On Seeing People as Holistic Humans — and Why It Matters More Than Ever
Zuzana Zecikova
Zuzana Zecikova is a globally-minded people strategy executive with over 16 years of experience driving organizational excellence for world-class brands such as Red Bull, Mars, British American Tobacco, and Kantar. Leveraging international cultural intelligence and innovative people strategy, she helps teams thrive across premium and luxury sectors.
A few years ago, I reached out to an Italian lifestyle platform. I introduced myself — no portfolio in lifestyle writing, no track record in that world, just a genuine passion for Milano and a desire to write about it. They didn’t ask about my professional background. They didn’t want to know my title or where I had worked. They simply said: send us something.
I sent an article. They liked it. We started our collaboration.
It was that simple — and that rare. They saw passion, took an agile bet, and it worked. No lengthy qualification process. No CV scrutiny. No questions designed to filter me out before I had even had a chance to show what I could do. Just: show us what you’ve got. That openness changed something for me. And I think about it often.
Because what they did — looking beyond credentials to curiosity — is something we struggle to do systematically in the world of recruitment and talent development. We have built elaborate systems for evaluating people, and yet those systems often tell us the least interesting things about them.
The CV Trap
I have sat in many interviews — on both sides of the table — and I know how easily they collapse into a tour of the résumé. Question by question, we move through a person’s professional timeline, validating experience with more experience, confirming what we already know from the piece of paper in front of us. It feels rigorous. It rarely is.
We rarely pause to ask: what are you curious about right now? What do you do after work? What gives you energy that has nothing to do with your job title? What would you explore if no one were watching?
The result is that we often hire someone who ticks every box — whose experience maps perfectly to the role — and yet something is missing. There is no inner drive. They execute competently, but without fire. Often because they were, in a sense, crafted by external expectation: they continued in the direction their career began, following the path others had laid out rather than the one that genuinely called to them. The CV told us everything except the thing that mattered most.
And then there are the moments that stay with you. I once witnessed someone stepping in to cover a maternity leave — taking on responsibilities they had never held, in a domain they had never formally worked in. They didn’t just cope. They flourished. Something unlocked. You could see it in the way they moved through the work, the questions they asked, the initiative they took. They had found, almost by accident, what might well have been their calling — and they had no idea it was waiting for them.
How often do we create those conditions deliberately? Rarely enough. Because creating them requires us to look beyond what someone has already done and ask what they might be capable of doing. That is a different — and more generous — kind of question.
We Are More Than One Thing
I am an HR professional — but I am also a writer, a friend who loves preparing surprises, a snowboarder, a flower lover, someone who is mildly obsessed with the gym, a traveller, a curious reader of psychology, someone deeply interested in artificial intelligence and design, a lover of fashion and languages. I find as much meaning in a well-arranged vase as in a well-programmed agent. I am drawn equally to the rational and the spiritual, to data and to beauty.
None of those things cancel each other out. They feed each other. My curiosity about human behavior, cultivated through travel, spirituality, and writing, makes me a better HR professional. My love of design sharpens the way I think about employee experience. My interest in AI — driven partly by genuine fascination rather than professional obligation — keeps me ahead of what matters. The occasional writing I do forces me to observe carefully, to find the story in detail. That is a skill that belongs in every boardroom.
The most interesting professionals I know are never just one thing. They have what I would call a portfolio identity — a constellation of skills, passions, and experiences that inform everything they do, even when it doesn’t appear on their LinkedIn profile. Their richness as human beings is precisely what makes them effective, creative, and resilient in their professional lives.
And yet so many people have learned to hide those parts of themselves. To present a clean, coherent, linear professional narrative — because that is what they believe the system rewards. They are not wrong. But we all lose something in the process.
A Different Kind of Curiosity
So here is what I would encourage — for hiring managers, for leaders, for anyone who has the power to open or close a door for someone else.
Ask different questions. Not just what have you done but what are you drawn to? Not just where have you worked but what have you taught yourself? Not just does your experience match this role but what would you do with a blank canvas? Be willing to be surprised. Be willing to take a small, agile bet on someone whose passion speaks louder than their track record. You may find exactly what you were looking for — in a place you hadn’t thought to look.
And to individuals: do not hide the parts of yourself that don’t fit neatly on a résumé. Your passion for photography, for cooking, for languages, for sport, for art — these are not footnotes to your professional identity. They are evidence of a curious, alive, self-directed human being. Own them. Let them be visible. If you are brave enough and your circumstances allow it, pursue the double career, the side path, the creative project that has nothing obvious to do with your day job. It will give back more than it takes.
The lifestyle platform that gave me a chance didn’t see an HR professional dabbling in writing. They saw someone who cared about Milan’s vibe enough to want to write about it. They asked for a draft, not a biography. That openness cost them very little. It gave me — and I hope their readers — something real.
That should happen more often. In interviews, in organizations, in the quiet moments when we decide whether to give someone a chance. See the whole person. You might be surprised by what you find.