Why Today’s Hiring Systems Are Outdated

The talent market has changed dramatically, yet most companies still hire the way they did decades ago. A resume, a short interview and the interviewer’s gut feeling are no longer enough to find people who can truly deliver. CEO Hẳng Phan Adley highlights three major flaws in traditional hiring and explains how leading organizations are shifting toward measuring competencies.

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The War for Talent Has No Borders

If a company is based in Ho Chi Minh City, your competitors for talent are no longer just the companies down the street. It is also competing with multinational corporations, global tech companies and virtually any organization anywhere in the world.
The question every leader should be asking their HR team is: the talent market has changed this much, but how much has our hiring system changed? According to numerous studies in human resource management, most companies are still using hiring methods that are decades out of date. (As shared by CEO & Founder Hẳng Phan Adley in a video on March 18, 2026 – click to watch)

How Does Traditional Hiring Work?

Many companies follow three familiar steps, and each one has its own limitations.
Step 1: Identifying Hiring Needs
HR identifies the departments and positions to be filled, then develops a job description outlining the requirements and selection criteria for each role.
Step 2: Resume Screening
Once a job is posted, the recruitment team receives hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of applications and tries to shortlist the most suitable candidates.
But a resume is essentially a self-written summary. It tells you where candidates have worked, where they studied, who they have worked with and which skills they consider their strengths. What a resume cannot show are the factors that matter most on the job:
– How they think when facing a complex, unprecedented problem
– How they handle pressure from shifting markets and workplace relationships
– How they collaborate with their team, other departments, customers and more
Step 3: Interviews
A typical interview lasts 30 to 120 minutes. In that time, recruiters try to assess the candidate’s technical expertise, communication skills and cultural fit with the organization.
Yet many reputable analyses point to this as one of the biggest weaknesses of traditional hiring. Humans are inherently prone to bias when evaluating others. We tend to unconsciously rate candidates higher when they speak confidently, make a strong first impression or share a similar background with the interview panel. None of these factors reliably reflects actual job performance.

The Uncomfortable Truth: Organizations Need Competencies, Not Just People

Here is a truth that makes many people uncomfortable: organizations don’t really need “people” – they need the capability to get the job done. In other words, a company hires someone because that person has the competencies to help the organization achieve its goals.
Consider this: if a machine could do the same job faster, more accurately and more efficiently, would you buy the machine or hire a person?
That is why many leading organizations have changed the way they hire. Instead of searching for someone who “seems like a good fit,” they focus on measuring the candidate’s actual competencies.

Three Major Flaws of Traditional Hiring

1. Judging potential through resumes. A resume only reflects how candidates describe themselves and their past. It reveals little about their capabilities and potential going forward.
2. Trying to understand a person through one short conversation. Thirty to 120 minutes of interviewing is simply not enough. True competencies usually emerge only when candidates face real-world situations.
3. Making decisions based on gut feeling. Many hiring decisions still rest on the interviewer’s intuition, while management research shows that structured, data-driven assessment methods are significantly more accurate.

From Reading Resumes to Measuring Competencies
Rather than focusing solely on resumes, the world’s leading organizations have shifted to assessing and measuring candidate competencies systematically. The key question is not “Where has this candidate worked?” but rather:
– What competencies does this candidate have?
– Are those competencies the right fit for our organization?
– Can those competencies help predict their future job performance?

AI Talent H&HIS Smart Interview Platform: 11 Personal Competencies, 5 Proficiency Levels (AKSMI)
To measure competencies systematically, our smart interview platform uses the AKSMI assessment model, which evaluates 11 personal competencies (in addition to technical competencies, leadership competencies and more) across 5 proficiency levels. This framework gives companies a more holistic view of each candidate than a few pages of a resume ever could.
– Customizable to your competency framework: the system adapts to each organization’s own competency framework, aligning with specific roles, industries and HR strategy.
– More objective and consistent: assessments on the platform collect and measure competencies against the same standards, reducing reliance on interviewer intuition.

Your Competitive Edge Lies in Your Team’s Competencies

Our goal is not only to help companies hire more effectively, but also to help organizations elevate their workforce capabilities so they can compete on equal footing with global corporations. In this new era, an organization’s greatest competitive advantage lies not only in technology, but in the competencies its people truly possess.
Want to know what your current hiring system might be missing? Contact us for a consultation and experience our smart interview platform.

Watch the full talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14rxn_lWM8E

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