ARM Goes to Las Vegas: Presenting at WBM 2026

Tomorrow, April 1st, we present our paper at the WBM 2026 International Research Conference at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

The paper is titled "Applicant Relationship Management (ARM): Beyond Multiple Hurdles — A Relational Paradigm for Talent Acquisition" and represents the first formal academic presentation of the ARM framework at an international management conference.

For those following this newsletter, the core argument will be familiar: the multiple hurdle model — where candidates are eliminated stage by stage through pass/fail gates — is not just unfair to applicants. It's suboptimal for employers. Compensatory selection models, where strengths in one area can offset weaknesses in another, consistently produce better hiring outcomes in the research literature. Yet almost no organisation uses them. Why? Because no practical framework existed to operationalise compensatory thinking at scale.

That's what ARM is. And that's what we'll be presenting.

The paper also introduces the "Silver Medallist" concept and shares preliminary evidence from noesishiring.ai, a platform built from the ground up on ARM principles.

Co-authored with prof. Simonetta Zamparelli and prof. Elisabetta Horvath from the University of Molise, Italy.

Conference details:

More on the ARM framework in upcoming posts. If you're working in talent acquisition or HR research, I'd welcome the conversation.