What Your CV Doesn't Tell Us

If you interview at Dialectica, the case you work through isn't hypothetical. It's a real client problem, written by the person who'd manage you. That's not an accident. VPs and Senior Managers across Dialectica's offices sat down with Talent Acquisition and built the interview content themselves.

We spoke with Valentina Prieto, Senior Manager, Talent Acquisition, Americas, to understand what that decision says about how Dialectica thinks about hiring.

Why leadership owns the bar

"Hiring isn't something a business hands to a recruiting function and walks away from," Valentina says. "If a leader owns the target, the headcount and the performance of the team, they own the bar for who gets in. What this says about the culture is that we treat that ownership literally."

The business problems candidates work through in their interviews were drawn from actual client situations, the kind of problems our teams solve every week. That is a real cost in senior hours. And Dialectica chose to spend it.

For candidates, Valentina points to three concrete changes. They work on a real problem: the cases reflect actual work, so the interview doubles as a preview of the job. They are assessed against the same criteria by every person they meet. And they meet the people who will actually manage them, which means the questions they can ask are real ones.

What a CV doesn't show

The qualities senior leaders are looking for in 2026 are the ones CVs have always been bad at capturing, plus one that is new. There are seven competencies that cover a range of behaviours and skills. Three of them are central to everything else.

• Drive. "A CV shows you what someone achieved, not what it cost them or whether anyone had to push," Valentina says. Drive is the difference between someone who moves because the work demands it and someone who moves because they decide to.
• Commercial Acumen. The work puts candidates in front of real business problems from day one. Understanding how companies operate, how value is created, and what clients are actually trying to solve isn't background knowledge here. It's the job.
• Critical Thinking. The case isn't designed to have one right answer. It's designed to show how someone approaches a problem: what they prioritise, what they question, and where they decide to go deeper. That's what the assessors are watching.

Alongside those, Valentina flags resilience: "The work involves a high volume of outreach and a lot of no's. The question isn't whether someone is smart. It's what their fourth hour looks like on a hard day." And ownership: the difference between flagging a problem and closing it.

The one that has changed most recently is Digital and AI Fluency, and Valentina is specific about what that means. "We treat it as a behavior, not a tool list. Listing Gemini under Skills tells us nothing. How someone uses AI to get to a better answer, and where they decide not to trust it, tells us a lot."

What this tells you about the role

The seven competencies Dialectica hires against are the same ones it develops and promotes against. "From the first interview, you know what good looks like here," Valentina says. "Nobody has to reverse-engineer it from feedback two years in."

She is also direct about intent. "Designing a process at this level of detail only makes sense if you are hiring people you expect to grow into the next roles."

The bar is explicit. It is the same for everyone. And it was set by the people you will be working for.

Interested in joining us? Explore our open roles at dialectica.io/careers

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