Are We Hiring the Wrong Kind of Expert?

Think about your best hire. Now, think about what made you hire them. It probably wasn’t just their CV. In this episode of The Future Is Human by Mews, host Naomi Trickey is joined by Maddy Cross, Partner for Europe at Riviera Partners, to talk about what great hiring really looks like when the old signals stop being enough. From her own winding career, Maddy has learned to spot the things that do not always fit on a scorecard: intrinsic motivation, range, conviction, emotional maturity and the “light behind the eyes” that tells you someone actually wants the work. This is a powerful reminder that it’s still the most human moments in a search that decide everything.

There is a strange comfort in a famous company name on a CV.

But as Maddy Cross points out in this episode of The Future Is Human by Mews, the biggest companies don’t hire from within. They look outwards and hire for aptitude, skill, motivation, and potential.

In this episode of The Future is Human, Naomi Trickey sits down with Maddy Cross, Partner for Europe at Riviera Partners, to unpack what modern executive hiring actually requires. This conversation frames hiring as a deeply human act. Because the future of work may be automated in many places, but choosing people still asks something more of us: curiosity, judgment, empathy, and the humility to look beyond what appears obvious on paper.

What You’ll Learn:

Why breadth of experience can become a competitive advantage
How Maddy spots the “light behind the eyes” that no hiring scorecard can capture
Why the best companies hire for diversity of experience, not uniform pedigree
How stakeholder misalignment quietly ruins senior searches before candidates even enter the room
Why the perfect “bleeding edge” technical leader with decades of boardroom maturity may not exist
What leadership readiness looks like when someone has to set direction
Why AI can make search faster, but cannot create more qualified candidates
How the smallest personal detail can become the thing that makes or breaks an offer
Why hiring for logos alone misses the potential that built the logo in the first place

Tune in for a conversation about the parts of hiring that still require a human voice, a human read and a willingness to see more than the CV.