would say that is science behind that, not a myth. And why is that? think culture is so important to the vision and the mission of a business. And you hire someone and there's not a line to that cultural value and vision. It's disastrous. You can train skill. You can't train cultural fit.
Nicola Tatham (22:39)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Watkins (22:58)
You've got to couple that with a bit of technical skill for the role you're hiring for. And again, we go back to the skill, the will, the desire, but hiring to culturally align is very important.
Nicola Tatham (23:04)
And I think the soft skills that we can measure are part of that culture fit. Anyway, you've got, you know, the experience, the harder skills, like you said, the more technical skills. But to assess culture fit, you've got to be looking at someone's soft skills that they're bringing in. Are they a team player? You know, are they not? So I completely understand that point.
Chris Watkins (23:29)
Totally.
Caroline Fry (23:33)
Okay, next one. Science or fiction, the perfect hire doesn't exist.
Chris Watkins (23:43)
Science, I think.
The perfect hire doesn't exist because if it was that easy, everyone would be doing it. And again, we go back to the whole, why would you want the perfect candidate anyway? You want them to be perfect as much as you can on culture, but skill set, you probably want them like 80 % because you still want them to stretch and to grow as a person and as a professional.
Caroline Fry (24:08)
Exactly, it's like you said before that development piece, if that's not there for the candidate, you'll be doing it again. You'll be hiring for that role in another six months or whatever if they get bored.
Chris Watkins (24:15)
Totally, totally.
Yeah. You know, there are the occasional unicorn candidates out there that tick a lot of boxes. But again, you know, if you look across your own teams that you've worked across, nobody meets that job description 100 % of the time.
Nicola Tatham (24:31)
Although my team might watch this, so they're all perfect.
Chris Watkins (24:34)
Absolutely.
Nicola Tatham (24:38)
As we draw to a close we always like to ask if there's one thing Chris that you want people to remember from this episode, what would it be?
Chris Watkins (24:47)
It would be hire slowly, really ensure why you want to hire the role and talk about where the role is going to mature in the next couple of years. So not hiring for right now, it's hiring for tomorrow and ensuring that when you do bring that person in, that that person can grow with the role in the next coming two to three years. I think that is super important when you hire, even at a junior level versus VC, it's not hiring for now, it's hiring for tomorrow. And how is that person going to evolve with the role as their responsibility and knowledge grows.
Nicola Tatham (25:22)
Yeah, I really like that. yeah, I second that. And I think in terms of takeaways, it's been really interesting hearing you talk and sharing your experiences. I like the mantra of hire slowly when we're talking about some of the businesses that you've been working with to pot of cash and then burn it all in the first year on headcount that you perhaps don't need. never going to be a sensible idea. So yeah, thank you. Really appreciated your time.
Chris Watkins (25:52)
Pleasure. Well, I've really enjoyed the questions and your time today. It's been really insightful. Thank you.
Caroline Fry (25:58)
Thanks Chris, thanks Nic and thanks for listening to The Score. If you picked up a new idea, had a laugh or just enjoyed this chat about the wild world of assessments, don't forget that new episodes land every two weeks on YouTube, Spotify or wherever you get your talent assessment content. See you next time.
From the early days of fax machines and filing boxes to AI-powered candidate screening, recruitment has undergone a dramatic transformation. Yet one truth hasn’t changed: getting hiring right can make or break a business.
In a recent episode of The Score podcast, talent consultant Chris Watkins joined hosts Nicola Tatham and Caroline Fry to explore how hiring has evolved, what organisations are still getting wrong, and how leaders can future-proof their approach to talent acquisition.
Two decades ago, recruitment meant newspaper adverts, piles of CVs, and frantic filing systems. Today, applicant tracking systems and AI-driven platforms have taken over. Technology has brought speed, scale, and efficiency, but also new risks.
The challenge for organisations now is striking the right balance: using technology to streamline processes without losing sight of the people behind the CVs.
For graduates and early career talent, recruiters are looking for raw potential: adaptability, willingness to learn, and the ability to process feedback. By contrast, executive hiring focuses less on technical skills and more on strategic vision, cultural adaptability, and leadership influence.
Chris stresses that a CV alone isn’t enough at senior levels. Leaders need to be assessed not just for what they’ve achieved in the past, but for how they’ll fit into and shape the culture of a new organisation.
One of the most practical models for assessing candidates is the Skill and Will framework:
The perfect candidate, someone who ticks every single box, doesn’t exist. In fact, hiring someone too perfectly matched to the role risks them becoming disengaged too quickly. A stronger approach is to look for candidates who bring the majority of required skills but still have room to grow, backed by the will to stretch into new challenges.
Fast-growing companies often feel the pressure to scale headcount quickly. But rushing hires almost always costs more in the long run. Shortcuts can damage culture, harm candidate experience, and lead to costly turnover.
The solution is to keep processes simple, transparent, and consistent. Use technology to support speed, not replace judgment, and invest in strong internal recruitment teams who can keep hiring aligned with strategy.
The future of hiring is being shaped by several big shifts:
The most important lesson Chris shares is simple: hire slowly. Before opening a role, organisations should ask:
A thoughtful, future-focused approach prevents mis-hires and helps build teams that can grow with the business.
Sova is a talent assessment platform that provides the right tools to evaluate candidates faster, fairer and more accurately than ever.
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