In short: screening hundreds of CVs is the wrong starting point. First compare the work that needs to be done with the strengths, roles and capabilities already in the team. Then check whether the answer is reallocating tasks, development, adjusting management, an internal role change or a new hire. If hiring is justified, compare each candidate with the real tasks, role, team and working environment.
“We received 300 CVs. How do we find the right person among them?”
This sounds like a recruitment problem. In reality, the mistake may have occurred much earlier. Why are we looking for one person to take on a list of dozens of different tasks? Do all those tasks need to be done? Do they add up to a full-time job? And does someone who is capable of doing all of them actually want to do them every day?
For years, recruiters have faced two opposite problems: too few candidates or too many. In both cases, the focus tends to be on adjusting the size of the candidate pool. When there are too few applicants, the job advertisement is made more attractive. When there are too many, the company looks for a faster way to screen CVs.
A business owner faces a different problem. The team is not delivering the expected results, relationships between employees are strained, or the manager repeatedly has to step in. The new hire is expected to improve the situation. But if that person enters the same unclear working environment, they often become the next employee said to have “not been the right fit”.
Choosing the right person from hundreds of CVs is not the company’s original challenge. First make the work, responsibility and the reason the required result is currently missing visible. Only then can the company decide whether it needs a new person or should change the role, tasks, management or collaboration.
Do We Need a New Employee, or Do We Need the Work Done?
Suppose a small company’s sales are not growing. The manager concludes that the business needs a marketing manager. The job advertisement includes strategy, social media, advertising, analytics, partnerships, copywriting, the website and sales materials. It looks like a full-time role because the list of tasks is long.
Breaking those tasks down may reveal something different. Setting the strategic direction may require only a few hours each month. Managing advertising requires a particular specialist. Editing content may suit someone already on the team. Meanwhile, information is not moving between sales and marketing at all. The problem is not necessarily the absence of one person. It may lie in how work and responsibility are divided.
Sometimes the answer is a new full-time employee. Sometimes the existing team can do the work if the company buys in one clearly defined service. Sometimes the current team’s responsibilities need to be reorganised, and the company should hire specifically for an area in which the team is weak. A new employee should strengthen the existing team, not inherit a collection of unresolved problems hidden behind a job title.
If the company has not made this decision, it can have both too many and too few candidates at the same time: hundreds of people who meet some of the requirements, but almost no one who matches the entire contradictory wish list.
Work Is More Than a List of Tasks
Even a well-written list of tasks is not enough. The same job may suit one person and exhaust another, depending on the people around them.
Will the new employee need to consult closely with their manager every day? Will they make decisions independently and meet the team once a week? Will other people’s questions constantly interrupt their work, or will they have long periods for focused work? Will they need to resolve disagreements, or will they mainly need precise input and uninterrupted time?
These are not optional soft considerations. They determine how well someone settles into the role, how much energy communication consumes and how quickly they can produce results. A mismatch between a manager’s and an employee’s working styles can take a small amount of time from each day. Over several months, that becomes a substantial cost. The employee may be highly capable but gradually spend more of their energy coping with the working environment instead of doing the work.
That is why fit should not be considered in the abstract: “Does this person fit our company?” The better question is: “How will this person manage these specific tasks, alongside these people and with this manager’s way of working?”
A CV Does Not Show the Whole Person, but No Profile Is the Final Truth Either
A CV shows previous job titles, experience and achievements. It does not fully show which tasks allow someone to use their strengths, what responsibility suits them, which environment supports their work or what kind of support they need.
Sparkly connects a profile the person has chosen to share with the real work tasks, position, team and working environment. A validated measurement, self-reflection, an AI-derived signal and a professional working hypothesis are different types of input. They must not be merged into a single “truth about the person”.
That is why Sparkly does not treat “productive working hours” or a “superpower” as a permanent label. A profile may reveal a pattern or strength, but its meaning depends on the task, responsibility, workload, manager, team and environment. A model’s output is a basis for questions and conversation, not a diagnosis or an automated final decision.
Value emerges when these inputs help frame a question that can be checked: can the person use their strengths in this role, what support do they need, what should change in the work and which risk needs the manager’s attention? A person always makes the decision and remains responsible for it.
Why Does Initial Enthusiasm Fade After a Few Months?
Both sides may be completely sincere during the interview. The candidate wants to do the work. The manager believes they are offering a good opportunity. The first few weeks are exciting. Then everyday reality sets in.
A role described as independent turns out to require approval at every step. Or the promised teamwork means that no one takes final responsibility. The employee was hired to do work they are good at, but spends most of the day filling gaps elsewhere. The manager assumed the employee would ask for help when needed; the employee assumed that asking for help would be seen as incompetence. Neither side was lying. They simply did not discuss precisely enough how the work would actually be done.
When someone becomes exhausted after a few months, this is often interpreted as a lack of motivation. Sometimes it is. But sometimes what we are seeing is friction between the person and the work—friction that could have been identified earlier or may still be reduced. To understand it, we need to ask what drains the person’s energy, which tasks allow them to create value and who helps them produce better results.
A realistic introduction to the role should therefore include its difficult aspects. The candidate must be able to assess the employer as seriously as the employer assesses them. An honest description of the tasks, the rhythm of the working day and the way people collaborate helps prevent both sides from saying at the end of the first month: “I did not expect it to be like this.”
The Cost of a Bad Hire Often Begins with a Badly Designed Role
The cost of a poor hire or a badly designed role is not limited to publishing another advertisement and running a new recruitment process. It also includes onboarding time, additional pressure on other employees, delayed decisions, unused strengths and lost opportunities. Before calling someone the wrong choice, check whether the problem lay with the person, role, tasks, team, working environment or management.
What Should We Do Differently? Start with the Company, Not the Candidate
Hiring the right person begins before the first job advertisement is published. If an organisation does not know what work needs to be done or why the existing team is not doing it, its comparison of candidates will also remain imprecise.
- Make the actual work visible. List the recurring tasks, their volume, importance and dependencies. What work is not being done? What takes up too much of the manager’s time? What work exists only because the current process is not functioning? Separate necessary work from habit and temporary workload.
- Ask the existing team what each person wants and is able to do. Do not limit the discussion to job titles. Find out which tasks employees already do well, which responsibilities they would like to take on and where they need training, time or a reduced workload elsewhere. If someone is interested, give them a genuine opportunity to demonstrate their ability instead of assuming that every new skill must come from outside the company.
- Compare three possible solutions. Can the work be redistributed within the existing team? Can a clearly defined part of it be bought as a service? Does the remaining work form a stable and sensible new role? In addition to salary, consider the cost of guidance, collaboration and reorganisation. Only then decide whether you need a full-time employee.
- Design the role with the people the new employee will actually work with. Describe their first three months, daily tasks, decision-making authority, working rhythm and contact with their manager and team. If they will communicate every day, examine working and collaboration styles more closely. If contact will be infrequent, clarify how information will move and how the employee can get help when needed. Agree on what the new employee will not be expected to do as well.
- Define what success in the work means before seeing the candidates. Which tasks, results and responsibilities are essential? What can be learned, and which ways of working support this team and environment? Use comparable core questions and a relevant work sample for every candidate. Sparkly helps bring the profile, skills, real tasks and role and team fit into one view. A score is a point of comparison, not a substitute for a decision: examine the inputs behind it, check what remains unclear and explain the final choice.
- Give the candidate an equally clear picture of the company. Show them a typical working day, the difficult parts of the role, the manager’s expectations and the team’s way of working. Ask which conditions help them work well, and allow them to decide whether the opportunity is right for them too. A candidate who declines after receiving honest information may save both sides from a very expensive mistake.
- Review the decision after the person starts work. At the end of the first, third and sixth months, for example, assess whether the employee is doing the work you agreed on, whether their strengths are being used and where friction has appeared. Adjust the tasks, collaboration or the manager’s way of working when necessary. Signing an employment contract does not prove that the original assumptions were correct.
Sparkly’s role is not to choose a person for the company. It organises the available information about the person, work, role, team and environment; distinguishes measurement, self-reflection, derived signals and working hypotheses; and shows which questions still need to be checked before a decision. This helps a manager or HR professional explain whether the better step is development, redesigning the work, internal mobility or hiring. A person always makes the final decision and remains responsible for it.
What Can Candidates Do Themselves?
Candidates can create a personal profile in Sparkly and explore analytical insights about themselves to understand how they work at their best. They can analyse job advertisements, see how their strengths relate to a specific role and its tasks, design work tasks that suit them, and compare their needs with the profile of a suitable company.
Sparkly also helps identify the work activities and conditions that are critical to the individual – the elements whose absence may leave their strengths underused and create a sense that they cannot fulfil their potential. The profile does not provide a final judgement about the person; it creates a foundation for more informed questions and choices.
A candidate’s self-description is still one input among several. It should be considered alongside work samples, comparable questions, the real requirements of the role and, where appropriate, an assessment.
Describe your best work through specific examples. What task did you take on, what did you do and what was the outcome? What came naturally to you, and what required a disproportionate amount of effort? This tells an employer more than saying, “I am a good team player.”
Ask what the day-to-day work actually looks like. What takes up most of the week? How often will you need to coordinate decisions with your manager? Who will you work with every day? Which part of the role is usually left out of the job advertisement? Ask for an example of a difficult but ordinary situation.
State the conditions you need in order to work well. If you need uninterrupted focus, clear priorities or prompt feedback, describe these as conditions for doing the work effectively. It is also worth asking what the company means by independence, collaboration and a good result. Those words may mean different things to each side.
Assess the fit for yourself. The question is not only whether you can do the job. Will you be able to use your strengths, learn and work there for the long term without constantly struggling against yourself? If the role described in writing does not match the role promised during the interview, clarify the difference before making a decision.
What Can an Existing Employee Do If They Want the Role?
Employees can also create their own Sparkly profile and explore which tasks make the best use of their strengths, which responsibilities could be designed into their role, and which activities and conditions are essential for fulfilling their potential. This provides a stronger foundation for a development discussion, role redesign or internal mobility.
When a company looks outside the organisation for someone to do work that a current employee would like to take on, internal interest should be treated as a real option, not an automatic advantage. Compare the same actual work, the support required, changes needed in the current role and the effect on the team’s result.
Make your interest specific. “I would like to develop” is too vague for a manager to act on. Identify the tasks you want to take over, show what similar work you have already done and explain the result you could create. If you have limited experience, suggest one small, real assignment with which to begin.
Show what would need to change in your current role. If the new work is simply added on top of everything you already do, it is not an opportunity but an overload. Explain which current tasks would need to be handed over, automated, stopped or bought as a service. This allows the manager to compare realistic ways of organising the work.
Suggest a trial period with a measurable outcome. This could be one clearly defined project lasting four to six weeks: what you will do, what support you need and which result you and your manager will use to decide whether your responsibility should be expanded. The trial must include time to do the work and clear feedback. It should not mean performing two roles at once without additional pay or recognition.
Ask for a fair comparison. If the company is also considering external candidates, the same real requirements of the role should apply to everyone. An internal candidate should not receive the role automatically, but their existing contribution and desire to develop should not remain invisible simply because the manager knows them through their old job title.
The company also has a responsibility here. An employee can make their interest visible, but they cannot give themselves decision-making authority, free up their own time or redesign the team alone. The manager must create a genuine opportunity to test the existing employee’s capabilities.
If hundreds of CVs are already on the table, those candidates must be assessed fairly. Before the next recruitment process, the company should begin earlier: define the work, ask about the capabilities and interests of existing employees, and only then decide who needs to be added. This gives a candidate the opportunity to choose work that suits them and a current employee the opportunity to grow before the company concludes that the right person must come from outside.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should a company do before screening hundreds of CVs?
Compare the work that needs to be done with the strengths, roles and capabilities already in the team. First check task reallocation, development, adjustments to management and an internal role change.
How does Sparkly support a hiring decision?
Sparkly connects a profile the person has chosen to share with the real work tasks, position, team and working environment, while helping distinguish measured information, self-reflection, derived signals and working hypotheses that still need to be checked.
Does Sparkly choose the right person for the company?
No. Sparkly organises information, makes points of comparison visible and helps frame questions to check in an interview or work situation. A person makes the final decision.
How can employers reduce the risk of a bad hire?
Define success criteria before seeing candidates, use comparable questions and a relevant work sample, check the inputs behind the score, and review after the person starts whether the role and working arrangements support the agreed result.