What follows is Chapter 39 of A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . It's 10 months old, so surely the algorithm has moved on right? Indeed, my own content performance has tanked if you compare 2026 to 2025. Around 12 million views of my content last year, while if I extrapolate my year to date performance, it looks like a little shy of 640,000 views. My LinkedIn feed is quieter, yet real life relevant conversations go from strength to strength, many of which stem from my content. Look, I don't love the term, but I am a fan of putting your message out there, across multiple means, so that your most relevant audience might become aware of you. And perhaps your relevant audience is an audience of one, a person who can put you nearer that job. Which is the only algorithm you need. This is a three part series, with part 2 on " Content strategy and philosophy " and part 3 on " A flair post ". Click on the links for the unedited versions on Substack. 39 - Introduction to personal branding Whatever you think of LinkedIn, you shouldn’t overlook its nature as a free marketing platform, where you can build a reputation through the words of your posts, comments and messages. Personal branding is a viable tactic as part of a multi-channel approach to your job search and it can bring opportunities to you. I'll start off by saying I'm not a fan of the term personal branding. It can lead to make-work which can even get in the way of what you should be doing. Writing and using content to create experiences that support a job search is a great idea and calling it personal branding - as a discrete activity - isn’t a bad thing. I expect there are many mediums through which you can build a personal brand. I'll focus on LinkedIn because of how entrenched it is in other job search activities. What a personal brand is For businesspeople the idea is that by building awareness of your personality, lifestyle and what you're promoting, you also build trust. So that when people are ready to buy, they'll buy your products. The brand might be personal. The goal is sales. When you see personal branding on LinkedIn it’s often a business that promotes their services through the account of the author. ‘Here’s my puppy, buy my stuff.’ Take note that the target audience for these advice posts is the businesspeople above. And these posts often seek to part them from their money. Your goals are similar. If there’s a commercial outcome you want, it’s likely a single job, not a throughput of leads. You’ll also see that controversial content gets huge engagement and can also repel readers. If you need a job, what’s the danger of writing overly spicy content? Could a reader make a decision against you based on your words? How much you need any job should inform the experience you want to create for your readers. How it sits in your wider job search Publishing content is about raising awareness and starting conversations with the right people. This can be your profile, written posts, newsletters, (bestselling) career breakdown kits, videos, you name it - anything you can become known for. In many ways the hierarchy of relationships your content appeals to is the same as with networking. Content can be publishing posts, commenting on the posts of others, sending direct messages. I’d argue even your applications and interviews are part of your personal brand. I think of LinkedIn posts like a plumber’s van driving around town. Most of the time you’ll disregard the van unless it cuts you up with noxious fumes. When you have a leaky pipe, you’ll surely take note of their number. It can support an application if a hiring manager decides to surreptitiously stalk your profile. And it can work against you if it suggests problem behaviour. A good balance for content is the poster in my daughters’ primary school from a few years back: THINK. Is it True? Is it Helpful? Is it Inspiring? Is it Necessary? Is it Kind? Achieve those five points and content will rarely work against your job search. Content should be consistent with your wider activity. Which means that everything people (potential employers) experience of you is a complementary and non-contradictory message. Content that contradicts your CV or cover letter may lead to red flags, whether that’s fair or not. Content should be intentional. HOW TO GO viral, and why you shouldn’t Anyone who writes content will enjoy the sweet, sweet flow of dopamine when you see reactions and comments trickle in. Such as that first flair post announcing you are available to help your next employer with examples of your achievements and what you are looking for. Do that and you’ll get loads of engagement. Why haven’t you done it yet? Tag me in and I’ll support you. Or you can do what most people do and say, ‘I’m sorry to announce I’ve lost my job, please help’ and that will get loads too. Because it is relevant and relatable to fellow job seekers, recruiters and sympathisers. Then you feel the soul-crushing defeat of a well-thought-out post, highlighting a problem in your industry, with tumbleweed to follow. Both types of content have a place. That tumbleweed post is relevant and relatable to a niche audience. I try to take a land and expand approach to content - job seeker advice, recruitment advice and stories, ponderings and satire, which I use to tackle topics from different directions. Over the past three years I’ve had between 3m to 11m views of my posts and I’ve gained a bit of business through them too. What I don’t do is try to go viral anymore. Because when I have gone viral with a few 1m impression posts, it’s taken weeks to extricate myself from them and there hasn’t been real benefit. I find my tumbleweed posts start better conversations from lurkers - those that never engage publicly. I promised you I’d show you how to go viral. Here you go. Relevance + relatability + readability + entitlement. Maybe add a selfie. If that seems too simple, search for this sentence on LinkedIn: “An employee asked me if he can WORK from HOME permanently.” You’ll need to use the double speech mark to search on the phrase, and rank by Posts. ‘Does it really work?’ asked Charles. I told him to try it as an experiment. He rarely got more than a few hundred impressions per post. 170,000 impressions, 2,000 reactions. Pretty viral for a first timer. It is the wrong path. What do these posts actually say? Who are they aimed at? And if they don’t appeal to people who can help you reach your objective, what’s the point? 

I was tempted to use another Tom Cruise AI image for this article, but his hands ended up looking like feet, which wasn't a true representation of him. Probably not fair to use AI in this way either, stealing copyrighted material without permission. And so I use this AI 'stock image' instead, which is probably also highly unethical, but feels more suitable and sufficient . Anyway here's an article about why the same principles are crucial for good recruitment: ‘True and Fair’ is an accountancy concept that lies at the heart of reporting, and can be applied effectively in recruitment. Its meaning is that any financial statement made about a company should accurately and completely represent its financial position and performance. The role of auditing is to confirm that documentation meets this definition. Do so and everyone knows what they are dealing with. HMRC, shareholders, customers, suppliers, employees – useful, and in many cases necessary, to have access to a true and fair view of a company’s accounts. Can something be true and not fair? In 2001, Enron went bust, a huge scandal with real-life repercussions that led to new legislation in the US. Their accounts were true, in that they conformed with the required laws and standards. However they had an incredibly complex reporting structure which made it impossible to see the overwhelming debt they had. Poof! Bye-bye a $100bn company when this all came out in the wash. How about fair but not true? This can happen if a situation is described which gives a fair picture but lacks accuracy. An example here could be the UK politician who HMRC deemed behaved fairly but made errors in his tax reporting. Only a few million quid plus penalty. What types of recruitment documentation does this apply to? Three key ones that spring to mind (although there’s no reason it can’t be applied everywhere): The job description. The job advertisement. The CV. If these three documents were always a true and fair representation of either a job or a candidate, you’d interview and hire better candidates who stick around longer. With the caveat that these documents should also be ‘suitable and sufficient’, if you remember last week's edition. Documents are the first step in a recruitment process, relating to a decision to apply and the decision to interview. Is it not the case, that the second most common complaint in recruitment is “not what we expected”? Therefore, if we nipped this complaint in the bud, with true and fair documentation, wouldn’t life be better for everyone in the recruitment process? What does true and fair mean in recruitment documentation? I think it has to cover three points. 1/ factually correct 2/ shows context suitably 3/ describes sufficiently An immediate objection might be that job descriptions are always true and fair, but I’d argue this is actually rarely the case. If you recruit for a new role, do you audit your job description against the current context? If you have a generic job family description does it show the specific day-to-day duties of a role? Have things changed in the current role that makes it different to the last time you recruited? A common scenario in recruitment is that Greg resigns, and the hiring manager says “we’d love someone just like Greg”. Yet if Greg resigned, wouldn’t someone just like Greg be at risk of resigning for the same reasons in future? Would now-Greg have applied for the same role that then-Greg applied for? Which definition of Greg is the true and fair one you’d hire? It feels strange writing my name like this. There are lots of different situations in which a job description that was true and fair a few years ago is no longer so. The only way to ensure it is true and fair, is to audit documentation prior to going live. You may think a fully representative and accurate contextual analysis is too time-consuming for most vacancies, especially where it doesn’t actually matter if there is some inaccuracy. “Oh yeah, that’s not relevant anymore”. But if you have a key hire that can make a difference in your business, ‘true and fair’ should be the starting point, each and every time. If you have a systematic process that finds truth and fairness, you’ll see the benefit of applying the same across any vacancy – for the reason that the time invested at the outset is offset by interviewing fewer unsuitable candidates and wasting less time and resources overall. And what should be the more important reason of better recruitment outcomes. For any project I take on, this is the first step – getting the documentation in order. Get it right and everything flows from there. It’s a key reason behind my nearly 100% fill rate. It’s also one of the reasons my average tenure is over 4 years for key hires. These achievements don’t come down to chance. They come from my process. If you've forgotten why suitability and sufficiency is the other pillar, here's an example that isn't suitable: Nineteen experiential bullet points might be true and fair but will also encourage ideal candidates to run away screaming. See you next time. Regards, Greg p.s. While you are here, if you like the idea of improving how you recruit, lack capacity or need better candidates, and are curious how I can help, these are my services: - commercial, operational and technical leadership recruitment (available for no more than two vacancies) - manage part or all of your recruitment on an individually designed basis for one client. This can be a large as end-to-end delivery of a programme of vacancies, or as small as writing one job advert for a key hire- recruitment strategy setting - outplacement support

What follows it Chapter 8 in A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . Like a lot of the chapters it's both too long and not long enough. Too long because who wants to read 9 pages of navel gazing on the recruitment industry. Not long enough because one of the most helpful things you can do at the start of a job search is to understand what you are dealing with, and the rules of the game. So this might have provided even more detail to cover the specific categories of recruiters you might build relationships with. I've tried to find a balance that makes you think differently. When you see the word 'recruiter' you might have an expectation of how they'll help you, but that word and it's brothers and sisters can be so wide ranging as to mean nothing. It's regrettable that I often get replies from job seekers that show annoyance that I can't help them directly. "Did you look at my profile - it's what you do?" sort of thing. So this may be a valuable read in showing what candidates are for recruiters, the different ways in which we work, how we are often held back by the system we work in, and how this might inform your strategy. And if you still have questions, you can join me and Simon Ward on Tuesday 24th at 1pm GMT for our LinkedIn Live on this subject. I'll include the link here on this article when it's ready. 8 - How recruiters work This chapter illustrates standard recruiter working practices and why they lead to some of the experiences commonly talked about among job seekers. This is about managing your expectations, by lifting the curtain on recruitment. I’ll use broad terms where applicable and a steer on how others may use more obscure terminology. What a candidate is If you jump on any recruiter website, I’m pretty sure the vast majority will say something along these lines: ‘We’re disrupting the market with better candidate experience.’ As well as a lot of promises of being different in a way that looks much the same as everyone else. And yet your experiences will differ wildly. Part of this may be generic marketing. Based on many discussions with fellow recruiters, my belief is that the industry definition is different to a job seeker’s definition. Many hiring processes see candidates as an employable person being considered for a job. I use this terminology myself. For example, a job advert may have 99 applications, while only 5 are potential candidates - because they meet the criteria of the role and the remaining applicants don’t. The nuance of this definition is that the more cynical the process, the worse the memory retention of which candidates were assessed. Some companies may have seen you as a candidate at 2nd stage interview, then completely forget about you if they’ve discounted you from the process - you are no longer a candidate. Using this definition, many recruiters think they give a first class of candidate experience because they only relate it to the people they think of as candidates. This is equally true of someone who treats everyone decently and those who only treat people they place into jobs decently. On the other hand, pretty much anyone who looks at new employment sees themselves as a candidate for that employment. Assuming you are accountable, you wouldn’t apply for any job you didn’t see yourself as suitable for. Even if you chose not to apply, it’s not necessarily because you didn’t see yourself as a candidate. It may be that even though you are a suitable candidate for that vacancy, your experience of the process made you choose to step away - which might be as simple as not liking the advert or email you read. This last point relates to the phenomenon of candidate resentment (p89). There’s another industry nuance to the candidate definition. In the same way you may have heard about the hidden jobs market, recruiters talk about the passive candidate market: ‘80% of candidates aren’t looking for a job, and these are the best candidates.’ Not my words, btw. A passive opportunity (p160) explores why this happens and how you can use the same principles to improve your odds. If you think it odd that I’ve started ‘How recruiters work’ with a discussion on candidates, it’s because our relationship with our candidates is a sign of how we work with employers. Without placing candidates in one form or another, most recruiters wouldn’t make any money. It is deeply integrated into how we work. Different agency recruitment models Typically, agency fees come from the successful placement of staff irrespective of the nature of work. The fee is often a percentage of salary and in most situations is budgeted separately from the new employee's pay. The overall steps recruiters often work to are these: Receive job description from employer Advertise job (on a job board or through outreach like DMs and calls) Find and submit qualified candidates Arrange interviews Coordinate offer process The differentiators are the quality of information at each step and how rigorously they are executed. For example, my requirement for recruiting a vacancy is a full consultation on the company, vacancy, context and culture, which I summarise in writing in a detailed candidate pack. Where there are issues, I advise the employer on how we can overcome them. There are variations around this type of process. Some agencies may rely more on a video presentation, others may ‘sell in’ candidates. Some agencies will use psychometrics or other types of assessments. Some will meet all candidates, some won't even talk to them. The general steps have a lot of crossovers. Contingency The most popular recruitment model is akin to 'no win, no fee'. In the UK, it’s estimated that the average fill rate is between 20% and 33%. This is a range from several sources, although it’s next to impossible to pinpoint accurately. At the lower end, for every vacancy filled, that recruiter won’t fill four vacancies. Therefore, their fee implicitly accounts for unfulfilled work. The reason it’s low is that most vacancies provided to recruiters are given on a ‘multi-agency’ basis and even in competition with the employer themselves. A lot of contingency recruitment is first past the post, in that a submitted CV is seen to be owned by the agency which submitted it first. Let’s say Joe Recruiter has to fill 3 vacancies a month to hit target. At a 20% fill rate, he works on 15 vacancies a month. You can see how this might impact quality of service if there are multiple different candidates for each role. And if the race is on to get CVs over as quickly as possible. This can result bad behaviours like refusing to divulge company information (for fear of divulging competitor secrets) to trying to find out who you are interviewing with (which may be to use them as leads). And classics like ghosting and poor responsiveness. It isn’t necessarily the case. There are some great contingency recruiters out there who work closely with employers, often with exclusivity. When I was a pure contingency recruiter, my fill rate varied between 50% and 70% annually. It’s higher consistently now, though I don’t work contingently anymore. Other models The traditional counterpoint to contingency is retained where we receive a portion of a fee up front to service a vacancy. This requires exclusivity and better access to hiring information. Retained isn’t intrinsically better than contingency - both have their issues, challenges and opportunities. It can lead to mutual obligation from the employer while allowing a more quality focused approach to candidate work, resulting in a better experience for everyone. A different approach is RPO (recruitment process outsourcing ) whereby a third party manages recruitment for the employer. Over the past few years, we’ve seen other models come through, from subscription types (bizarrely called Recruitment as a Service ), to embedded / insourced / fractional (acting as an in-house recruitment function as a third party) to Uber-style apps. Different types of agency recruiter There are as many types of agency recruiter as there are recruitment models. What complicates matters is that as an industry we sometimes try to hide what we do by clever names. Am I a boutique headhunter or am I a recruiter? Or a Talent Ecosystem Intelligence Officer? I’m proud to be a recruiter who wears my process on my sleeve. Whatever we term ourselves the nature of an agency will inform whether they might help you: Temps / interim Where you sign up for temporary work on an hourly or daily rate employed through a contract for service. While Interim recruitment also relates to temporary projects it is quite different. Interims have a skills set a traditional employee doesn’t have. They provide a service through their limited company, held outside of IR35 (off-payroll working regulations). The agency will make money on a margin / markup based on your pay. Permanent An agency that works mainly on permanent vacancies typically paid on filling a job, by the employer. Many agencies offer both. Specialist These are typically recruitment agencies that specialise in a domain. This could be a broad industry like manufacturing or professional services, or a market vertical like marketing or HR. It doesn’t necessarily mean they have specialist knowledge of the roles they recruit, although this can be the case. It means more that they regularly recruit a specific type of role. Generalist These won’t have one specialty and may work closer with certain employers across a variety of vacancies. They might be pure scattergun. You may find them excellent for the one vacancy you are in discussion for, yet that’s the only time they’ll have something for you. Headhunter This can mean many things. The idea is that headhunters access passive candidates who don’t apply for jobs. Although many use the same tools other recruiters do. Some won’t advertise at all. Others might advertise alongside other activities. The crux of the message for employers is that they have a capability beyond what employers can achieve themselves, which can be true. Executive Search Typically, this works on a retained basis for board level appointments. It’s rare to see these roles advertised. They use many of the same proactive channels others do and may cultivate a specific network of contacts who are go-to candidates. Some are so niche they may not go outside of their network. And many more It doesn’t matter so much how a recruiter works, more that they can be a conduit to your next job. Two points come from the sections above: 1/ that candidate experience is hard to deliver consistently when dealing with the volume of vacancies you see in a contingency model, and takes intent in other models, 2/ that agencies are paid to fill jobs, not explicitly to help find people jobs. That second point can cause much frustration if you assume it’s the job of a recruiter to help you find a role, especially when our marketing talks about how we help candidates. Recruitment is often a short-term business. It’s rare that you’ll see recruiters cultivate long-term relationships with job seekers if they can’t help you directly. This is ironic, considering many job seekers will reciprocate the help they’ve received with people they’ve built trust with. Doubly ironic, when it’s someone with hiring authority that gets radio silence from previous suppliers. It’s common to hear of job seekers blacklisting agencies for poor service - frustrating, demoralising and occasionally crushing to be on the end of bad experience. Don’t let a bad process get in the way of what might be good employment. This is as true at the employer end as with agencies. With agencies, the onus is often on winning the next vacancy, rather than giving service to people who may or may not be candidates. Their client may not even know how those agencies work with candidates. These same agencies may have further vacancies you could be seen as a good candidate for with different employers. At the same time, many hiring managers have never been trained on recruitment or interviewing, while being busy at work. This can lead to a poor experience as a candidate compared with what they would be like to work with. The internal recruiter These are recruiters employed directly by the employer to fulfil their recruitment. Often these are called Talent Acquisition Managers, Internal Recruiter, or Recruitment Manager. More than filling vacancies, they manage the system of recruitment. There are many specialist domains within talent acquisition including workforce planning, retention, enablement, marketing and branding. It’s a field that is overwhelmed by a large number of redundancies and where internal recruiters are often overburdened. When working on vacancies, the priority is to fill them. This can lead to frustration if you ask corporate recruiters, ‘Do you have any jobs I might be suitable for?’ Whether or not there is an argument that they could help you, it’s more effective to do the work yourself. Research the business areas they recruit for and ask directly ‘could you tell me who is the best contact for ‘ or ‘when are you likely to recruit for these roles?’ Help them help you. Takeaways There’s much to talk about on this subject and I’ve no doubt I’ve missed glaringly obvious topics. Equally, it’s easy to oversimplify what is a huge and complex industry. It’s worth learning the rules of the recruitment game when you can. Be curious and ask questions. While we should be criticised for poor behaviour, if you don’t understand why a recruiter works in a certain way, please don’t assume it’s for bad reason. Recruitment is a stressful job at the best of times. This can lead to thick skin and callous behaviour. It’s not an excuse, more a symptom of the system we all work in. 

How do you argue at people? For any assertion I make, I try to achieve two thresholds. Is it true and fair? Is it suitable and sufficient? You may have picked up on these, if you've followed my content, but they aren't just hyperbole. They're a fundamental way in which I think, because I hate ambiguity. I'll explain why and how in the next two editions of Anti Recruitment: February 2023 ‘Suitable and sufficient’ is a health and safety definition that can and should be adapted into recruitment. In the UK, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) owns and enforces the majority of legislation around ensuring people go home in the same condition they arrived. And their health too. Employers must, as a minimum, take care in understanding the risks their people face at work and put in place measures to prevent any issue covered by legislation. Relevant risks should be assessed and appropriately documented. This risk assessment is at the heart of health and safety and is a formal document that needs to meet the definitions of ‘suitable and sufficient’. The HSE declares: “The law states that a risk assessment must be 'suitable and sufficient', ie it should show that: a proper check was made you asked who might be affected you dealt with all the obvious significant risks, taking into account the number of people who could be involved the precautions are reasonable, and the remaining risk is low you involved your workers or their representatives in the process The level of detail in a risk assessment should be proportionate to the risk and appropriate to the nature of the work. Insignificant risks can usually be ignored, as can risks arising from routine activities associated with life in general, unless the work activity compounds or significantly alters those risks. Your risk assessment should only include what you could reasonably be expected to know - you are not expected to anticipate unforeseeable risks.” Safety glasses might be a suitable measure when working with chemicals – no one wants corrosive chemicals splashing in their eyes. But it isn’t sufficient if, instead, you splashed the same chemicals on your hand. While a full body suit with a face mask might be sufficient, they may not be suitable for long periods of time, such as our utterly exhausted Doctors working with Covid patients. Checking both directions is a suitable and sufficient dynamic risk assessment for crossing the road. Isn’t it interesting how balanced and practical this definition is, rather than fear-mongering? The greater the risk the more importance you place on getting it right, first time. You can apply this definition word for word in replacing ‘risk assessment’ with ‘job description’, and the spirit of it to every other step in a recruitment process. The crux of it is to understand the shape and impact of any step in your process and ensure it is both suitable and sufficient. In recruitment, the ‘greater the risk’ typically relates to level of seniority, opportunity for transformation, or consequence of things going wrong. Or it might be legally non-compliant processes that put you at risk. Conversely, ‘low risk’ recruitment is proportionate. If roles are easy to fill and it doesn’t really matter who gets them, as is the case in transactional vacancies, your level of care can be more generic and commoditised. You probably don’t need to wear safety glasses at interview – it’s a negligible risk that they are a spitter. Is a fifth technical interview really suitable for a mid-level role? Are references sufficient testimony to employability? Is your interview confirmation suitable and sufficient? Some of these are role-specific, and some are systemic recruitment good practice. What a great way to differentiate how you can look at different types of roles, different steps in your process, and how many resources you should invest to get them fit for purpose. Spending 120 hours on a retained multichannel campaign for an Administrator is not suitable. It’s certainly way more than sufficient too – maximum overkill! I’d find you a damned good administrator, to be fair. And it wouldn’t take me 120 hours. Or be that expensive. Okay, bad example. Sticking a copypasta job advert up for a Chief Operating Officer is neither suitable nor sufficient, with transformational risk if you get it wrong. Working with a recruiter when you could be promoting internally can be sufficient and unsuitable. Getting both suitability and sufficiency right is the best way to make your recruitment ship shape. Suitable and sufficient ensures your processes and documentation are fit for purpose in managing your internal risk with new and existing employees. Next week, I'll explain how and why True and fair ensures documentation is fit for purpose for third parties – your candidates, agencies, or hiring managers. A true and fair approach that is suitable and sufficient will give you the best likelihood of a good outcome. Thanks for reading. Regards, Greg 

Last week I signed up to the Claude Pro plan to look at a couple of opportunities to improve how I work. If you haven't tried it, I'd recommend investing in at least a month. This version of Claude has really moved on, even in the past 6 months. If you happen to subscribe to my recruitment newsletter, you'll already have seen my Job Advert review tool. Feedback on it so far is excellent, and it already achieves what I set out to do - show the employer where their adverts are missing the mark, red flags, missed opportunities, and how they can flip their content to be focused on the reader, rather than their own needs. You're welcome to try it, if you're curious. You probably aren't recruiting, but if there's an advert you like the look of, send it over and you'll be able to see under the hood of what employers should consider. If you're wondering why I've kicked off a "Free CV Audit Tool" newsletter on a seemingly different tool, it's because they come from the same place. Adverts struggle in the same way CVs do, and the solutions are the same. I recommend that employers spend more time understanding the challenges job seekers have too. The second tool has the same purpose for CVs. I've used A Career Breakdown Kit and my free CV template/guide as the rules of play, and the tool is designed to make you think about how you best position yourself for your ideal job. Mainly it focuses on putting the reader first, showing context, applicable skills and achievements. You might think you have that nailed already, but so do the 95% of the population that are relying on CVs that don't hit the mark. Something I can highlight based on the high volumes of CVs I see, and feedback from peers. There are two ironies with this tool. One is that three people have commented how human the feedback is. Yet, other than being trained on my voice from my content, it's entirely automated. The other is that the reports implicitly 'optimise for the ATS' that sucker punch line that pervades everyone's dreams. It's implicit because the report focuses on human readers and what they need to see you as a viable candidate. Given at some point your CV will get reviewed by people, this must be a priority. And because a CV that is effective for humans, and which parses correctly is correctly administered by any applicant tracking system. To parse correctly: simple formatting, no images, no columns, no tables, but only for older systems, The other feedback I've had is that it's quite different to other such tools my experimentees have tried. Pretty much every AI tool optimises a CV against a document, something I recommend not to do (this post also has the CV template included). Instead you must look inwards, to best show how you, individually, can help solve the problems of the vacancy you are most suited to. What I like most about both these tools is that it circumvents the "well, you would say that" argument, which assumes I'm trying to sell something, even if it's just virtue. Because all you need do is DM me here, or email greg.wyatt@bwrecruitment.co.uk , with your CV or advert, and I'll reply with a report that hasn't been written or edited by me directly. As for the opportunity they give me. I will launch the advert tool as a commercial product, including consulting, if I can get it to a suitable, consistent output. The CV tool will always be free. The quality of feedback it gives, means I can help more people in less time, which is wonderful. Drop me a line if you want to try either out.  Greg p.s. no LinkedIn Live this week. Simon and I are back on Tuesday 24th at 1pm GMT

What follows is Chapter 16 of A Career Breakdown Kit (2026). In many ways it's a snapshot of the whole book, because it's about cutting through assumption and making informed decisions. While also showing why understanding how recruitment works can improve the steps you take. Recruitment mirrors, or more accurately inverts, a job search for the same role, so the lessons from one are most always applicable to the other. 'Candidate resentment' is a key opportunity for mindful employers to improve how they engage the market. It's effective because we know people will make a stand, even if it hurts their prospects, and assume bad behaviour, even when it doesn't exist in that instance. It's something you should be mindful of when deciding on any step in your job search, in case your decision holds you back: 16 - About candidate resentment Over the past few years, a phenomenon has come to the fore in recruitment - candidate resentment. It’s the notion that the experiences candidates have of a recruitment process, and of their wider job search, informs their actions. Some examples: You’ve been lowballed a few times having applied for a job that advertised £competitive salary. Therefore, you won’t waste your time by doing so again ‘Hitting the ground running’, ‘a resilient approach’, ‘able to cope with ambiguity’ are red flags in a job advert An interviewer who asks silly questions shows a dodgy employer A protracted interview process shows a company that can’t make decisions ‘I will never apply to a company that uses Workday!!!!!!?!!!! 1!’ A high number of visible applications makes it pointless to apply for an advert. On an individual basis, employers won’t see this as a big deal, especially if they’ve filled the vacancy. However, we live in a connected society where experiences are shared widely, which can create a wave of resentment. Employers would do well to recognise this phenomenon and deliver a process that does the opposite. This would stand out for candidates and reduce the possibility of candidates stepping away from a recruitment process. The sale of hope Candidate resentment is driven by strong emotion and common experience - something that’s easy to take advantage of by the cynical. How often have you read a promotional message, which said something along the lines of: How annoying is it when you’ve spent two hours applying for a job and the ATS rejects you instantly? ATS won’t even look at you if your CV / resume isn’t compliant! Buy my ATS compliance writing service Apply for 100 jobs with no replies? Try the hidden jobs market! Buy my services and I’ll show you the way Worse, these messages feel true and are widely spread, irrespective of any basis in fact. And this resentment informs your actions. Actions which may cut your nose off to spite your face. What employers do Recruitment is a rare function that has no continuing professional development and little in the way of best practice to guide employers. Because there isn’t a north star for the profession, employers often make it up as they go. We don’t have the equivalent of CIMA, ACCA, CIPD, CIPS or any other chartered body in the UK. We’re an industry that looks at what others do because starting from first principles is hard. If others have a suboptimal process, it’s likely we do too. It’s one reason why ChatGPT type tools have become so popular - they allow adverts to do exactly the same as everyone else quicker, and perhaps more engagingly. Even if it does nothing to help those adverts sell or stand out. Where there is a formalised approach, it’s typically because recruitment is contained in another function - such as within HR or Administration, or in the role of a founder. These are functions which have other priorities, leading to recruitment being seen as an administrative burden rather than a commercial opportunity. When times are busy, it’s easy to either do recruitment habitually (rather than intentionally) or fit it in where you can (rather than strategically). Of course, some employers are rubbish at recruitment in the same way they are rubbish at employment. It’s easy to assume that anyone who gives a poor experience in recruitment will be that kind of employer. This isn’t true. Herein lies the problem with candidate resentment, for you, as a job seeker, in a job search that has no doubt created much resentment. I speak to many employers who do exactly the things people resent yet are great employers for the right people. Sometimes £competitive salary is stated due to a compensation philosophy that is generous but not fixed. Perhaps not ideal, but not necessarily a lowball. Some use Workday because of its Accounting and HR functions with the ATS being a bolt on. And so on. Real life has nuance that socials don’t show - because nuance reduces engagement. You are less likely to read them, and dopamine hungry writers are less likely to write them. And you? Assume nothing. Where possible, gain insight. A bad hiring step might hide a great employer. If you find yourself reacting emotionally to something on socials - stop, breathe and look at it logically. Look for evidence and always ask ‘where is the money?’ The answer to that question may show why a post was written. Do people want to be popular as hero employers / recruiters / career coaches? Or do they have something to say that’s helpful? Treat low effort processes reciprocally and invest your energy in the ones that matter. But you also want to put yourself in a position where you have the best chance of saying no, rather than the employer doing that for you. You may not like £competitive salary - you can always apply and state your salary expectation. Take note of the application (in case they contact you) and move on. In some ways resentment is helpful, even healthy - it can protect, it can help you cope, it can help you heal, it can flag danger to others. Take care not to let it define how you act or who you are. 

A new challenge in any sort of recruitment is that you must now assume your candidates will think: is this fake is this a scam are there any humans at the other end? Whether you promote your recruitment publicly on a job board or contact someone by phone, email, voice note, DM, you need to consider this. Okay, semaphore and carrier pigeons remain safe. While this challenge is new, the answers are not, and often cater to candidate resentment through candour, respect and appropriate transparency - better messaging that's unrelated to automation. You can find out exactly what works best for your audience, by going to Gemba. Talk the walk February 2023 Gemba is Japanese for ‘the actual place’. Coined by Toyota and closely linked to ‘Genchi Genbutsu’, a phrase I regularly throw at my children – ‘see for yourself!’ Clearly, Toyota doesn’t like arguing with people whose strong views are based on assumptions, although my issues relate mainly to a lack of chocolate in the snack cupboard. Gemba is a powerful concept because it gives managers access to the actual work and challenges that are inherent to their projects, and therefore where they can find efficiency and improve productivity. While linking the coal face to leadership in a way that influences strategy. Although Toyota’s Gemba is a car factory floor, it’s been commonly adopted across industries and relates to anywhere where the work is done and value created. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre applied Gemba to reduce Hospital Acquired Infections, applying root cause analysis to patient rooms to identify the cause of these infections. It turned out to be poorly cleaned medical equipment. Better cleaning meant fewer infections to treat. Would the alternative have been to accept the infections and invest in better treatment? Retail stores, construction sites, and even prisons – Gemba is applicable in any working environment. I’ve applied Genchi Genbutsu and Gemba throughout my recruitment career, learning through the experiences of candidates and hiring processes. In recruitment, there are many types of Gemba. The one that springs to mind is your hiring team – whether you are an agency, TA, HR or hiring lead. This type of Gemba is individualistic, and you can go have a chat with your team right now, listen to them, and find pragmatic areas for improvement. However, I’m more interested in systemic improvement, for the purpose of this email, and there are a few types of Gemba that we can all benefit from, two of which I’ve already mentioned. Any aspect of a hiring system that creates an experience has a Gemba. By working with candidates and employers (hiring managers and in partnership with HR / TA), I’ve learnt many strategic, tactical and execution improvements from finding solutions to common problems. The most helpful Gemba in recent memory is my work with executive job seekers since the pandemic. Around 800 conversations with people I will rarely be able to help directly, but who have given me much insight into the common issues job seekers face outside of my hiring process. It’s startling how much you can learn by talking to people in the ‘ecosystem’ who aren’t customers. It’s something I’d recommend any recruiter do and has the added benefit of helping others. You may think out-of-sight, out-of-mind, job seekers aren’t at your coal face; however, they regularly interact with the coal face of the recruitment industry in unsuccessfully looking for work. Their pain points are valuable areas of insight we can take advantage of, to create better experiences all around. Go to your Gemba and you will find areas you can improve. (Note, March 2026: if you've followed this newsletter through the AiDE framework, you'll already have seen some of these improvements in practice. Such as Warts and All , Walk a Mile , and Trust Me . All of the series is in some way are built on lessons from the Gemba) What can you learn about the experiences your customers have of your hiring process? For an employer, this will be every touchpoint in your recruitment process – from your adverts and ATS, to your interviews and interview confirmations, to your offer and rejection process, and everything else. You may think you have an excellent process, but what do your customers think? Have you tried applying through your own ATS as a dummy candidate? What did that feel like? How about your own experiences with your recruitment process? If you’re having a poor experience with your agency suppliers, what root cause analysis have you done to find out the real reasons? Or are you stuck in a Region Beta paradox, where things aren’t quite bad enough to make a change, even though your experience is shoddy enough to complain about? There’s a simple way to find out about which experiences can lead to improvement – talk to the people that have them. And not just new starters delighted to be in a new role. What about those you rejected? Or those that never applied… what if you could find out why, and apply that learning to make your process more attractive? (Answers to which I found in my exec job seeker calls) I’d argue if you build your recruitment process from your Gemba it will allow you a uniquely fit-for-purpose approach for your hiring process. Invest in systems, technology, tools and processes based on the Gemba, rather than what others may tell you that you need. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t talk to good consultants who can help you overcome the problems you don’t know you don’t know. Just that you should expect their consultation to be built on your Gemba, rather than the sale of a solution for the solution’s sake. Not so easy if you aren’t an employer that has the agency to make change. The next edition is on how Stockholm Syndrome and Region Beta paradox intersect to explain candidate behaviour.  Thanks for reading. Greg

This might seem a weird chapter. Surely you look at a job advert, maybe even read it, then decide to apply or not? Yet a job advert is more than just what's presented on a job board. It's a microcosm of everything in recruitment, including everything wrong, and you can learn a lot about what to expect in your job search by the least intentional of words. And when you do read a job advert, in its entirety, there are only two questions you should ask of it: Am I qualified? Should I be interested? It's somewhat odd that 99% of job adverts don't actually try and help you answer that. But maybe that's why employers say job adverts don't work. And why you don't think they do either. While you're here, why not check out A Career Breakdown Kit in its entirety? This series of always free chapters is an advert, after all. But it was never supposed to be an easy book to read, just accessible and comprehensive. I expect most readers are over 50, ND, or other marginalised demographics, considering these will likely be the longest out of work in our 'diverse and inclusive' world. If you're 'in demand' though, you'll probably click apply and wonder what the fuss was about. 44 - How to experience a job advert This chapter is about job adverts, what they are and aren’t, how you might experience them, how they might inform your decisions and your responses. I say experience rather than read because not all adverts are written or read. What’s a job advert? A job advert is the first step in a multichannel commercial approach to filling a vacancy. It’s the inverse of your job search taking a multichannel, through-the-line approach - we go where the candidates are. It’s the first step because it’s the first thing you experience of that vacancy irrespective of whether it’s a: Listing on a job board A post on social media A DM from a recruiter A phone call from a hiring process A referral Or any other means by which you become aware of a vacancy Each of these is a marketing or sales channel that may result in a candidate's application. It’s regrettable employers don’t necessarily see it this way because of the transactional nature of much recruitment process. They think it’s sticking a job posting up on LinkedIn. Employers forget that when you experience such an advert you first make the choice to entertain that advert rather than a yes or no to ‘Should I apply?’ Indeed much advertising neglects the psychology of a job move, which principally relates to problem awareness. How you experience an advert, what may encourage you to progress an enquiry and what you are prepared to put up with in the process relate to your situation and the problems you currently face. Are you out of work, needing any job to pay the bills? Are you in work, desperate to escape a toxic culture? Are you gainfully employed yet wouldn’t mind a bit more flexibility to pick the children up from school? Are you apparently smashing it, with that missing something you don’t even know about, and the right vacancy might improve your lot? And everything in between. The answer to these questions informs your experience of any advert. Because many employers don’t consider what informs an experience and think people would be lucky to work there, it’s rare that more than the minimum acceptable skill will be applied to an advert. As discussed in Better use of job boards, the emphasis is on more rather than better. It’s often thought that ‘if we can reach more candidates, we might fill the job.’ Rather than appeal to the right people for the right reasons. And so we are in a market where an advert attracts hundreds if not thousands of applications, most of whom are wholly unsuitable. What isn’t a job advert? A job advert isn’t a fake job, although many of these are listed. They aren’t Job Descriptions either - the next chapter explains why this distinction is important. While you may spend much time perusing job boards and talking with fellow job seekers, reading their posts on LinkedIn - I’d expect most employers have little awareness outside of their own sphere of what happens in the job seeker community. They’ll advertise how they advertise, instruct agencies how they instruct agencies and run their process how they run their process. I wonder how many great employers use Workday as an ATS, fill their jobs suitably, and have no knowledge of how Workday is viewed by job seekers who have dozens of Workday accounts, one per application? It’s true terrible employers might do the same. In one of my job advert consultations I had a detailed conversation with a Talent Acquisition Manager of a local technology consultancy. I can say that they are a jewel in the crown of technology development in the UK, have top 1% compensation, offer career development, and are a fantastic place to work. I know this because I have spoken to many people who have worked there. All speak highly of them. Yet the advert we reviewed had a number of red flags: £Competitive salary Generic company first text Confusion around job titles If you were an ideal candidate who decided not to apply because of these red flags you’d have missed out. There are two considerations in how an advert might be put together. The first is whether it is a product of a transactional process or whether the hiring team recognises potential candidates are driven by selfish reasons and seek to understand ‘what’s in it for them.’ (I’ve mentioned WIIFM (What’s in it for me) a few times now - answering that is key to good marketing) The second is the direction of travel - are you reading a job board advert or have you been contacted proactively about the vacancy? A transactional process is defined by information transactions with a focus on speed and volume. It places less emphasis on qualitative measures such as accuracy, specificity, relationships, and empathy. Instead you can define the process by a series of information transactions and exchanges: Job description Advert Suitable number of relevant applications Suitable number of interviews Offer Starter The goal is to fill a vacancy. A non-transactional process recognises the importance of relationships and that to build trust the right information needs to be put forward. Though the steps are much the same, at each stage the question is asked: ‘Does this give the candidate the right information to make an informed decision?’ Here a candidate is everyone who interacts with the vacancy outside of the hiring end - even a reader who chooses not to apply. The goal is to create a process that draws the right person forward while leaving everyone with a good experience. It’s not just about decency - it’s about long-term commercial outcomes. If you want the right person to thrive over the long term the process has to reflect this goal. While all the ‘nos’ might be commercial opportunity in future - future candidates, future customers - who knows? These are the archetypes. In reality, recruitment falls somewhere along this spectrum, often changing at different stages in the process. Intent matters even if the execution is flawed. Why does it matter ? Because a healthy rule of thumb is to reciprocate the level of care you experience. If you come across a transactional process - treat it transactionally. This isn’t inherently bad - it’s just the way of the process. The employers may still be good to work for. When and whether to apply Irrespective of how a role is recruited, there will be non-negotiable essential criteria that inform whether or not you are suitable. If you can establish these criteria you can confirm whether to apply. The problem is these criteria aren’t always stated. Sometimes they are implicit to the context - if the role is employed by a rapidly growing scale-up, it’s likely they’ll need someone with that experience. Hopefully this context is alluded to in the advert. It will need critical thinking to parse. Sometimes these aren’t defined at the outset and become mandatory when there are too many candidates in view. Sometimes these are hidden by Goldilocks or illegal discrimination - not too experienced, not too inexperienced, not too old. Sometimes the employer can’t divulge essential criteria. The other problem is that some essential criteria aren’t essential, such as when a company writes unrealistic shopping lists. Yes, it’s a FUBAR situation given it’s pretty hard to tell whether you’re a suitable candidate or whether you should even apply. Nonetheless - if you choose to apply your application must show how you can meet any essential criteria you can identify. If that’s the only thing your application does - it must do this. In my experience, transactional processes are the hardest to unpick, with adverts going something like: Here at genericorp we are proud to be recruiting for a in our market leading innovative environment. You’ll be doing You’ll need In return you can expect a £competitive salary. Apply with a full cover letter and updated CV. Only successful candidates will be contacted. Familiar? Whereas the rare non-transactional adverts give more of a narrative about why the right person might think to apply or give you avenues for finding more information. A note on inbound enquiries. With automation allowing volume outreach the effort to produce transactional DMs, emails and messages is pretty low. You might think when you receive such a message that you are already in the running - in many situations you are a transactional prospect. I’ve even heard some recruiters InMail #OpenToWork profiles only to improve their response rates. While not all messages are this way these are potential reasons you might not hear back when you reply to a recruiter. It’s not quite the case with phone calls which have yet to be executed through automation (some platforms promise AI call automation already). Again, you can separate transactional from non-transactional straightforwardly. Transactional leads with selling the job. Non-transactional seeks to explore if you are the right candidate. If the vacancy isn’t right it’s best to find that out as early as possible and save everyone time. Inbound enquiries are still adverts, in a different medium. Try not to treat your job search transactionally by default. Your goal isn’t to apply for hundreds of jobs. Your goal is to start conversations that count. By prioritising adverts in the right way you’ll improve your odds with high stakes applications. You’ll gain time and energy for other activities, including taking time away from your job search to recharge. 

So here were are, the start of a new series. This series may be around 10 editions, looking at the things other industries do that we can implement into recruitment. These were written 3 years ago, right at the start of the AI zazzle, and in some ways have dated quite a bit. In others, the way in which they haven't dated at all, because the principles of how we live our business lives can be universal. So, I'm not sure yet, how much editing I'll do, whether there will be any inclusions, or whether I'll leave articles intact, as a moment in time. I've learnt all of these notions from candidates and clients, as I came to understand the function of their vacancies. Hearing about the daily practice from people doing jobs, I couldn't help but notice the same relevance in recruitment. So while these articles are hardly comprehensive, perhaps they'll make you look at your candidates differently, in what we can learn from them, and how that might improve our recruitment. Why five? December 2022 Ask anyone involved in active recruitment what their key problems are, and they’ll likely talk about skills shortages and candidate behaviour. On the face of it, problems which are out of our control, worthy of complaint with little opportunity to find improvement. But what if these were issues that weren’t entirely out of our control? What if we could apply a replicable process to understand what’s really going on, and how we can make a difference? Fortunately, we needn’t invent the wheel, as other industries have already done this for us. One such is 5Y, or Five Whys, a problem-solving technique that was developed by Toyota in the 1930s. It's part of the Toyota Management System that has inspired much of my work. Five is the general number of “Why?”s needed to get to the root of a problem. Often you can get to the heart of the issue sooner, sometimes later. Often there are multiple root causes. More than just solving problems, it’s about establishing practical countermeasures to prevent these problems from coming up in future. 5Y is an example of Toyota’s philosophy of “go and see”: working on the shop floor to find out how things work in practice to find ways for iterative improvement. This isn’t a theoretical idea to try out on a whim – it’s based on grounded reality and almost always works. There are two costs – time and accountability. Here’s a practical example, then a recruitment one. (Names have been removed to protect my identity) Problem 1 : The children were late for school. Why? Traffic held us up. Why? We left the house late. Why? The children weren’t ready on time. Why? Their school uniforms weren’t prepared. Why? We hadn’t set them out the night before. Here the countermeasure is to get everything ready the night before, rather than blame traffic for being late. Perhaps we might have gotten to school on time without heavy traffic, but that is an element out of our control. Of course, here there is another root cause – very naughty children – but better to focus on the simple changes. And sometimes traffic is the root cause after all, once you’ve ruled out other elements in your control. (2026 note: my eldest now often drives my youngest to school. A time laden solution I hadn't considered three years ago. Now I don't care if they're late 😆) Problem 2: Candidates keep ghosting us. Why? They weren’t committed to responding. Why? They didn’t accept my requirement for a response. Why? They saw no value in my requirement. Why? I didn’t create an environment where this requirement has value ( root cause 1 ). Or because they are very naughty candidates, with a bad attitude. Why have we allowed someone with a bad attitude in our recruitment process? Because we didn’t prequalify them well enough ( root cause 2 ) The first root cause is something we can work on by giving candidates what they need, building trust, and working to mutual obligations. There are many ways to do this – I’ve already talked about examples in previous newsletters. It comes down to good candidate experience and reciprocity. The second root cause requires us to work harder at understanding candidate needs, aspirations, behaviours and attitudes at the outset of a recruitment process. There’s a reason for their behaviour. We can be accountable for finding it. That’s no mean skill to develop, yet an essential one for anyone whose core responsibility is recruitment. And it’s hard to do in a transactional volume process, so the question then becomes, does your process help more than it hinders? You can apply 5Y to any issue you come across, as long as you are prepared to be accountable. At worst you may find that the things that were out of your control are at fault. In this case, you are at least armed with good information to report to your stakeholders, by ruling out other possibilities. What’s the point of doing all this? For me it’s continually improving how I recruit, with the consequence, in the example above, that I am rarely ghosted at all. And you can 5Y any issue you come across. Are poor agency CV submissions their fault, or in part down to your briefing and process? Are skills genuinely scarce, or is your requirement unrealistic? Is it true that your agency hasn’t listened to you, or do you engage the right partners in the right way? 5Y has the answers. Regards, Greg