What follows is Chapter 43 from A Career Breakdown Kit. Is it a magic salve guaranteed for success? No of course not. But much like anything in a job search, nothing is guaranteed. What we do is identify which avenues can be effective for your context, and form an appropriate strategy. LinkedIn optimisation is great if people search for you on LinkedIn. Except speaking to my recruitment peers, fewer and fewer rely on it. Would it surprise you if I told you I rarely invested in at all before 2019? I've been working in recruitment since 1996 including at CEO level. Applications, networking, referrals, content, CV databases. All have a place and a purpose. Doorknocking on the other hand - some would tell you it has no place in the modern job search. If my daughter*, her friends and other 18 year olds can get a job from an old school technique, while those employers say "only through Indeed" then that might be a hint it still works. Some of whom are socially anxious, but then it's a replicable process, not a cult of personality. Or the periodic messages I get from CxOs who made their own jobs from direct outreach. Not forgetting Granovetter's seminal research and recent LinkedIn-specific studies in Science journal showing weak ties drive more job mobility than strong ties. And why wouldn't doorknocking work on LinkedIn, when you have a weak tie that suggests a viable employer? But no, it's not a guarantee. It's just an arrow in the quiver of a multichannel job search. 43 - How to doorknock Doorknocking is an old-school sales approach you may well have experienced, such as when a salesperson with a clipboard rings your doorbell and asks you to change electricity provider. My wife even once bought from exactly this scenario. While it’s not uncommon in a business-to-consumer situation it can also work business-to-business… if you can get past security. Although technology has moved on, the principle is the same whether in person, by phone, email, letter or LinkedIn: You approach someone cold and create your own opportunity. This isn’t an approach for everyone and requires chutzpah. If you are used to a high failure rate in applications - what do you have to lose by being proactive? More than that - look at all the advice on LinkedIn on how to improve your odds in a job search. It’s all transactional and applicable, available to everyone - if you all follow it, everyone takes the same step forward. While taking steps others are less prepared to do means the approach alone may stand out. If you encounter the equivalent of a sign which says, ‘Trespassers will be shot!’, pay attention. My own career of looking for work includes many non-transactional approaches: Walked into the local Cinema and asked for a job Walked into Office World and asked for a job Worked for Dad Talked to one of my ex-colleagues and gained some by-the-call phone research work Temped through an agency Walked into an Inn and asked for a job Referred to a publishing, training & consulting company In managing their small-scale recruitment alongside my day job I got to know the MD of a recruitment firm as a supplier. I went to work there Tapped up to return to a more senior role Started my business upon being given the boot - thanks Dave! It’s true I did apply through job boards and agencies. It’s mainly through my own means that I have secured my employment. *My daughter even tried doorknocking for her first job in our local town last summer. It didn’t work for her - she found a nice retail job through an application on Indeed. Her experience was positive enough that she helped a friend do the same - who got a job at the first shop they tried. Doorknocking is about approaching companies by category not because they are recruiting. These categories can be: All the employers in your local business park (often they have websites, with directories and job adverts) Companies listed in local newspapers, directories or platforms (local to me this could be Cambridge Evening News, Bury Free Press, Cambridge Network or Business Weekly) Top 100 employers in your domain Companies that have recently had funding and are about to scale Doorknocking companies you’ve come across through networking and its resulting market map Make contact and make a case for yourself on the principle of the right person, right time, right place, right message, right offer, and right price. There’s an element of luck involved for these elements to all come together. A disadvantage is that they may not be recruiting or ever have a need to employ you and even if they do have a vacancy, you still have to establish the right fit. That means a logically low hit rate. Your threshold for an acceptable failure rate will inform whether this is the right approach for you. The difference is the anonymous rejection of a volume-based application versus the ‘personal rejection’ from your direct outbound approach. Right person, right time, right place, right message, right offer, and right price. Let’s reorder and examine this marketing principle: Right Place Those Categories above. The place is the Company, and how you contact them. You can go in blind if you are a bold prospector or research them in advance. ‘site:’ is a useful command in Google. You can search on specific websites: ‘site: linkedin.com ACME jobs’ Right Person Typically this will be the ‘next one up’ - Head of department, Director, CxO or Owner. Who would be the budget holder at work? Those are prospects. Look them up on LinkedIn, PR, news, video platforms. What can you find out? Right Time While time can be happenstance, can timed factors create opportunity? What might be a hiring trigger? Perhaps you could contact a list of companies that have recently announced funding or a big win - news that may lead to hiring additional people. Or maybe you hear through the grapevine that Janine is about to go off on maternity leave. If their process isn’t time-bound, can you make it time-bound? ‘We aren’t hiring right now’ might mean they’ve run out of headcount in the January to June period and may have a new budget in July. What can you learn that helps you both? If you have radio silence, why not try again in a month or three months? Think about how you buy. If you don’t need something how likely are you to respond to a message no matter how well crafted? If you do need something you might think first of someone who keeps in regular touch. Right Offer You have more opportunity for career creativity in being unemployed than someone entrenched in a 9 to 5 permanent job. What problems can you fix for a company in a non-traditional employment capacity? Let’s say an employer has a problem that needs fixing. They don’t have capacity to do it right now. It isn’t burning enough to seek professional help and there isn’t sufficient work in view to make it a job. What if you caught them at the right time? An out-of-work TA Manager who offered to revamp an onboarding process. A web designer who notes lots of issues with their website. A strategic operational issue that is their unknown unknown identified by your expertise. A swamped team that could benefit from their admin burden being reduced. An orchard that needs pickers at harvest time. What starts out as a short-term, project, or part-time piece of work can become proof of concept. While rare, I know a few people whose permanent full-time jobs have come about this way, including at a senior level. Right message This is both specific and crude. It’s specific because nailing the message CAN create an opportunity a poorly written message may miss. It’s crude because sometimes you can catch people at the right time, no matter how cruddy your message is. This is the case in recruitment - I’ve picked up several senior appointments by calling at the right time. ‘I’m glad you called Greg, I’m starting to think about my maternity cover in June.’ Had I not called, that HR Director may well have gone to the specialist HR recruiters she is also in touch with. If you have a strong hook in your message - such as a key area of rare expertise or a clear issue you’ve identified which companies may have - go in with that. If you don’t - done is better than procrastinating: ‘Hi Greg, I live locally to Bircham Wyatt Recruitment. Love what you do. I wondered if you might be recruiting for an apple picker at any point. If you can’t help, could you point me in the right direction?’ Right price I’ve left this until the end because much of this is variable and subjective. What are your needs? What can they afford? What does the market say? How flexible can you be? Research will help if you can get a sense of what they generally pay through Indeed, Glassdoor or others. Or maybe what comparable companies that are advertising will pay. One approach might be to pro-rate your salary over the period you’ll work there. Doorknocking can sometimes give you access to jobs that are being actively recruited. It’s a happy byproduct of your work, if you find yourself in this situation. It’s worth persevering. Otherwise, it’s too easy to think after 10, 20, or 100 unsuccessful efforts that the approach itself is at fault. There is always an element of luck in any activity. This may be out of your comfort zone, in which case it’s an opportunity to grow. The only certain thing is that if you don’t try you definitely won’t benefit.

Listening to the consequences of your recruitment process is an opportunity. I do find it interesting go through my older articles. How has my thinking changed? Has it improved? How was I so cringy? Looking at this article in its August 2023 form, I hadn't yet focused on Candidate Resentment as an opportunity to improve how we recruit. Not because it's decent to treat people better, but because that is a happy byproduct of strategically assessing our work as it supports our goals. Whether that's filling vacancies or finding people that meet our goals long-term and flourish doing so. Root canal If you recognise that speaking to the potential problems of the people you want to engage is a good idea, you may also recognise why you shouldn't create any problems that push them away. Engagement is an ongoing process that carries through every stage of recruitment, even into employment. Yes, bring your candidates forward, in part by showing how you solve their career problems. But, don’t throw up unnecessary issues that undo your good work. Listening to the consequences of your recruitment process is an opportunity. Why did that candidate proceed? Why did another withdraw? What raised concern? What about the potential candidates we don’t even know about? What influenced their decisions? I’ve spoken to tens of thousands of candidates, prospects, applicants, and everything else, during my career. Out of curiosity, I’m always interested in what influences their decisions in their pursuit of a new career. What fascinates me is that these are the Gemba , the unknown unknowns that we can extrapolate into our own recruitment processes. What problems do they encounter elsewhere, that discourage them from applying, that encourage them to withdraw, and why? And how might we be guilty of the same? While if we are guilty, how can we fix these problems, so that the objection never comes up? Imagine that - the reader that might have walked away, who instead chooses to engage. This may seem an unknowable unknown, but one of the benefits of my job seeker work is hearing about the issues they encounter on their side of recruitment and how that may influence their decisions. Considering these are people that are very problem aware, their appetite for bullshit is in some ways higher than the problem unaware (passive in old speak). While in others, what you may consider normal behaviour, they consider red flags. While we can’t control the behaviour of candidates, we can learn what influences their behaviour and form a process that nudges, draws forward or mitigates when needed. What are we accountable for that might present a problem for a candidate we want to employ? Especially when, in normal life, moving jobs is one of the biggest stresses? How might we unnecessarily cause scepticism or anxiety? Auditing your own recruitment process as a mystery candidate is one opportunity. As is surveying your staff for their experience - with the caveat they are happy to be working for you, skewing their perception. Or perhaps they're terrified of losing their jobs. Do they really want to rock the boat with criticism? But it’s the candidates who withdraw, who hesitate, who object that can be the source of the biggest improvements. What would you say their common complaints are? You can look to LinkedIn for the answer, in their high-engagement posts. Salary on the job description (they mean the advert) ATS data duplication Responsiveness and transparency Tardy, bloated and unnecessary recruitment stages A robotic process that forgot they are human Which becomes your choice. Do you look within and challenge yourself with 5 Whys to see how you can improve? Do you take away problems before they can occur? Saving your candidates unnecessary toothache? Or do you lay blame on the areas you can’t control? Those are the questions. Regards, Greg p.s. I’m available for interesting work - UK key hires, fractional talent acquisition and recruitment writing. Maybe we can talk. p.p.s. A Recruitment AiDE is out now - the discipline for UK key hire recruitment

What follows is an updated chapter for the Summer edition of A Career Breakdown Kit (2026). Two main changes: A range of free resources available to boost your job search - you can access them on www.bwrecruitment.co.uk/resources . These are not generative tools - they are diagnostic tools. Feedback has been fantastic so far, including a message yesterday that attributes advice from one of the reports helped them secure a job offer Insight into an emergent situation that means the myth of ATS compliance is now actively working against you. It's a good thing the tools above are designed to help you better stand out in a way that is ATS hygienic and puts your best foot forward If you've already bought the book, DM me when the new edition is published and I'll send you a free digital copy. It's my commitment to any buyer, for as long as I update it. 31 - AI or no? I often see discussions on the uses and perils of AI in a job search. There are many wonderful applications for AI inside and outside of a job search. Some automate and take away the burden of the more painful aspects of looking for a job. From writing CVs to applying at scale for you. And potentially doing the interview for you, with burgeoning deepfake technology. Should you use AI in your job search and how? Ask yourself these questions: ‘Will it be seen as cheating, if the employer finds out I’ve used AI?’ And ‘What are the unexpected consequences that wholesale adoption of new technology creates?’ Using AI in place of truth, whether in a customised CV, to game interviews, or deepfake candidacy - I see this as fraud, and it should be treated as such. You aren’t just cheating the employer, you’re cheating other candidates who have better integrity. Given recruitment processes are in part designed to extrapolate how you might behave and perform in a role, the sense of cheating can lead to an instant ‘no.’ And with the advent of an AI arms race, you should be careful in what you choose to use. I know the odds are stacked against job seekers through a combination of the market, systems and philosophy. Do you want others to make arbitrary decisions over your application, only because you’ve used AI? What do I mean by arms race? Let’s look at using AI to write a CV. In one sense it’s no different to paying someone to write your CV for you, such as a CV Writer. And it’s free. No problem, right? Let’s set aside the argument “Employers filter with AI so why can’t we use AI to get ahead?” for now. Especially because Some Truths About the ATS and AI (p32) and its follow up chapters show what’s really happening. The problem isn’t so much employers as it is how your CV sits alongside other applications. Many applicants who are wholly unsuitable can use the same AI to write a customised CV that paints them as someone worth assessing at interview. A waste of time for the employer, or worse which could lead to a mis-hire and also take attention away from suitable candidates such as you. This creates suspicion over the veracity of AI written CVs. For each development in job seeker AI, you’ll see an opposing one come up at the hiring end. And because these are all based on the same principles, they are relatively simple to develop. An emerging consequence of the arms race This arms race has a consequence worth taking seriously, because it's starting to affect everyone. Automated tools let candidates fire CVs at two thousand vacancies overnight. The same tools can optimise CVs against each advert at scale. For an overwhelmed jobseeker this might seem the golden ticket. But the increasingly reported result is that recruiters now open their ATS to find a pile of CVs that look structurally equivalent: the same section orders, the same keyword density, the same generic achievement bullets. The features that were supposed to make a CV stand out, its mirroring of the advert language and its claimed compliance with the system, become the very features that make these applications indistinguishable from each other. With the additional problem that many applications lie at scale to beat the system. Recruiters must adapt to what they experience, and often it will be by finding the shortcuts experienced humans take when they're drowning. It's a sad state of affairs that this pain is the same one that drives automated applications. Recruiters look for signs that a CV represents an actual qualified candidate rather than a machine-tuned approximation of one. Specificity beats generic mirroring. Context-rich achievement statements beat keyword-dense bullets. Inconsistencies between the CV and the candidate's LinkedIn profile become disqualifying, because they suggest the CV was tuned for the advert rather than the truth. Moreover, signs that applications are driven by an automated service might be discounted at scale, such as one international Talent Acquisition Manager who has set filters to discount applications from LoopCV – because his experience is that they are mainly spammed applications. And while this situation forces employers to reassess how they administer applications, it also leads to the question of whether advertising is a viable channel at all. Especially when other channels are more specific and controllable, such as using LinkedIn Recruiter Licence to find people directly. This news is from June 2026 and things are moving fast. For now, the practical point is that the case for a good-enough CV that's genuinely yours gets stronger as the volume of customised CVs increases. And the case for a well-specified LinkedIn profile that anchors the CV becomes essential, because the profile is what recruiters will compare your CV against when they want to know whether it's real. And because the profile is what may come up in recruiter searches when the jobs they used to advertise aren't advertised any more. I cover the customisation question in more detail in Should I customise my CV? (p178). I cover the LinkedIn profile configuration that anchors the CV in LinkedIn profiles that convert (p204). Does that mean you shouldn’t use AI optimisation at all? It’s situation dependent and you should think about the consequences. If I were looking for an early career job that paid the bills and was aware of the huge competition for a wide number of vacancies – I might consider automation to do this at scale. However, in this case I’d do the opposite of automation and doorknock instead. If I were only receptive to a unique opportunity, AI wouldn’t be relevant. A more straightforward discussion is the uses where AI augments your own intelligence, rather than automates manual processes. Here, I wholeheartedly recommend looking into options and being creative: · Tools to check spelling & grammar, used judiciously (I ignore most of Grammarly’s advice on how to improve my writing style) · Compare your CV against a job description. Check for gaps, synonyms, how you might articulate your experience · Ask for examples of achievements you can use as collateral to support your documentation and interviews, then replace those examples with the facts of your experience · Build a keyword thesaurus to aid in searching for, applying for and being found for vacancies · Use for ideation and sense checking. I’ll paste content into Claude and ChatGPT and ask for its ‘thoughts.’ Some of its feedback is helpful. Sometimes it lies and gaslights me · Ask questions around your career path - job titles, industries to look at; qualifications to underpin your experience · Use as a buddy to ask questions of, help with research and interview preparations (e.g. what questions might I be asked in an interview for a CTO; the company is a venture funded start-up with 30 employees, operating in SaaS) · Purpose specific tools that have been error checked. Such as those that share market insights in your domain - prospects for speculative approaches, networking opportunities, knowledge sharing, etc None of these can be seen as cheating, given it’s invisible behind the scenes work that supports your candidacy. Additionally you can google or AI search for how others have solved their job search applications with AI – there are many case studies in the wild including open source access to their prompts and apps. However, you might prefer to have unlimited free use of tools I have developed to support your job search. Go to www.bwrecruitment.co.uk/resources These tools are based on the principles set out in this book, the associated CV template (which you can download here too) and my new book on effective key hire recruitment – A Recruitment AiDE. They are diagnostic, not generative, therefore have a different use than AI optimisation. Here are the tools available right now, which I may add to over time: · CV template and guide · CV diagnostic – assess where your CV sits right now and how you can better articulate your candidacy. A structured report you can act on immediately · CV-Vacancy analysis – assess whether and how you should apply, SWOT analyse your CV against expected competition, scraped inferred pain that informs why the vacancy is actually recruited, company context and relevant information, and potential interview questions that may come up · Rejection decoder – plausible analysis of why you may have been rejected. This may give constructive advice, it may just help you move on. · Is it a scam? Paste a suspicious message and it will highlight how suspicious it actually is · AI interview practice – infer questions that are likely to be asked from a job description. Practice, transcribe and record your answers to review. Plus an AI analysis of your answers. Nothing is stored outside of your browser session. · LinkedIn profile optimiser – get more easily found by Recruiters including for jobs that aren’t advertised. Optimised for Recruiter Licence: the number one tool on LinkedIn for sourcing potential candidates. · Salary negotiation insights – an advisory analysis to help you determine whether an offer is fair, and whether and how you might negotiate I’ve designed these so that nothing is stored outside of your browser session. Nothing is visible to me. Full instructions on the resources page. There’s a wider discussion to be had, outside of the purview of this book, which is that of reasonable adjustments. Such as for disability and neurodiversity. What about for non-English speakers when fluent written English isn’t necessary? How about someone with limited time that happens to be the perfect candidate? Shouldn’t we enable candidates to put forward the best version of themselves straightforwardly? If you are someone with hiring authority reading this, let me add this. AI in itself isn’t a cheat, if what is represented is true. When you catch a candidate out for using AI, ask why, instead of assuming. The process of securing a new role is a skill, much of which can be learnt over a long-term job search. In some situations, people can afford CV Writers, LinkedIn profile upgrades, career & interview coaching. All these do is allow them to provide a better version of themselves. AI is no different, albeit less effective on an individual basis. If you see use of AI as problematic, this may discriminate against people with less means to pay for support, the same people who likely need the most help. Don’t be too quick to judge. Don’t you use similar tools to enable your work? At the moment, what matters is how hiring processes might view the use of AI. This is a key consideration.

What follows is an updated chapter for the Summer 2026 edition of A Career Breakdown Kit , due for release in July. It explains why you may have a strong profile yet be invisible to recruiter searches - and what you can do about it. If you've already bought a copy, DM me with your receipt and I'll DM you the latest version - that will always be my commitment and where this book is unlike others on the market. A few weeks back I published the follow up chapter - " LinkedIn profiles that convert ". You see it's not good enough to only get found, you must also convert readers into action. Unless, I suppose recruiters rely on only the most basic searches and don't want evidence of suitability. Indeed I had a couple of comments on that article... "Greg getting found is far more important!", which is true, though it highlighted they didn't read the article. It is indeed true that you can't convert if you aren't found, but the two go hand in hand. So this chapter fixes it. I publish the update now due to my LinkedIn Live with Simon Ward on Wednesday, where I prove a simple truth that confounds much LinkedIn advice: If you believe your Headline is the only thing to rely on, you are wrong. We'll use this simple leetspeak term "h34dl1n3" to show what LinkedIn Recruiter looks for in searches. I use that term because no one else on LinkedIn has, so it shows point for point what results are brought from searches. Here's the Link for Wednesday 10th June at 2pm BST: Job hunters helpdesk . If you can't make it the recording is available in the same place. Or you can read the following: 36 - LinkedIn profiles that get found Whatever you think of LinkedIn, you shouldn’t overlook its nature as a data repository for recruiters. Many of us rely on this data to fill our vacancies. That data is you and your competition. This chapter shows how recruiters use the LinkedIn Recruiter Licence to enable us to search for potential candidates, how this reflects other CV databases, and how this might help you improve the odds that your profile can be found. If you didn’t know, Recruiter Licence is an expensive resource for recruiters and one which many rely on as a core part of their hiring approach. We do this sometimes at the same time as advertising, sometimes instead of. I’m a member of a private recruiter group on LinkedIn. We’re all small independents, and it was set up for recruiters who both care about candidate experience and are skilled in their craft. In preparation for one of my LinkedIn Lives, I asked them in our WhatsApp group what their common frustration with LinkedIn profiles is. These were their replies: ‘Headlines are always shit’ ‘CVs not matching LinkedIn profiles are a big no, especially in targeted roles like sales’ ‘Job titles that don't make sense’ ‘No personal profile’ ‘Don't have your current job title as 'looking for work', put the job title you are aiming for and change your headline to e.g. 'Software Developer looking for their next role in X where I can add X value'‘ ‘Profiles in my domain all look exactly the same. It’s all job titles, qualifications and nothing to differentiate them.’ Common issues I see too. It’s worth pointing out that this exercise was solely on LinkedIn Recruiter. Recruiters have different ways of finding candidates: Their own CV database of previously registered candidates Subscription CV databases off the back of job boards (in the UK), e.g. Indeed, Reed, Totaljobs, CV Library or more specialist ones in your area of expertise ATS-style software that scrapes candidate data from LinkedIn and other sources Real-life networking, referrals Headhunting through market mapping, prospect companies and people in viable roles When it comes to searching data, these are based on Boolean search and filters. It’s the same way we might search through a high volume of applicants, such as on an ATS. I recently did an experiment with my co-host, Simon Ward, on our weekly LinkedIn Live. Simon is an exceptional Job Search Coach in the UK. He chose this title to define his services because, from his perspective, it was the most relevant description of what he does. If I were to ask you what does someone do who can coach you through finding a job, what would you answer? My guess would be Career Coach or maybe CV Writer. And if you searched on those terms for Simon, you wouldn’t have found him. If you took the ‘lazy recruiter’ approach to sourcing you wouldn’t find him under ‘Job Search Coach’ either. LinkedIn Recruiter works much in the same way as Amazon. You run a general search for your item of choice, then filter by various elements - in this case by industry and location. One of the features of LinkedIn Recruiter is that we can filter by ‘Open to Work’, if you have that turned on in your profile, it should be to your advantage. I don’t use it, because I have better means of contacting out-of-work job seekers. When I look at my dashboard, these are the basic search fields that come up: Job Title Locations Skills and Assessments Companies Schools Attended Industries Keywords I use Job Title, Location, Industry and Keywords for general searches, as well as Companies if I know they might be incubators for candidates. There are also advanced filters. For the purpose of this chapter, it’s about getting the basics right. These search fields map point for point with how you fill out your profile. Play around with editing your profile and you’ll see the same options. The problem with Simon is that he defined himself as a Job Search Coach in his headline. If I search for this specific term as a Job Title, he won’t come up, whereas 37 other credible results do. It’s only if I search on this term in Keywords that he comes up. Headlines don’t have a specific filter to search on them - they only get found in a Keyword filter search, in an advanced operator search, or when that term is also specified in a primary search filter like Job Title. See A note on headlines below for why this matters. What if you were an HR Manager who was a 100% fit for a Head of People vacancy, yet the recruiter didn’t find you because you didn’t use that explicit job title? As a recruiter I would build up a Boolean string of comparable job titles, then expand or reduce depending on the volume of results. Which might be: (‘HR Manager’ OR ‘Human Resource Manager’ OR ‘Human Resources Manager’ OR ‘Head of HR’ OR ‘HR Director’) etc I’d use every iteration of HR above and (‘People Manager’ OR ‘Head of People’), maybe I’d even go old school with Personnel. I do this because of the arbitrariness of job titles, and because an HR Director in one business might be a Head of People in another. As well as other curiosities like People Business Partner, which might be any and all of those titles. Once I have a comprehensive list, I can save this for future reference and build it iteratively if I come across any weird job titles in the wild. If I need to further fine-tune, I’d bring in relevant qualifications, memberships and skills for that role. MCIPD AND ‘Employee Relations’ AND FMCG… might be an example, although these are separated on LinkedIn by individual fields. If you’re wondering about the capitalisation - AND OR NOT and others are Boolean operators that allow us to specify or separate data. Sometimes I’ll even search on typos, because I know these aren’t searched for by many, but only if it’s a hard role to fill: ‘HR Manger’ (I realise HR isn’t obscure) I do what it takes to find the right people. It won’t help if you are a suitable candidate for the above and your job title is ‘Assistant to the Senior Manager, HR, Business Partnering.’ A real job title I once came across. I explain in the ATS chapters (p29) that one area AI is enhancing work is through automating Boolean searches - this makes it easier for a less skilled recruiter to find candidates. If you have the basics above nailed, things will only improve. For now, a skilled search will uncover candidates better than automation. Here’s the first takeaway: Ensure the keywords, job titles, skills and qualifications that reflect the job you want are explicitly stated on your profile and in the right fields. Ensure Industry is best fit with your ideal career industry (a specific filter we use, which can be amended where you edit your headline) If you aren’t sure, print off all the jobs you’ve recently applied for where you are a 90%+ fit. What are the common terms? These should be on your profile - if and only if they are true and you have evidence. If your current job title is ‘Looking for a new opportunity,’ it might be true and it might get you overlooked. You’d probably want your current job title to be ‘HR Manager - looking for a new opportunity.’ In that fuzzy weird title above, I’d go for ‘Assistant to the Senior Manager, HR, Business Partnering - (HR Manager)’ Search fields do have additional filters, allowing a search on current or past jobs - can we guarantee recruiters won’t do anything more than the most simplistic of searches? Now, you’d hope that recruiters aren’t actually lazy, corner cutters or incompetent. Though if you cater for the weakest link, you also cater for more skilled recruiters. I asked a current job seeker what roles he is applying for. His reply: Compliance Assistant / Administrator, Client Onboarding Assistant / Administrator, Operations Assistant / Administrator, Reconciliations Administrator. I couldn’t find him on a basic search for the first line. This was my reply: When I did a search using your ideal job titles, you didn't come up for ‘Compliance Assistant’ or ‘Compliance Administrator.’ You do come up for ‘Client Onboarding Assistant’ and Administrator because these are explicit in your profile. You may benefit from making sure the exact terms you look for in adverts are represented in your profile. The crux of being found is understanding what we search for. Give us what we need to find you. Inversion. The principles are the same for a CV which you can use on job board CV databases. Another exercise to improve visibility What were the last 10 job adverts you read that represented a strong fit with where you are in your career? Ones which reflect what you've been doing and would be a natural step forward. What do these descriptions have in common, out of job titles, key skills, qualifications and technology? Now look at your LinkedIn profile. In order of priority, do these use the same words you see in adverts? Your job titles - most recent and previous Your Headline Your About section The sections under each job title Your skills Often, when recruiters do searches against similar roles, they'll use the terminology from the job description, which is commonly used as the basis for adverts. They'll search under the same terms that you might read on those adverts - job titles, qualifications, skills, software, industry. If your profile doesn't explicitly state these, you won't be as easily found. For example, if you are a ‘Head of Affiliate, Digital and Offline Marketing’ and you are performing the duties of a Marketing Manager - that's what you need to show in your profile. While your headline is important - it doesn't help you if your profile doesn't turn up in search results, given its lower priority in Recruiter Licence search filters. Update your profile truthfully and see what happens. How else can you help readers see you as a viable candidate? Do the same for your CV - because these same principles will support your applications, speculative contacts, networking and use of CV databases. Note: there is no global ranking of profiles. Search rankings are in part specific to the searcher, based on things like network proximity and the recruiter's own activity. So you might be #1 in one search, and on the 3rd page for a different recruiter. The configuration layer beneath the visible profile Everything so far has been the visible profile: headline, about, experience, the keywords a reader can see. There is a configuration layer beneath this that drives how the platform matches you to sponsored adverts and how recruiters filter their searches. I covered why this matters in The invitation that wasn't (p67). Here is how to set it. The first thing to understand is that these fields are additive. They add the searches and matches you appear in. They do not subtract your existing visibility. Setting a stretch title in Open to Work cannot erase your real title from your Experience section, which is where Boolean searches actually hit. So there is no penalty for reaching, only the question of where you spend limited slots. Open to Work job titles. Up to five slots, drawn from LinkedIn's pre-populated taxonomy. These titles make you findable for roles you have never held. Set Director of Operations and you surface in searches for that title even if your profile only shows you as a Business Manager. It is the single most useful mechanism the platform offers anyone trying to move sideways, level up, or pivot. Five slots forces a choice, which is the right design. The balance to aim for is between titles you are genuinely suited for now and titles you would move jobs for. Where you sit depends on your situation. If you are passively open and not in a rush, weight the slots toward the next move up; you can afford to wait for the right conversation. If you are actively looking and need to land something soon, weight them toward your current level, where you are credible on paper and the conversation is easier. Most people sit in between, two or three slots at current level and the rest reaching forward. Don't spend slots on minor variants of the same title. Operations Manager, Senior Operations Manager and Head of Operations sound distinct but are the same career step at different scales. Use the slots to span seniority, sector framings, or adjacent functions you would genuinely accept, not to maximise hits on one narrow lane. The taxonomy is incomplete in niche sectors; pick the closest standard option and live with it. Employment types. Tick every type you would genuinely accept, including part-time and contract if you would. The match engine appears to read this as a permission rather than a preference, and unchecking a type closes a door. If you would consider part-time in the right role, say so. Locations and remote flag. Specify your real location plus the remote flag if you would take remote work. The advice to limit yourself to two or three locations to avoid looking desperate is editorial commentary, not LinkedIn policy. Set it honestly. Visibility. Recruiters-only versus all members. Both feed the same match engine, so this is a risk-management choice, not a leverage one. Recruiters-only is the right default for anyone currently employed. This is mainly invisible to your current employer - unless they are cynical enough to employ a 3rd party to see who is Open to Work. The public green frame adds reach but exposes your status to your current employer and to a great deal of low-quality outreach, including scams. The wider perception question I cover in #OpenToWork (p47). Industry and current employer link. Your industry classification is pulled from your current employer's LinkedIn Page, not from anything you say. I have seen this fail for candidates whose employer was mis-tagged or whose Page wasn't linked: the classification is wrong and they never know. Check that your current employer's page is linked correctly in your Experience section. This is also the field that hides your Open to Work status from your current employer's recruiters. If the link is missing or wrong, that privacy guarantee fails. Settings drift. Most candidates set these fields once, at the moment of activating Open to Work, and never revisit them. The titles you would accept change as you learn what the market wants. Treat it as a living configuration, not a permanent declaration. The reason this belongs in a chapter on getting found is that it is the hidden half of discoverability. The visible profile gets you into recruiter Boolean searches. The configuration layer gets you into the platform's match engine. How that same profile then has to hold up to a human reading it, and how it serves your outbound approaches too, sits within the wider framework in Through-the-Line (p120). A note on headlines Headlines are a secondary priority in recruiter searches. The Simon Ward experiment from the LinkedIn Live illustrated this directly: searching on a specific job title term as a Job Title filter returned a different, smaller result set than the same term entered as a Keyword. Profiles where that title existed only in the headline - not in any Experience entry - surfaced in the Keyword search and not in the Job Title filter. This is consistent with how LinkedIn documents its own search architecture. The Job Titles filter is defined as targeting job titles members add in the Experience section. The Keywords filter is defined as pulling from the entire profile page. Those are two distinct fields with two distinct search behaviours. Independent cross-checking against platform documentation and practitioner testing found no evidence that it differs by tier. The Job Title filter appears to index Experience title fields consistently across Recruiter Lite, Professional and Corporate. This morning (1st June 2026), I confirmed this using the unique term h34dl1n3, which only appears on one profile in the world - mine. This was on LinkedIn Recruiter Lite and confirmed expert Boolean sourcing practitioner findings, such as from Irina Shamaeva in late 2024. This surfaces h34dl1n3 when it is solely stated in the Headline field when using the secondary filter "Keywords" and the advanced operator "headline:". If you search on the primary filter Job Titles - it does not appear. Where the headline earns its keep is at the next stage. When the term appears in the headline, About or title, the results list renders it in bold. That bolding is what catches a recruiter's eye as they scan - a scanning signal, not a discovery one. It affects whether you get noticed among the results, not whether you appear in them. To summarise: your headline matters for Keyword searches and for how a reader processes your profile once they've clicked through. It does not help you appear in Job Title filter searches unless your title also appears in an Experience entry. A note on Resumes/CVs Storing a CV on LinkedIn and turning on the backend "Share resume data with recruiters" button supports discoverability, through keywords and skills that are aligned with your Recruiter profile. This can boost your return in search results, through compounding within your LinkedIn profile. The substance of this boost isn't quantifiable, given LinkedIn is opaque in how it ranks search results. However, it's a good idea to have your current 'good enough' CV stored, as well as additional documents (up to 4) for different role profiles you are suitable for. A note on Activity Another ranking factor is your activity on LinkedIn. The logic is simple - active job seekers are more likely to be responsive to recruiter enquiries, therefore they prove effectiveness of messaging through Recruiter Licence and are prioritised. While there are conflicting reports of what makes up effective activity, including between practitioner advice and LinkedIn help articles - my advice is simpler: Be responsive and proactive whatever you do on LinkedIn, with the happy byproduct that action boosts your visibility. However Getting found is only the first piece of the puzzle, and when your profile is read, you need to convert interest. This is why you need to get the balance right in how you present your information.

What follows is part 1 in a new series on problem awareness in recruitment. It's also a foundational chapter in my new book A Recruitment AiDE - out on Saturday. The book is a discipline for attracting key hires, combining evidence, frameworks, practical steps and insight. Mainly it's who I am as a recruiter and you can see all of me in my words. I'll share the link to the paperback when it's available. Chapter 3 - An introduction to problem awareness August 2023 / May 2026 (updated for the book) As my partner and I were picking up our keys at Hertz, confident we had a good insurance policy, the counter agent presented us with a problem. Your insurance has an excess and doesn't cover this this and this. You could pay up to £3,000 more in this this and this scenario. 'Really?' Nervous sweat agitated our brows as we anticipated the mad tooting of the Amalfi coast roads, unaware this might even have been a problem. Fortunately, they had a solution of paying their insurance which was more than the cost of the rental. Nice try, mio amico. Maybe next time. Employers could learn a great deal from this interaction, especially when considering the candidate journey. The majority of employers and agencies approach recruitment as if a candidate's first step is to apply. It isn't. Their first step is problem awareness. Problem awareness isn't a new concept. The Problem Agitation Solution copywriting framework has used it for decades. A candidate’s problem may be unemployment, an uncertain job situation, a bad boss, limited career progression or money. These are often people who are actively looking for work and they'll see any role that solves their problem as an opportunity. Many of these are brilliant candidates, who may contact you just because of your vacancy. But if your adverts aren't working, who else should you be appealing to? The problem unaware, the problem ambivalent, and those who accept a compromise. You’ll note I haven’t mentioned the active vs passive candidate debate here. Problem awareness is a better way to look at it. One because situation does not define candidacy. Two because a passive candidate one day may suddenly become aware of the problem of impending redundancy - has their capability changed? Many problem unaware potential candidates are caught in a combination of career inertia, Stockholm Syndrome and Region Beta Paradox. They may well see your role as the right move for the right reason if you engage them in the right way. But your messaging doesn't do this. When your advertising talks about brilliant and unique opportunities, market leaders and innovation, what problems does that address? Besides, every vacancy is these things, according to most adverts, therefore none of them are. And if you assume a public advert is the archetype of your message, it's likely to be just as ineffective everywhere: in your DMs, phone calls, pitches, interviews, job offers. All you need do in your messaging is address the issues and problems the most unaware of candidates have, and that message is effective for every level of problem awareness. Put your candidate's needs first, and this informs everything you do in recruitment. In service of filling your vacancy. It means moving from a system focused on transactions, speed and volume, to one focused on the person you need to employ. A minor shift and one which has a fundamental impact on how you recruit, how you bring people on board, and how you retain them. What are the problems your ideal candidate may have that your vacancy solves? Articulate that and you'll find recruitment simpler. I'm not saying you need to cause nervous sweat to agitate on your candidates' brows. Instead, make them think about their own situation having read or heard your words. One way to do this is adapting the Problem Agitation Solution copywriting framework in your advertising. Problem: insufficient insurance. Agitation: the consequence. Solution: additional insurance. But unlike the mafiosi agents, there's no need for compulsion, simply highlighting the problems your vacancy solves. A start-up CEO once mentioned that, in interviewing candidates, it was surprising how many were frustrated by a lack of training in their roles. That's the candidate problem, right there. 'We invest in your future through a clear path for career development, funding the training you need' - if you can do that. Maybe that wasn't an identified problem previously, but like any writing, once you've identified it as an attraction point, you can use it everywhere, iteratively and appropriately. What other problems? I think back on all those tens of thousands of conversations I've had with candidates. 'I'd love to have a bit of flexibility, even just to see my daughter's nativity play.' We trust you to get the job done how you see fit, which means you'll always have the flexibility for the things that matter at home. 'We were hybrid, now they want us back in the office.' 'The politics here is an organ grinder.' 'I know I'm underpaid, but they don't care.' 'I've hit the ceiling of how I can progress. The FD has been here 300 years and is immortal.' My solution to the first example above is clumsy. How would you solve these other problems? Of course above-the-line (one to many) messaging has to be generic, to an extent. You can form an ideal candidate profile, but your ideal candidate may well be different. So when you enter below-the-line comms (one to one), the best thing to do is to find out their situation, needs, aspirations and potential problems first. Through asking good questions, not pitching. It's one reason I don't personalise much in my outreach. I find personalisation quite cringy, but more importantly I find it wasted space when you make the conversation solely about them. Do that and if your opportunity meets what they need, it's far more likely to be the right move. Problem awareness sits underneath much of the AiDE framework. The Attention dimension depends on naming a problem a reader recognises - or one they are one honest sentence away from recognising. The ikigai dimension depends on understanding what a particular candidate, in a particular moment of their life, is trying to solve. The Definition and Experience dimensions serve readers at different awareness levels differently: a long-term job seeker who has been burned by opaque processes needs a different Experience section than a settled senior professional deciding whether this role is worth a phone call. This chapter is a short introduction to the concept. I've written more fully about problem awareness across my No Problem series on LinkedIn and Substack, and in more depth about career inertia, Stockholm Syndrome and Region Beta Paradox in The Pain Mirror. The articles are here: https://gregwyatt.substack.com/p/tldr

What follows isn't yet a chapter in A Career Breakdown Kit (2026). It will be included in the Summer update, published around July 2026. If you've already bought any version of the book, you are invited to DM me or email for a free digital version of the new edition. You see I've tried to do something quite unusual by publishing a book that will always be current, when updatedness is one of the key elements of any advice in a job search. So much has changed even in the past few months, such as my knowledge of how LinkedIn works when recruiting. The example below is as current as last week, when H graciously agreed I could share her experience, in introducing her for a key hire. An aspect of LinkedIn that even they don't talk about publicly, much like the advanced filters in Recruiter Licence (looking at you "headline:" which actually prioritises your headline, rather than using it as a compounding element for ranking). I think it will sit quite early on in the book, because this single element represents everything I talk about later in developing a through-the-line strategy that accesses all of the jobs market that is unique to you. 12 - The invitation that wasn’t In May 2026 I filled a key hire vacancy that had been carefully designed and specified with the employer. The candidate who secured that role asked me how I had found her. You see, she had been prompted to apply by a LinkedIn notification highlighting I thought she’d be a good fit. A notification, not a DM. This was news to me. What actually happened was that I’d posted a sponsored advert and got on with the rest of the search - when appropriate I advertise, source, network and headhunt. LinkedIn had, in parallel and without any input from me, surfaced the role to her in language that read like a personal pick, in what proved to be a standard feature of sponsored adverts. That gap between what the platform implies and what actually happened is the starting point for this chapter. While this may feel granular this early on the book, it has tactical and strategic value, both for LinkedIn and what it means in your wider search. After all, what actually is LinkedIn? The settings that drive action are doing more work than most jobseekers realise. Some of which override your public profile and can bring opportunity to you. Two mechanisms, one feature LinkedIn calls this Invite to Apply. It’s bundled into sponsored job adverts and operates through two mechanisms. The first is recruiter-driven. When you sponsor a job post, LinkedIn presents you with a list of twenty-five pre-qualified candidates. You can invite them individually or hit one button to invite all twenty-five. Or you can decline them, providing feedback why to help train Hiring Assistant AI. From there you can continue to look through recommended profiles or step away entirely. The second is platform-driven. On the same advert that produced the placement above, my Recruiter dashboard records 298 potential candidates as having been invited to apply, against a Recommended panel of just twenty-five. The dashboard heading reads, in the first person, I invited these top candidates to apply. Given the language commonly used across the dashboards, it is clear the “I” is LinkedIn narrating its own actions back to the recruiter. A second candidate I declined at application stage later told me on the phone she only applied because of the invitation. I’d called her because I recognised she had been artificially invited to apply and wanted to explain what had happened behind the scenes. The telling part is the asymmetry in how the two sides experience the same event. On the candidate side, the notification doesn’t mention LinkedIn as the actor at all; it reads as if a named recruiter from a named company has decided you’re a good fit. This framing is asymmetric by design. The candidate is the audience whose behaviour is being optimised, and the warmth of the framing is what influences action. If the candidate notification said LinkedIn has matched you to a sponsored advert from Bircham Wyatt Recruitment, the response rate would presumably drop. This matters because the behavioural response to a manual invitation and a platform-driven one ought to be different. A human invitation from me is a strong indication that I have read your profile. A platform-distributed invitation within a sponsored advert is closer to a well-targeted advertisement. Both deserve a response if the role interests you, but only one should be read as a vote of confidence. The user interface makes that distinction roughly impossible to detect from inside the notification. So much, so what? This only matters if you’d like a relevant vacancy to be brought to your attention, and in the case of H, it proved an ideal move. So it makes sense to take advantage of the settings you have control over to maximise the odds. What LinkedIn confirms is happening LinkedIn’s Help documentation on Invite to Apply states that the matching uses Recommended Match technology, considering job description, location, required skills, and job title, with a special focus on those marked as #OpenToWork. Five elements, with one of them carrying explicit additional weight. LinkedIn confirms the Open to Work feature lets you set up to five job titles, up to five locations plus a remote-work flag, a start-date preference, employment types, and a visibility choice. These preferences feed into recruiter searches regardless of which visibility mode you choose. The green frame on your profile photo only appears with the public option. The most consequential field here is Job Titles. Drawn from LinkedIn’s pre-populated taxonomy (you can’t invent your own), they make you findable for those titles even if you have never held them. These may not appear anywhere else on your profile. The candidate I placed lists Director of Operations in her Open to Work titles. She is found in Recruiter searches for Director of Operations for this reason, despite that not appearing in her public profile. Most people don’t know this field exists in this form or how to use it. It cuts both ways. A recruiter clicks through, reads the actual profile, and decides whether you’re a credible candidate. The Open to Work titles allow you to be more easily found but the visible profile has to justify further consideration. If the rest of your profile supports the step (experience, skills, recent achievements), the mechanic does its job. If it doesn’t, you’ve surfaced for a role you are less suitable for than the multitude of profiles that have the explicit capability. It's no good saying you're a Book, when you're a DVD. The book buyer will never purchase. In my recent placement, the candidate had “part-time” selected as one of her employment types. My advert stated full-time and part-time in the body of the text. The algorithm appears to have treated her stated availability as a positive signal and surfaced the role to her. I can’t prove that without LinkedIn opening the algorithm, but it is the most parsimonious explanation. This tells us something useful about how the matching engine weights candidate-stated preferences. What this means for how you think about LinkedIn Most jobseekers think of their LinkedIn profile as a public CV: a document that recruiters might find or simply come across. More than this your profile is a live configuration that drives algorithmic surfacing. Sponsored adverts find you, not the other way around, based on fields you set once and forget. Some of those fields override the visible profile entirely. This is aside from recruiters proactively searching for profiles outside of advert responses (LinkedIn profiles that get found). There’s an added dimension too, in the ‘Open to Work’ debate, when an Invited to Apply application comes through, it isn’t visibly Open to Work unless the banner is shown. An inbound and outbound channel at once This changes how you may think a well-specified LinkedIn profile fits into a job search strategy. This is not just a static CV that shows your capability. A profile that brings sponsored adverts to you, without you doing anything, creates inbound opportunity. Roles are recommended to you on the basis of fields you have configured. Set the fields well and the inbound flow happens without further effort, assuming there is a flow to be had. This isn't a guarantee of an ideal job - it's simply configuring your profile, so that if there is an advert that's a close match, you are more likely to see it. But then nothing in a job search is guaranteed. Your profile might be brilliantly optimised to be found when recruiters source using Recruiter Licence - but if the jobs aren't there, the recruiter is careless, or they take unreasonable shortcuts... well that's out of your control, and it doesn't mean you shouldn't get the fundamentals rights. Because, whether for Invited to Apply, a Recruiter search, or another reason, this profile is what people will check to see who you are. Every connection request, every InMail, every comment on a target company’s post, every direct approach to a hiring manager, lands on the same artefact. That’s outbound: your push depends on the profile holding up to inspection when the person you contacted goes to look. This is critically important in a time when hiring processes need to verify applications, and your LinkedIn profile is a couple of clicks away. A recruiter discovering you and the hiring manager you reached out to both read the same document, configured by you. That’s the kind of integration most jobseekers never quite achieve, and it’s why the profile deserves more attention than it typically gets. This is a fragment of a wider strategic framework I cover in Through-the-Line (p120), which sets out how the different channels of a job search combine and feed into each other rather than competing for your time. The LinkedIn profile is the clearest single example I have of an asset that pulls its weight across multiple channels at once. The mechanics, the field-by-field configuration that drives both the inbound matching and the outbound credibility, I cover in LinkedIn profiles that convert (p204). For now, the takeaway is simpler: an invitation from LinkedIn often isn’t one. It’s the platform suggesting a match based on configuration you control, sent to you in language that hides its algorithmic origin. Treat the prompt as useful data about your discoverability, not evidence of human interest. The interest, if it exists, comes later, in a conversation that follows your application, when a read of your profile and CV may be the first time that recruiter has come across you. A note on stored resumes/CVs Storing a CV on LinkedIn and turning on the backend "Share resume data with recruiters" button informs which vacancies are recommended to you, and may support the Invited to Apply mechanism. It's worth making sure yours is up-to-date so that you aren't inadvertently influencing LinkedIn to send you the wrong vacancies - they do that well enough without your help!

Have you looked at a catastrophe and wondered what the sliding doors moment was, when it all went wrong? Would it surprise you if that pivotal moment was actually something everyday, like catching or missing a train? Coined by Ward Cunningham in 1992 to describe the ‘failure to consolidate’, technical debt is the long-term cost shortcuts and poor design decisions in software and technical architecture. Compromise now, pay the piper later. A good example of the potentially catastrophic consequence of technical debt is Enron, which alongside MCI Worldcom’s collapse precipitated Sarbannes-Oxley. Enron’s sprawling systems and opaque reporting structures contributed to an environment where liabilities were obscured and oversight failed. Resulting in a $67 billion fraud. Ouch. Yet, in the moment, using those systems, keeping to those habits, failing to challenge process - these all must have felt like business as usual. How does technical debt apply in recruitment? I define recruitment debt as the long-term consequence of a short-term decision at any step in recruitment. “What technical debt will this decision create?” Here are some examples to set the scene: 1/ “I can’t believe Chris quit! We need to find a replacement asap – let’s advertise using his old job description and see if we can get someone just like him…” Why did Chris quit? Could it be he’d outgrown his old job description? Doesn’t hiring someone at his current level imply they’re already bigger than his old job? What about the job description itself? If it’s old, how does it reflect the current context? With all the achievements Chris made, is the role the same now as it was then? What about the business climate – is the 2026 situation the same as 2022? Yet this is a common scenario. What if, instead, you updated the job description against the current context and the future outcomes you want to achieve? What kind of candidate would that appeal to? Probably not Chris Mk 2, anyway. What’s the recruitment debt of haste? 2/ “I can’t believe Chris quit! What was his salary? Let’s get another Chris in at the same salary!” Why did Chris quit? Might it have been for a higher salary? And if that’s the case, wouldn’t Chris Mk 2 already want that higher salary now? And if you need to offer the salary level old-Chris accepted to take his new job… why didn’t you just pay Chris a salary that meant he didn’t have to leave to achieve it? What else have you lost by not paying Chris his value? 3/ “We can’t afford agencies, so we’ll advertise and go to our network” "Well, Greg, you would say that." There’s no reason not to recruit directly, if you know what you need, have defined it clearly and make an appealing message to potential candidates. Sometimes you can even get away with it by doing none of those. But what kind of access does that give you to the candidate marketplace? Not the applicant marketplace - we all know the problem with volume of automated, AI optimised, non-viable applicants. But applicants are not necessarily viable candidates. And candidates often aren't applicants. If you’re facing a role you consider skill short, one with impact, or one where you aren’t clear on your needs – what are the risks involved? A direct hire, may appear cheaper, but what’s the cost of a vacancy that’s been unfilled for three months financially, culturally, and for opportunity? And if you buy cheap, will you buy twice? What’s the technical debt of: Poor documentation Making assumptions Not having a clear plan Not managing expectations Not focusing on strategic candidate experience Not focusing on post-offer, preboarding and onboarding The cost can be unfilled vacancies, lost income, reduced spending leading to higher cost, missed deadlines, and the wrong hires with all the damage that entails – culture, opportunity, lost market share, you name it. It’s no small thing recruitment debt. And it’s something we should all establish at every step in our process. Regards, Greg P.s. if you prefer opportunity over debt, outcomes over instances, and you're a UK employer that thinks your recruitment should be better - maybe we can talk

What follows is Chapter 14 of A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . I last shared in February when Simon Ward and I did a LinkedIn Live on fake jobs. The title's a little different because we've had a few requests to do a session specifically on scams. While this might seem pedantic, not all fake jobs are scams - such as StudySmarter scraping some of my vacancies last week and hiding them behind a sign up. But scam jobs are more damaging, whether they're doing a bait and switch (apply for a job, get told you need to do a £1k CV rewrite), phishing or others. And they seem to prey on people at their most vulnerable. It's no surprising the only thing separating scam from scum is one letter. You can join us, or view the recording, at this link: https://www.linkedin.com/events/jobhuntingscams-howrealisthedan7460979369981841408/theater/ Come armed with your questions and your example so we can help job seekers avoid these pitfalls. 14 - Fake jobs Picture the scene. You’ve gone through the emotional turmoil of losing your job. Or maybe something’s happened at work to galvanise your decision to make a change. You take a bit of time to figure out what the right next move is. You go through the obvious channels to see what jobs are out there - job boards and other websites which promote jobs. Your first reaction is one of hope and optimism - there seems quite a bit out there - maybe you’ll secure something quickly. If you happen to be reading this, new to a job search, indeed you might. Many people in this market quickly realise that a significant number of adverts do not represent jobs that exist. A double whammy in your emotional rollercoaster of recent weeks. There are a few categories to go through, but the outcome is the same: an advert that, at best, wastes your time. The recruiter perspective When we advertise a job, we allow time for applications to come in before assessing them and starting the interview process. Let’s say the volume is manageable and the outcome is not guaranteed - for example, when a candidate you want to offer decides to take a different job instead. There are no villains in this scenario. It’s common enough that risk is a factor when advertising. If a recruitment process takes six weeks from advert to offer, it can make sense to leave the advert up in case you need more candidates in your pipeline. What about if your process takes three months? Illness, holiday, lack of availability, unexpected deadlines - all can delay a process. There are many tools and suppliers which support a hiring process, one of which is the job board. Often features are developed to support ‘what happens if things go wrong.’ These same tools can lead to issues you may experience: Scraping Scraping is when one website takes content from another and relists it. This can happen as an affiliate / aggregation / commercial arrangement, or to drive traffic to the scraping website. The idea is that this increases eyeballs on the content. In the context of job adverts, you can see this everywhere. Indeed and LinkedIn have both relisted adverts from elsewhere at various times. It's changing because some job boards have now secured high volumes of traffic and want to monetise that traffic while keeping control of the adverts. An indication that this happens is when you click ‘apply now’ and it takes you to another website other than the employer’s. This can happen multiple times. Every time a job is scraped, there can be parsing errors where data from fields are incorrectly transferred. If the original advert is updated, the scraped adverts won’t necessarily be updated. Scraped adverts can give inaccurate or outdated salary, location, or even job information. They can also stay listed when the original has closed without the employer ever knowing about it. This is a form of 'legitimate' scraping intended to benefit the employer through additional applications. There is a second type of scraping. As of 2nd February 2026, one of my vacancies has been scraped, without my permission, by apparently two different organisations. In the first you can only apply by signing up. It lists a salary that I haven't disclosed elsewhere is not commensurate with role responsibilities. If you click on my Company Name, it will tell you I am a large multinational recruiter, employing 51-100 staff. Which is 51-100 more people than I employ, if you don't include me. Let's ignore the AI word soup company profile they've lumped on me for now. Some of my other adverts this website shares are slop summary overviews. Including the same job at 40% to 60% of the salary in the first advert. It's the same for the second, except here the salary invented is well above the hypothetical top budget. Looking deeper at both companies, on Trustpilot, both offer subscription services to access jobs that are hard to cancel. While one offers what appears to be bait and switch CV writing services. Several reviews are from employers who have experienced similar to me, with instances of outdated vacancies that no longer exist. What a sham. Relisting As a feature for advertisers, many job boards allow an automatic relisting of adverts to ‘bring it to the top of the pile.’ These relists can occur throughout the lifespan of an advert. Six weeks in, an advert may appear new, even though a candidate might be about to be given a job offer. The vacancy is live, but your application may not be considered because the process is too far along. This can also happen manually for many reasons. I’ve taken down a job after a couple of weeks to rewrite it based on fine tuning from an interview process. Or when a candidate has declined an offer put forward to them. Or when a vacancy has been put on hiatus. The reason for a manual relisting might be unknowable if it isn’t stated in the advert. It isn’t necessarily for a bad reason. If I were to relist an advert, it would only be because I need more candidates, in which case your application would be read. In many situations relisting can encourage an application that won’t be assessed. Laziness Adverts can remain listed because someone forgot to take them down. This is more likely to happen if there isn’t a cost per advert, such as on an employer website, or if there is an unlimited contract. Evergreen vacancies Some vacancies are perpetually advertised to enable a candidate pipeline for a specialism. There might be no vacancy now, with anticipation of vacancies in future. This is more common within larger employers or a specialist recruitment agency. I spoke with a Talent Acquisition Manager recently about the positive side of an evergreen vacancy. She told me for that vacancy they are always recruiting, having mad eight hires in six months - it's a business as usual vacancy. I would hope this is made clear in the advert. Fishing Sometimes adverts harvest applications on the off chance that a related vacancy comes up. I remember a Cambridge agency that used to scrape employer adverts, list them as their own, then submit those CVs speculatively to the same employers - without a commercial arrangement in place. Make of that what you will. Is there any way to check for fishing? Probe the advertiser for relevant information and what their relationship is with the hiring process. That’s not proof of bad behaviour because of how the contingency model works. When multiple agencies work on one vacancy, it’s common not to provide company information until later in the process. If an agency is fishing only to build a bank of CVs, it’s unlikely they’ll admit to it. Scam jobs It sickens me that advertising and job scams are on the rise. If it doesn’t feel right, if they are asking for payment, if they do a bait and switch (this job isn’t right but here’s our CV writing service or access to a system beating framework), if they ask for ID that can be used for other purposes: beware. These may be in public advert form. They may also be from direct messages - LinkedIn DMs, WhatsApp messages, or phone calls. Often from ‘recruiters’ that appear to work for big corporates, yet have no connections and use a gmail account. One scam last year cloned a legitimate company website and job seekers lost many thousands of pounds. My scraped example above is, in my book, a likely scam too. It’s worth reading through www.jobsaware.co.uk , which is a great resource on scams and employment exploitation. The disappearing act This last category may or may not be a fake job. Here’s the scenario - it looks like a vacancy, it sounds like one in discussion. Perhaps you even interview there on site. You may even go so far as to do a 5 hour presentation at final interview on your 90 day strategy. Then it disappears - either permanently, or it reappears with no further communication from the employer or agency. I hear this happening a lot, particularly at a senior level, in the UK market. There are a few reasons it can happen: Company had budget to recruit; changes in the business, or external factors, mean the vacancy isn’t viable at least immediately Company didn’t have budget to recruit and only realises there is no budget later in the process Company runs an interview process to get free consultancy in the form of a final interview presentation (scumbags) Company dipping a toe in the market to see what’s out there, with no intent to hire Company benchmarking an internal hire for future planning purposes Agency finds out there may be a need for an employer to hire and runs a speculative process that doesn’t get approval I’m sure there are many more reasons this can happen and there isn’t a huge amount you can do, given the appearance is of a real vacancy. You can ask if budget has been approved, research the business on Glassdoor, or speak to alumni. It’s unclear what proportion of job adverts are fake. It is a notable problem, and one which takes attention away from legitimate adverts that can put you closer to employment. For the adverts that are real, Part Three of the book will help you assess which you are best suited for and how to effectively use job boards.

Tomorrow at 1pm BST, Simon Ward and I navigate how to interview, in our LinkedIn Live. You can join us or view the recording here: The Interview Edition . Interviews are a key area of anxiety in a tough job search - for good reason. If you've been struggling to convert applications or enquiries into interviews, the interview itself may seem an achievement. Yet for the employer, it's the 2nd step of many in their assessment process. The assumption that you can get the job if you nail the interview can be a heavy load to carry, so it's only natural that you'll do what you can to actually nail it. Yet, when I look at interview advice online, it's invariably of the J0b s3arch haxxor variety - whether it's killer questions you should ask at the end, the secret tricks of body language or other esoteric arts that seem to make a difference. The irony is though that, even if there is truth to them, they are palliative rather than strategic. Because if that's what you're relying on to change the outcome, you've missed opportunities that are in your control. Foundational opportunities that lead to better outcome, some of which may seem unrelated to how you are on the day, while being central to better performance. What follows is Chapter 46 in A Career Breakdown Kit (2026). You can buy it for an always-current guide to navigating your jobs market - or you can read all the chapters for free here. It's the first in a 4 part series, but next week's Chapter is on the conflicting mess of advice and how you can unpick opinion from steps that helps you. 46 - Interview preparation I see a lot of advice on how to perform well at interview. Typically, it relates to STAR (situation task action results), CARL (context action results learning) or another derivation of this storytelling framework. However this advice typically stands on its own and can set you adrift if you don’t have the right anchor: Preparation. The what and why of interviews The goal of any constructive interview process is to understand How a candidate will perform in a role, What they will be like to work with How likely they are to stick around long enough for the employer to see a suitable return on investment And to compare each candidate against the vacancy requirements to identify the best hire. Every employer has different priorities in assessing these points, different ways of conducting interviews and different strategies for how the process is run. The problem is that it’s hard to tell what to expect when all initial communications are similar. Transparency helps and is a great way to build trust yet few employers do this well. If you were to know in advance that you are one of 25 people being screened by a panel on Teams, how would that affect your preparation compared to being one of 3? Gaining insight into the what and why of any interview process should inform your strategy. Typically, employers won’t include agency interviews as part of their interview process. I’m sure you might. An employer might feel they only do a 2-stage process that is efficient. Your experience might look like this: Application to agency advert Registration with agency Agency screening Qualification call with TA Advisor at employer Numerical and verbal reasoning test 1st interview with hiring manager 2nd interview stage comprising 4 separate calls with stakeholders around the world Psychometrics Quick chat with the CEO Debrief with the hiring manager? A former client who shut up shop in the UK a few years back regularly used to run 7 or 8 interview stages. Is it a surprise that they are a good company to work for? The goals of interviewers A legitimate interview process aims to appoint the most suitable candidate. That isn’t necessarily the goal of any individual interview or interviewer. Goals can be dictated by a number of elements such as number of candidates or differing views of stakeholders. These goals can be anything from: Checking broad suitability before progressing to decision makers Looking for reasons to discount candidates from a volume process Wanting to look credible to higher-ups in who is presented Assessing cultural fit or technical capability Investigating concerns or doubts Confirming a decision Interviews can also move from recruitment and selection to recruitment and elimination the closer you get to the end of a process. This is particularly the case if candidates are close in overall capability - if you can’t find a clear reason to offer one candidate are there any reasons you can discount instead? This is one reason why industry knowledge can become a problem at final stage when it wasn’t earlier. Given there is such a huge variety in interview philosophy, purpose, strategy, process and execution, it can be tempting to second guess everything and overcomplicate your part in it. I’d go the other way and simplify it to what you can control. Interviews are your opportunity to show the employer why you are interested in them, how you will contribute, how you will solve their problems, and what you are like in a professional setting. Put your best foot forward in a way that is professionally authentic and let the rest take care of itself. Why do you interview? Interviews can and should be a two-way process that gives you transparent information and enables an objective decision about whether this vacancy is the right move. Interviews aren’t always though, are they? You might think that getting the job is your goal. The real reason to interview is to establish as early as possible every non-negotiable reason why you shouldn’t take the job. This means you do what you can to be the candidate of choice for the right reasons, and if there are no insurmountable problems at the end of the process you can accept the offer put forward. You want to be able to be the person who says no if you have to rather than have them say no for you. How you can prepare with these in mind There are six types of preparation you can do for an interview. The first two are ongoing preparations that serve every interview process. The rest are mainly application specific. 1. Ensure you portray yourself in a way that has meaning to the interviewer One pitfall in recruitment, whether you are a job seeker or employer, is the valuable information you have trapped in your head that will help the other see you as a viable match. We aren’t mind readers. How can you give meaning about why you are a great candidate? Read through Principles of a Good CV again. Not because you should repeat your CV verbatim. It’s a distillation of your candidacy written for the reader. A reminder of how you can help. You should be an expert on yourself who can draw on your achievements readily. Get a friend to ask you questions on your CV, someone who isn’t an expert in your domain, and see how they react to your answers. While you might hope interviewers have technical insight in your areas of specialism you will inevitably come across people in the process who aren’t. An HR practitioner may be involved as a steward for their culture and to ensure you are interviewed fairly - should you expect them to understand jargon? And how might that work against you? If you are fortunate enough to get interviews regularly, you can treat these as both practice and the real thing. Watch how interviewers respond to what you say and reflect on it afterwards. How can you give better meaning? Interviewing is a skill you can sharpen over the course of your job search. This is prep you should do before any interview. An anchor to your candidacy and a reminder of why you can be great at what you do. 2. Keep abreast of general industry and professional news related to your work For anyone interested in continuous professional development, this should be a natural endeavour. Yet it’s easy to fall into the trap of not doing so when you are between jobs or busy with other priorities. Given how what’s going on in the near-outside world of your profession impacts your profession, I recommend you take some time every week to keep updated. It may even help with interviewing showing the currency of your expertise. 3. The company, its people, its offering, its industry and its market One of the pillars of negotiation is to gain as full an understanding of the situation as possible. If you want to negotiate a successful interview, one where you’re seen as the right candidate, doing this is an advantage. There are many resources available: Their website Their other vacancies Their industry news Media relations YouTube Endole / TechCrunch Local resources. For example, Cambridge Network and Business Weekly (which is about the Cambridge tech scene) LinkedIn to get a feel for their organisational structure LinkedIn for information on the interviewers (why not connect and say hi) LinkedIn for their content, which might give hidden insight to their attitudes LinkedIn for past employees (what can they tell you?) Glassdoor / Indeed / Trustpilot / Google reviews - what do trends say about customer and candidate experiences? Every industry and company will have their own priorities in an interview - keep this in mind, particularly if you’re transitioning into a new domain. Someone with only private sector experience might be surprised by the needs of a civil service recruitment process. Information is often available to help you prepare. 4. Give the interview what it needs Every interview has its own priority some of which will articulate the part you should play. If you want to stay in a legitimate interview process, give the employer what they ask for. You may think presentations, on-site meetings, psychometrics, etc are worthless. If they are non-negotiable for the employer they are a requirement to fulfil. You don’t have to play the game; if you choose to, play to win. 5. How you can deliver on the role requirements Analyse what you can of their role against the achievements you have, problems you’ve solved and outcomes you’ve reached - in reflection of their needs. It’s worth qualifying this in the interview itself to allow you to tailor your answers. While this is role-specific preparation, it is also related to the first point above - the answers are within. 6. Why you want the job, or at least to work at the company I expect most people who’ve been out of work for a while simply want a way to make ends meet. Yet I wouldn’t recommend using this as an answer at an interview. Many employers have an inclination to candidates who have reason to want to work for them specifically. Take time to understand your reasons that relate to the job or company. What about them appeals to you? This is the answer to give. If the only reason you’re applying is because it is a job, how can you truthfully frame your answer to make it about them? ‘I enjoy the role of a especially around ‘ with examples from their job description - might be crude. It is more effective than ‘I need to buy dinner on Friday’ no matter how true that is. Your interest levels can be a deciding factor.