Beyond LinkedIn: The Story-First Revolution in Hiring
- Joseph Haecker
- Nov 6
- 6 min read
Why ElevenLabs’ Non-Traditional Hiring Strategy Proves What We’ve Been Saying All Along at Open To Work Social
When Business Insider published its recent piece about ElevenLabs CEO Mati Staniszewski, I’ll admit — I stopped scrolling.
Not because of the company’s $6.6 billion valuation. Not because of its AI breakthroughs.
But because of one sentence.
“We’re very against traditional hiring… we found some of our best talent by ignoring LinkedIn.”
There it was — the quiet truth so many in recruiting, HR, and tech leadership whisper about but rarely say out loud:
The system we’re using to find talent isn’t just outdated. It’s misaligned with how people actually work, learn, and grow today.
And yet, companies keep doubling down on it. More filters. More automation. More “efficiency.”
Meanwhile, the best talent — the innovators, the autodidacts, the creators — are being overlooked every single day because they don’t “fit” the algorithm.
ElevenLabs isn’t just an AI company; it’s a case study in what happens when you stop hiring by formula and start hiring by story.
How the Hiring System Lost Its Humanity
Let’s start with a hard truth: most job platforms weren’t built for job seekers — they were built for recruiters.
LinkedIn, Indeed, and every other major career platform were designed to make sorting and filtering easier.
Not to make understanding better.
That’s why résumés have become the common currency of professional life.
They’re easy to scan. Easy to quantify. Easy to discard.
But “easy” has a cost.
When you’re trying to fill a position in a company of 1,200 people and get 4,000 résumés, your system becomes less about finding the right person — and more about surviving the noise.
The result? We built a digital arms race.
Job seekers build tools to send thousands of applications at once.
Employers build AI to filter thousands of applications faster.
Both sides automate themselves into oblivion.
No one’s listening. No one’s connecting.
And no one’s really learning about the human being on the other side of the screen.
So when ElevenLabs’ CEO said they were “very against traditional hiring,” it wasn’t just a preference — it was an act of rebellion against a broken system.
The Polish Call Center Researcher Who Proved a Point
In the Business Insider article, Staniszewski shared one of the best hiring stories I’ve ever heard.
He talked about a researcher — one of the company’s most brilliant minds — who was discovered working in a call center.
This individual had built an incredible open-source text-to-speech model in their free time. They weren’t sitting in Silicon Valley or applying for jobs on LinkedIn. They weren’t optimizing a résumé or tweaking keywords to “beat the ATS.”
They were doing the work.
And when ElevenLabs found them, they didn’t ask for a résumé.
They recognized the story behind the work — the persistence, the self-teaching, the passion — and they hired them.
That person is now one of the leading researchers on ElevenLabs’ team.
That’s not a fluke. That’s the future of hiring.
Why “Non-Traditional” Hiring Is Actually Just Human Hiring
ElevenLabs isn’t rejecting professionalism.
They’re rejecting predictability.
The notion that good candidates must follow a pre-approved path — top school, internships, linear career progression, active LinkedIn profile — has been one of the most limiting frameworks in modern business.
It’s the professional version of “you must color inside the lines.”
But when you look at the world’s most creative thinkers, most of them didn’t follow those rules. They broke them. They pivoted. They built things on nights and weekends. They taught themselves what the system refused to teach.
Hiring for that kind of person requires curiosity, not compliance.
And it’s why storytelling — not résumé-sorting — is the next evolution of professional discovery.
The Resume Problem Nobody Talks About
Resumes don’t tell stories.
They tell summaries.
They flatten multi-dimensional people into one-page bullet points that sound identical to every other applicant.
“Collaborative leader.”
“Results-driven.”
“Proven ability to deliver.”
Those aren’t stories. Those are slogans.
A résumé might tell you what someone did, but it will never tell you why they did it, what they learned, or who they became in the process.
That’s what Open To Work Social was built to fix.
A Platform Built on People, Not Posts
At Open To Work Social, we didn’t set out to build another job site.
We set out to build a storytelling platform for job seekers and employers alike.
Our approach is simple:
1️⃣ We let job seekers tell their stories — through interviews, articles, and short posts about their experience.
2️⃣ We feature them in a magazine-style format, similar to Forbes or Business Insider, but focused on the individual.
3️⃣ We give employers and recruiters a new lens — one that filters for authenticity, not automation.
Because here’s the truth:
The future of recruiting isn’t about finding more people faster. It’s about finding the right people by listening better.
When you read a person’s story — their perspective, their motivation, their journey — you don’t need an algorithm to tell you if they’re a fit. You can feel it.
Hiring Beyond Borders
Another powerful takeaway from the ElevenLabs story is geography.
Staniszewski said it bluntly — if they had limited themselves to Silicon Valley, ElevenLabs wouldn’t exist.
Instead, they started in Europe, where the cofounders are from, and expanded globally — hiring across Poland, Asia, and beyond.
That global approach isn’t just smart; it’s necessary.
We’re living in an era where the world’s best talent may not live anywhere near a traditional “tech hub.” The next breakthrough engineer could be in Bangalore. The next marketing visionary might be in Bogotá. The next creative director could be in Kansas City, not California.
When you remove borders from opportunity, you remove barriers from innovation.
That’s what story-first platforms like Open To Work Social enable — the ability for anyone, anywhere, to tell their story and be seen by the right people.
No gatekeepers. No “upload your résumé and pray.” Just visibility, authenticity, and connection.
Why the World Still Measures Talent in Horsepower
Here’s a metaphor I often share in conversations about innovation:
When automobiles were first introduced, people couldn’t conceptualize “engine power.” They only knew “horsepower.”
So that’s how they measured it.
To this day, over 100 years later, we’re still using a term created to help people understand a machine they didn’t yet trust.
And that’s exactly what’s happening in hiring right now.
We’re measuring talent by résumé horsepower — because that’s the metric we understand. But the world has changed. The engine has evolved. And the real power now lives in storytelling, adaptability, and creativity.
We don’t need faster horses — we need a new way of seeing potential.
The Future of Work Is Human Again
What ElevenLabs has proven is that the future doesn’t belong to the fastest algorithm or the most “optimized” job board. It belongs to companies brave enough to listen differently.
To value human stories over machine learning. To hire the curious, not just the credentialed. To see talent where others only see data.
That’s what we’re building at Open To Work Social — a space where job seekers don’t get lost in automation. A platform where recruiters can discover people by reading their stories, not sorting their keywords.
A movement where the hiring process feels like what it always should’ve been: human.
Because when companies hire based on stories, they don’t just find employees. They find alignment. They find purpose. They find brilliance — sometimes even in a call center.
A New Era Begins
We’re entering a new phase in the future of work — one where storytelling, visibility, and authenticity are the currency of opportunity.
LinkedIn isn’t going away. But it’s no longer enough.
If you want to stand out, you have to be known for more than your job title.
If you want to attract great people, you have to look beyond their credentials.
And if you want to understand talent in the 21st century, you have to start by understanding their story.
That’s not a rejection of the past — it’s an evolution of it.
So maybe ElevenLabs didn’t just find a “brilliant researcher in a call center.” Maybe they found the future — one story at a time.
💡 Share your story.
📖 Discover real people.
🌎 Rethink what hiring can be.
👉 Join Open To Work Social
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