In Search of Signals:

How Hiring Decisions Actually Get Made

The Signal Lab – Episode 10

Hiring isn’t one decision made by one person. Follow an applicant through the marketplaces, technologies, recruiters, and hiring managers that determine who gets seen—and discover what better hiring systems must do differently.

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I went looking for signals. I found a decision system.

I began this investigation with a question: What information actually changes an employer’s hiring decision?

But there is no single hiring decision.

A marketplace decides which opportunities someone sees. A person decides whether to apply. An applicant tracking system organizes and surfaces applications. A recruiter decides who deserves human attention. A hiring manager decides who they can imagine doing the work.

Each decision is made by someone—or something—different. Each uses different information. And a person can be eliminated long before reaching the human most capable of recognizing their value.

Episode 10 brings together what we learned across the entire investigation—and why designing better hiring systems requires starting with decisions, not data.

What This Investigation Revealed

Why hiring is a sequence of decisions rather than one employer decision

How scarce human attention is allocated throughout the hiring process

Why qualified people disappear before a hiring manager can evaluate them

What resumes, job postings, and existing systems consistently fail to capture

Why better data only matters if it reaches the right decision at the right moment

How technology can support better human judgment instead of replacing it

Built from Conversations Across Hiring

The investigation follows hiring from the final human decision backward through recruiting, applicant tracking systems, job distribution, and talent marketplaces.

Featuring insights from Brad Robinson, Christy Lamers, James Harris, Jordan Franklin, Andrew Cunsolo, Matt Plummer, Allison Danielsen, and Matt Charney.

All Episodes

Fix The System: The Conclusion of Our Employer Research – The Signal Lab

What do employers actually want?What skills matter? What credentials will they trust? Can better data improve hiring? After three months investigating how hiring decisions actually get made, Ian Davidson thinks we're starting with the wrong question.The better question is: Which decision are you trying to change?Hiring isn't one decision. Job boards decide which opportunities people see. Applicant tracking systems decide who gets surfaced. Recruiters decide who gets a conversation. Hiring managers decide who gets the job.Together, those decisions allocate one of hiring's scarcest resources: human attention.And the decisions affecting the most candidates often happen when the system knows the least about them.Episode 10 brings together insights from Allison Danielsen, Matt Plummer, Andrew Cunsolo, Jordan Franklin, Matt Charney, Brad Robinson, and James Harris.The investigation began as a search for better signals. It became the Hiring Decision Architecture: a framework for identifying which hiring decision we're trying to improve, what information could make it better, and where to intervene.EPISODE CHAPTERS00:00 — What Do Employers Actually Want? Why skills and credentials may be the wrong starting point.05:00 — What Hiring Managers Really Evaluate Motivation, potential, work ethic, learning, and what resumes miss.12:00 — Skills-Based Hiring and the Replacement Problem What replaces degree and experience requirements?14:00 — Application Overload, ATSs and AI Hiring What happens when employers receive 1,000 applications?16:00 — Hiring Is an Allocation of Human Attention Why consequential decisions happen with limited candidate information.18:00 — The “Cake Lady” and the Candidates Systems Miss A great hire who never would have survived the conventional process.21:00 — Better Candidate and Opportunity Profiles Why resumes and job descriptions both leave out critical context.26:00 — The Hiring Decision Architecture Start with the decision, then identify the information needed to improve it.28:00 — Talent Marketplaces and Workforce Intelligence What if matching systems understood people's needs and constraints?33:00 — Fix the System Before the Hiring Manager Improve the decisions determining who reaches a human.37:00 — AI, Machine-Readable Data and Verifiable Skills Technology can use richer information without overwhelming recruiters.40:00 — Better Talent Marketplace Matching Matching capability, potential, motivation, needs, and opportunity.42:00 — Learning and Employment Records + Trusted Career Profile How portable, verifiable data could improve hiring decisions.45:00 — The Demand-Side Case for Better Workforce Data Employers aren't asking for LERs. They're asking for help with 1,200 applicants.48:00 — Which Hiring Decisions Should We Fix? Stop starting with data. Start with the decision.Research supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and T3 Innovation Network.Explore the Hiring Decision Architecture: https://signollabs.com/hiring-decision-architecture/Signol Labs: https://signollabs.com/Subscribe to The Signal Lab wherever you listen to podcasts.

About the Host

Ian Davidson is the founder of Signol Labs and a long-time workforce technology leader. His work focuses on helping education, workforce, and employer systems better understand human capability through improved signals, standards, and infrastructure.

Through The Signal Lab, Ian explores the intersection of learning, work, technology, and opportunity with the practitioners building the future.

Join the Conversation

Have a perspective on skills, hiring, workforce technology, credentials, AI, or the future of opportunity?

I’d love to hear from you.

Whether you’re an employer, educator, policymaker, technologist, researcher, or workforce practitioner, The Signal Lab exists to connect ideas across communities that don’t talk to each other often enough.

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