Content strategy and philosophy

Greg Wyatt • April 27, 2026

What follows is Chapter 40 of A Career Breakdown Kit, and part two of a three part series on Personal Branding.

Except it isn't. There are various definitions I revolt against, with good reason, in a job search.

Personal branding, hidden jobs markets, ATS compliance, and all the others. Terms that seem to hide secret wins, not replicable steps, especially when hidden behind a paywall.

I call it the title that's expected because of the questions job seekers ask me.

You may recall my article on the Hidden Jobs Market breaks it apart and rebuilds it into a cohesive multichannel marketing strategy that allows you to access the whole of your jobs market.

And so it is with my personal branding series.

This isn't about your brand. Or even about your reputation.

It's about pushing content that starts conversations with relevant people - such as peers, former colleagues, recruiters with a vested interest in these content areas, and even people that can put you closer to a job. Not forgetting fellow job seekers you can share experiences with - as long as you don't dwell on the negative.

And it's also about writing in a way that is both true to you and your profession - because conversation has to follow in the same voice as you write, and should support your work, when in work.

It's a strategy and philosophy that mirrors earlier chapters on networking, doorknocking, getting found and converting interest.

It isn't about writing credible statements in a content savvy way that shares unprovable anecdotes, hacks that lack substance, and where a funnel means more than a lesson. That way is the way of social media marketing - this is about conversations that matter.

40 - Content strategy and philosophy

While a personal brand might be the goal, your content strategy should be the priority. It can be applied even if you don’t like the idea of branding.

Much is made about LinkedIn’s algorithm and how you need to do this that and the other to get engagement.

You can look at it differently, ignoring the algorithm on the whole, and still achieve much the same.

These are the outcomes I aim for and see when writing content:

Start conversations
Help others
Sharpen and spark ideas
Raise awareness and trust
Have a laugh and a chat

I’ve gained friends I’ve never spoken to and friendly acquaintances I only know through ‘comments.’

As well as paying clients who have benefitted from my service.

Just as importantly, I have more credibility with candidates who place weight on LinkedIn content.

Content makes it easier for me to start conversations.

It’s important for me that I either enjoy the content and its consequences or find it fulfilling.

I don’t talk openly about my personal life, family or challenges. Something I agreed with my wife when I started publishing content.

Instead, I show all of myself in my words - quirks and all. So that if we ever speak in real life, there isn’t much of a disconnect.

Start with other people’s content

Find content writers who inspire you and use them as a catalyst for your own words.

There are two ways to do this.

Firstly, if you’re thinking about writing on LinkedIn, you are presumably already reading content.

What inspires you? What do you enjoy reading? Which authors resonate with your career, your values, your goals and the problems you solve?

When you read their content, do you engage and comment? Do you connect with them? Do you ask them who they recommend as writers in your field?

Secondly, look within.

What do you want to be known for in your career?

Maybe it’s procurement or your CIPD membership. React or agile. 5 Whys or Gemba.

If these are areas that interest you, use the LinkedIn search bar to find posts on these topics.

Now filter the results by ‘Posts’ and ‘Sort by’ latest.

Read through the results both for posts that interest you and those that have high engagement (less likely on a niche topic).

When you’ve found inspiring content, what next?

One first step in content creation is to respond to these posts with your own ideas. Less ‘Agree’ and more how you might respond in a real-life conversation on this topic.

Commenting on other people’s posts is a good way to find your voice, particularly if the conversation continues.

Like any skill, writing takes practice, and comments are a low-friction way of developing your tone.

If a comment sparks interest from other readers, it can be a concept to build on as a post in its own right.

The other benefit of this kind of niche content is that those who engage are likely to have similar interests to you.

Make sure to read other comments and see if there are more conversations to be had.

The comments you build with them can be the start of a mutually beneficial relationship.

Check out their profiles - do their interests and values reflect yours?

These are people to connect with, then DM to continue the conversation.

Check out their posting history, which will be available on their profile - there may well be a lot of interesting content to absorb.

With conversation comes content. Ideas and discussion that grow are an effective way to share your voice.

Here’s a suggestion for how you can do this in practice:

Look for 5 posts daily that interest you professionally - manually, using a search, or checking what your valuable connections are up to
Engage and comment on each
Check out new relevant profiles - connect and follow their content
On each post, look at who is engaging and respond naturally
Try to connect with 5 new relevant people from these interactions
Perhaps follow up with a message
Take note of the most interesting conversations and at the end of the week pick at least one to inspire your own posts
You don’t need to publish them if you aren’t comfortable - save for later if not

I’d avoid the viral content that combines relevance + relatability + entitlement + readability. These writers are more interested in engagement numbers than your specific interest.

You can see the truth of their words in how they respond in the comments sections.

From a marketing perspective, different types of content have different places in your lead generation:

Awareness
Interest
Consideration
Evaluation
Purchase

Each post, comment, DM and real-life conversation can relate to these steps and support your goals, even if you aren’t treating these as a marketing activity.

Time and time again

There’s a lot of investigation into optimal times to post. It’s more important that you are available to reply attentively in the first hour.

The course of a post is often dictated by the performance during this time.

I actively reply to comments for around an hour a day with LinkedIn on in the background of other work.

How much time can you set aside per week and per day for content?

Even if you only write a couple of posts a week, this will probably take a couple of hours.

You can expect low performance initially, with some exceptions, as it takes time to build inertia.

Set aside a sustainable amount of time each week and commit to it over a period - try for 10-12 weeks and track how things have developed.

You may find it becomes an enjoyable task. Try not to get distracted by engagement for its own sake and keep your goals in mind.

Types of content to try

Engagement on LinkedIn is built primarily on relevance and relatability. Even ragebait, given it drives strong feeling.

You can write a 100% relatable post that everyone takes relevance from and see massive engagement. Though that engagement may not serve your goals.

Or you can write a post that is 100% relevant to the problems you solve in your career, and the people who will find it relevant are from a small niche facing the same problems.

This is why a photo of you with your dog will fly, while a carefully thought out post about the optimisation of widgets in a byzantine setting will appear to be shouting into a void.

Or you can blend the two through storytelling, pivoting observations into business content, and copywriting formulae like AIDA (attention interest desire action) and PAS (problem agitation solution).

Everyone will have different forms of content that will be effective for them.

What do you want your ideal readers to experience?

What would ‘you five years ago’ would find helpful?

Do you want readers to see you as a credible expert?

Someone who is authentically vulnerable?

Your warts and all personality?

Someone who stands out in a sea of competition?

Someone who is thought-provoking, helpful, or altruistic?

The answers are much the same if you posed these questions of interviewing.

This is no coincidence, given your message should be consistently delivered no matter where it is received.

With that in mind, here are some content ideas you can try:

How you might solve a problem specific to your industry
Stories from your everyday life
The challenges in your job search
Observations on a news story and how it relates to your work
A flair post highlighting your availability
Asking for thoughts on an idea you are interested in
Sharing insight you find fascinating, whether that’s films, video games, science or sport
Stories from your career where you can show growth (everyone loves a hero’s journey)
Business frameworks, processes and techniques you find useful - Pomodoro Technique, scientific method, STAR, what do you use?
Equipment you use for work
Developments in your workplace and culture
Thoughts on content you find inspiring
Memes, humour, satire

Google content ideas for LinkedIn or ask ChatGPT, Claude and others.

I wouldn’t use AI to write articles. I do use them for ideation and to sense check.

‘Write me a post for LinkedIn that shows the link between Tesla cars and how to develop an HR strategy.’

The vulnerability of writing

You can be a content creator without ever publishing a post if you continue conversations through comments, connections, DMs and real-life.

This avoids sticking your head above the parapets and is low risk, but misses the gain of publishing your own content.

I know that some people are held back for fear of failure. I can tell you that clicking ‘send’ is always a high point of anxiety for me in sending newsletters. Imagine how I felt when I clicked Publish for this book.

What’s the worst that can happen with a carefully thought-out post?

Tumbleweed?

If no one reads it, you can always post it again another time.

Disagreement?

Loads of people disagree on my posts - you’ll see from my comments that I am always constructive in my dialogue and typically this supports the intent of my post.

Everyone has an opinion and they are welcome to theirs - as long as it’s constructive, there is always a learning opportunity.

Trolls?

These people exist and will at some point rear their ugly heads. I imagine them naked on the Underground, which takes the sting out of their vitriol. I’m sure it’s their unhappiness that drives their behaviour.

Marriage requests?

Unfortunately, dubious and toxic behaviour isn’t uncommon.

Don’t be afraid to block and report if you receive harmful messages.

As long as you are constructive in what you write and you work to build a conversation, it’s unlikely anything bad will happen. You will open yourself up to the opportunity of new relevant people starting conversations with you:

hiring managers, recruiters, peers, fellow job seekers, and friendly strangers.

Weight and depth of opinion

A couple of years ago, I had a message from an out-of-work Sales Director asking for some feedback.

He’d shot a video for LinkedIn where he talked about why he should be snapped up and received a lot of praise for the post. However, he was confused because a CEO he trusts told him it was poor and made him look boring.

He knew I’d give him unvarnished feedback, which was what he needed to find some clarity on what had happened.

Truthfully, the CEO was correct.

What had happened?

All of the positive engagement was from fellow job seekers and people who wanted to support him. That he’d done it was praiseworthy in itself and was rightly celebrated, rather than the quality of what he had produced.

None of them had hiring authority or were in a career similar to someone who would be his line manager.

The video didn’t show him how he comes across in person either.

While the positive feedback was fantastic for validation, his video worked against him. What might happen if a hiring process thought his video was boring when the role being recruited for has persuasion as a key requirement?

I’m pleased to say his redo was excellent, showing off his charisma while delivering the same message.

Who can you rely on to be this CEO for you in your career?

Why you should start now, even if you don’t see any benefit for months.

Starting cold on LinkedIn can take time to get traction.

When your first post bombs you might never think to do a second.

Going in with the expectation of little impact for the first three to six months is healthy in making a sustainable habit.

If you’re out of work though, three to six months may seem too far off to be worthwhile when there are many activities that offer a quick turnaround, such as applying for jobs.

I’ve spoken to many job seekers who’ve been out of work for more than six months and had decided not to write content at the outset of their search.

If they had, they might now be seeing the benefit of their work.

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An inverted job search

By Greg Wyatt • October 7, 2026

I realise I've shared this chapter fairly recently, but there's good reason to revisit it. On Friday, I launched a new AI tool - Your Job Search Plan. You can find it here: https://your-jobsearch-plan.netlify.app/ It's based on the inversion principle below: the optimal job search is an inversion of how that job is optimally recruited. In other words, the first step in a job search should be to understand how recruiters and hiring processes seek to fill your ideal vacancy. Then to access all those channels while putting your best foot forward. It connects your applications, your networking, your CV, your LinkedIn profile, and so on, all of which should stem from your professional identity, the context of your career, the market conditions for that career, and therefore the work you'll need to do to boost your odds. One thing I'm pleased about with this tool is how it relates to the other tools and resources on www.bwrecruitment.co.uk/resources . So what seemed abstract, or painful activities without guaranteed outcome, become a practical arrow in the quiver of your search. I hope you find these tools helpful. They are a starting point, rather than a resolution. 20 - An inverted job search So, your broad approach to looking for a job is based on a product marketing strategy. How does this link to your job search and how companies hire? The next step is to recognise a job search is an inverted recruitment process. Whatever you can learn about the actual workings of recruitment, the better armed you are to navigate them. The first way in which this is true is around the routes to market employers take to fill a job. Employers want to fill vacancies in the most economical and efficient means possible. Sometimes they’ll rely on external advice, sometimes they’ll figure out their own way, and sometimes they’ll employ people to do it for them (such as a Talent Acquisition Manager or internal recruiter). When they rely on external advice, it may not surprise you it’s as varied and contradictory as job seeker advice. Take this nugget of wisdom: 80% of suitable candidates are not actively looking for work. By advertising, you’ll only have access to the 20% that applies to adverts. Hang on a minute! Doesn’t that sound an awful lot like the hidden jobs market? Of course, candidates aren’t hidden - much like hidden jobs, the priority is to understand the channels through which candidates are found. These channels directly mirror the channels through which you look for that job: Job boards; LinkedIn; Recruitment agencies; Confidential headhunting; Internal promotions; Secondments; Temp-to-perm hires; Consulting-to-perm hires; Referrals; Networking; Speculative approaches; Careers pages; Talent pools; Candidate databases Every job is different, dictated by principles like supply and demand, confidentiality, reputational risk, wherewithal, budget and capacity. The hiring process of a Software Developer is different from that of a Sales Director. If an employer only hires through an advert - this means if you don’t apply for adverts, there’s no way in which you can be considered for that vacancy. A second way it’s accurate is the notion that what’s true for one may not be true for others. This relates to candidate resentment . You may read online that some recruitment behaviours are signs of a bad employer. Yet, you should always follow the instructions given when applying for an advert or through an agency. They may instruct you to: 1/ Write a CV, cover letter and duplicate it on their ATS 2/ Tell them your salary when they don’t list theirs 3/ Do 17 interviews before reaching a decision 4/ Deliver a 6-month strategy plan by presentation 5/ Or any other request deemed unreasonable by Career Coaches, Job seekers, or people otherwise uninvolved in that process What some consider red flags, others will deem acceptable practice. It becomes your choice to play the game or not. Either follow their instructions or step away. You don’t have to apply if you don’t want to. In a similar vein, if you hear a hiring process has a preference, or if there are gaps in their employment armoury - these might be biases you can lean into. The hiring manager loves Arsenal Football Club and is biased towards people who love the same? Now might be the time to switch allegiance, if you can fake it or make it. They love a one page CV? Apply with a one page CV. You know the hiring manager of an advert with 400 applications? Give them a call - they might give you an unfair advantage. Poor practice from the employer, yet these are problems you can turn into opportunity. A third way in which this is true is by comparing inbound and outbound activity Outbound activity is where you go to your prospect (phone calls, messaging). Inbound activity is where the prospect comes to you (job adverts, content). Yet an outbound activity for a recruiter is an inbound activity for you (you receive phone calls and messages). While an inbound activity has you getting in touch because of their advert or content. When we talk about optimising your work, whether your CV, profile or interviews, it has to give the process what it needs. How can you be more discoverable, so you receive more relevant calls and messages? How can you improve your return on applications and your outbound messages? What about inverse non-recruitment? A brilliant, if strange question, with the same answer. When networking, going direct, seeking to become a referral, doorknocking, or other, what is the inverse of that activity? How does that person find or recommend people, if they become aware of a vacancy? How might they see you as a person to solve their problems, even if it isn’t a vacancy? You do these activities because of how they might help you and because of the benefit the other party experiences. What’s in it for them? If there isn’t anything in it for them, why should they help you? For each and every stage in recruitment, there is an opposed force, as candidates and the hiring process meet each other. It’s rarely an equal force, because every vacancy has supply and demand, resource, skill level, biases and intent at play. This is why each type of role has a different method of looking for work. Executive vacancies typically prioritise headhunted candidates, with fewer public adverts. Here the priority shifts towards building relationships with, and being discoverable by, Executive Search recruiters. If executives rely mainly on job boards, they may never think to focus on more suited channels. If you can learn what the other needs for that process to be successful, you can deliver the same. Speak to peers, speak to hiring managers you know, speak to recruiters, speak to former job seekers. How have they found work, and how would they recruit for your roles? Research your market to find viable employers, to identify recruiters and to build your network. Then execute an appropriate strategy to access these channels.

Hierarchy of Pain

By Greg Wyatt • September 23, 2026

I had an aborted conversation at a networking event on Tuesday. It was about a problem vacancy a fractional people lead was looking at. Her client had instructed various executive search firms and none had produced a viable candidate. It seems the consistent approach was to match CVs to job description - pureplay transactional - and none were candidates that met the goal of the vacancy. You see that organisational pain that the vacancy heals wasn't defined by documentation, and therefore if you rely on that documentation to find candidates, it's happenstance that you come across someone viable. It's such a common problem, and when I 'fix' problem vacancies, it's invariably something that isn't described which was holding back a successful hire. The irony is this shouldn't be a hidden pain - presuming it's appropriate to share, it should be front and centre. What complicates modern recruitment is that, instead of better specifying vacancies, both sides of the hiring fence increasingly rely on LLMs to produce documentation that shaves the edges off. And as a result a candidate that has extensively healed the hidden pain a vacancy might even remove the evidence from their application in a bit to better match an advert or job description. The more transactional recruitment comes, particularly through reliance on technology, the worse this problem becomes. Probably not an issue for business as usual vacancy, but when a vacancy has impact, standard process of "5 CVs by Friday" will invariably hold you back. The chapter below is from A Career Breakdown Kit , my guide for navigating a skewiff employment market. It may be for job seekers, but the problem and solution are directly mirrored by the hiring side. It's taken word for word from the book, so some of the content is interconnected with other chapters. You can read most of them for free in the Jobseeker Basics newsletter. Hierarchy of pain This chapter reflects on how buyers make decisions, how this is reflected in hiring and why it matters in how you put forward your CV, application, interviews and other messages. If you’ve ever encountered sales in your career or life you are likely familiar with the concepts of Features and Benefits. The product is what is proposed. Features are what it does. Benefits are how it helps. However there are actually three other components in this hierarchy that make up commercial messaging. Value is what the benefits mean to you. “Sell the sizzle, not the sausage” - the sizzle isn’t a benefit, if you don’t like sausages. Outcomes are the tangible long-term results from using that product or service. “Sell the picture frame, not the screwdriver” - or rather what’s in the frame. Why does it matter? The idea being these peel back the layers of the onion to help a potential customer understand exactly What’s In It For Them. Yet, it may not matter whatsoever if your brilliantly put together message doesn’t achieve one element - show how you heal their hidden pain. In that frame example above, this might be a photo of a loved one, no longer with us. The photo is for our memories and feelings. The frame has to be right, to commemorate them properly. While it needs to be mounted well, using tools that make the job easier. Could you market that loss to sell a screwdriver? Hopefully not, though the message might be, “For memories that matter,” instead of "High Quality Screwdriver". It's a common pain many share, yet not one you might discuss down the DIY shop. Early in my career I had a lesson on hidden pain and its importance. I recruited an HR Manager for a high growth business whose requirement was for someone with broad experience in a similar environment. I presented an excellent candidate who was only available due to the shutdown of her employer - she had to stay to the final day to manage the process well, which limited her availability to start work. That was the only reason I explained her current situation to this new employer, because redundancy management wasn’t on the job description. She got the job! On day one of her new employment, her role was made redundant and she was offered a retention bonus to shut down the local site - everyone was to lose their jobs. The hidden pain here was redundancy, something not even mentioned to me during the vacancy briefing, and something I never broached with Julie. IIRC, there was no mention of it during the interview process either. Perhaps that’s an extreme example, but it does show what can happen behind the scenes. And if you happened to be out of work, a fixed term contract with a retention bonus might be quite appealing. Were you to apply to that vacancy, it would be important to highlight your redundancy experience - customising your CV might even have worked against you! So how does this hierarchy fit within your job search? You are the product, with your next employer on a buyer’s journey. Your features are what you offer. In a CV this is a combination of job titles, qualifications, skills and areas of experience. It’s also your salary requirement, where you are based and other elements like Visa status and working arrangements. Get these right and a little luck might mean they are all you need, considering that these same elements are what we source and filter on. I expect in this market you’re in competition with many people that offer the same Features, so the differentiator is what you bring to the table uniquely. The contexts of your career combined with how you helped, your impact, your achievements, and what the outcomes were. Related chapters: Principles of a Good CV Should I customise my CV? LinkedIn profiles that get found LinkedIn profiles that convert These are all resources that will help you communicate the benefits of your experience, the value you bring, the problems you solve, and the outcomes of these solutions. As for the hidden pain question, which in many vacancies isn’t articulated, how can you unpick hidden? Go back to why vacancies are recruited. How did they come about in the first place? They only fit into two piles - new and replacement. However these two piles have many subcategories relating to the problems they solve and the pain they heal. Researching the company can help. Inside knowledge definitely helps - it’s one reason good agency recruiters will be a valuable ally. But this knowledge isn’t always available, and sometimes the employer may not even know! I always come back to the principle, “You can’t be all things to all people.” And when you try to do this, you appeal to no one. It’s one reason why using LLM style AI to customise CVs is so problematic. The output is necessarily same-same because it’s a probabilistic determination of what you want based on an aggregate of data. It’s why, when recruiters receive a volume of AI augmented CVs, they all look the same. Your ‘good enough’ core CV ( Should I customise my CV ) leans into your strengths. While you might tweak it to meet the essential requirements, in the language of the employer, this should naturally support your greatest strength - the unique fingerprint that is your career. The downside of relying on customisation against vague, and often misrepresentative, adverts is that you can deemphasise and even remove your biggest achievements. The same achievements that would have helped you stand out. If your application doesn’t heal the hidden pain of a vacancy, it’s either because you have not defined your strengths correctly or you aren’t that close of a fit with the actual needs of the vacancy. An example to show this pitfall in practice. I caught up with a friend yesterday who has resigned from a post that was missold to him. His career is based on commercial acumen and enablement in a field that is heavily focused on risk management and compliance. So he’s already unusual in a good way (though his CV didn’t show this). On day one of his new job, he encountered a literal unexpected disaster. While these things happen, and he managed the situation effectively, this proved a consequence of the business culture and strategy. These problems kept coming up and his functional area in the business needed a complete overhaul at executive level. Rather than the commercial enablement picture they painted, they needed someone who relished chaos - a master of disaster. Completely the opposite of the career Simon wants. This isn’t something they could publicise in their recruitment process, for reputational reasons, yet it was a fundamental baked-in aspect of the role. I’ve no doubt Simon’s CV is a match for their job description. Yet he is not a match for their job. What if they’d seen CVs of people who’d leant into strengths of healing dysfunction? What if he’d leant into his strength of enablement? He may not have left his previous job for something he went on to regret. If you’re sceptical about how crucial hidden pain is in recruitment, think about your own hidden pain when applying for jobs. What’s going on in your life that impacts which roles are ideal for you. The same points you might not divulge when you’re just trying to get back into employment. Perhaps you've even experienced the pain I did when considering a hardware purchase. How did that pain inform your buying decisions? It’s no different for employers when they consider the pain and problems inherent in their vacancy.