I'm thrilled to announce the publication of A Recruitment AiDE. A guide, philosophy and discipline for effective key hire recruitment. The timing’s perfect, given the deluge of AI content that floods our feeds. Imagine how these similarly produced generic adverts land with people you want to talk to. "We're thrilled to announce we want, we need, here’s our shopping list, why aren’t you responding and oh what’s this flood of AI CVs?" It doesn’t have to be this way. This has taken twenty-five years of hard graft - talking to job seekers, researching the market and recruitment practice, learning about candidate resentment, problem awareness, marketing, copywriting, and the psychology of what moves people. With the evidence that backs this up. The result is something that may make you rethink your approach to recruitment. That will improve the number of qualified candidates, while reducing the total number of applications. It's too early to prove, but my expectation is this will reduce the number of AI CVs too, given there is less for AI to grab when you speak to professional identity. You’ll have to be bold, go against the grain, do something that feels counterintuitive, especially if someone has their hand on your shoulder saying "This isn't the company style!" But then, what does it take to stand out from the crowd? And if you really want to attract the best people, shouldn’t your first step be focused on them, and not you? Kindle version out now. Here's the link: https://amzn.eu/d/03idlAVM.  Paperback in two weeks. If you don’t like Evilcorp, let me know and we can work something out.

What follows is Chapter 40 of A Career Breakdown Kit , and part two of a three part series on Personal Branding. Except it isn't. There are various definitions I revolt against, with good reason, in a job search. Personal branding, hidden jobs markets, ATS compliance, and all the others. Terms that seem to hide secret wins, not replicable steps, especially when hidden behind a paywall. I call it the title that's expected because of the questions job seekers ask me. You may recall my article on the Hidden Jobs Market breaks it apart and rebuilds it into a cohesive multichannel marketing strategy that allows you to access the whole of your jobs market. And so it is with my personal branding series. This isn't about your brand. Or even about your reputation. It's about pushing content that starts conversations with relevant people - such as peers, former colleagues, recruiters with a vested interest in these content areas, and even people that can put you closer to a job. Not forgetting fellow job seekers you can share experiences with - as long as you don't dwell on the negative. And it's also about writing in a way that is both true to you and your profession - because conversation has to follow in the same voice as you write, and should support your work, when in work. It's a strategy and philosophy that mirrors earlier chapters on networking, doorknocking, getting found and converting interest. It isn't about writing credible statements in a content savvy way that shares unprovable anecdotes, hacks that lack substance, and where a funnel means more than a lesson. That way is the way of social media marketing - this is about conversations that matter. 40 - Content strategy and philosophy While a personal brand might be the goal, your content strategy should be the priority. It can be applied even if you don’t like the idea of branding. Much is made about LinkedIn’s algorithm and how you need to do this that and the other to get engagement. You can look at it differently, ignoring the algorithm on the whole, and still achieve much the same. These are the outcomes I aim for and see when writing content: Start conversations Help others Sharpen and spark ideas Raise awareness and trust Have a laugh and a chat I’ve gained friends I’ve never spoken to and friendly acquaintances I only know through ‘comments.’ As well as paying clients who have benefitted from my service. Just as importantly, I have more credibility with candidates who place weight on LinkedIn content. Content makes it easier for me to start conversations. It’s important for me that I either enjoy the content and its consequences or find it fulfilling. I don’t talk openly about my personal life, family or challenges. Something I agreed with my wife when I started publishing content. Instead, I show all of myself in my words - quirks and all. So that if we ever speak in real life, there isn’t much of a disconnect. Start with other people’s content Find content writers who inspire you and use them as a catalyst for your own words. There are two ways to do this. Firstly, if you’re thinking about writing on LinkedIn, you are presumably already reading content. What inspires you? What do you enjoy reading? Which authors resonate with your career, your values, your goals and the problems you solve? When you read their content, do you engage and comment? Do you connect with them? Do you ask them who they recommend as writers in your field? Secondly, look within. What do you want to be known for in your career? Maybe it’s procurement or your CIPD membership. React or agile. 5 Whys or Gemba. If these are areas that interest you, use the LinkedIn search bar to find posts on these topics. Now filter the results by ‘Posts’ and ‘Sort by’ latest. Read through the results both for posts that interest you and those that have high engagement (less likely on a niche topic). When you’ve found inspiring content, what next ? One first step in content creation is to respond to these posts with your own ideas. Less ‘Agree’ and more how you might respond in a real-life conversation on this topic. Commenting on other people’s posts is a good way to find your voice, particularly if the conversation continues. Like any skill, writing takes practice, and comments are a low-friction way of developing your tone. If a comment sparks interest from other readers, it can be a concept to build on as a post in its own right. The other benefit of this kind of niche content is that those who engage are likely to have similar interests to you. Make sure to read other comments and see if there are more conversations to be had. The comments you build with them can be the start of a mutually beneficial relationship. Check out their profiles - do their interests and values reflect yours? These are people to connect with, then DM to continue the conversation. Check out their posting history, which will be available on their profile - there may well be a lot of interesting content to absorb. With conversation comes content. Ideas and discussion that grow are an effective way to share your voice. Here’s a suggestion for how you can do this in practice: Look for 5 posts daily that interest you professionally - manually, using a search, or checking what your valuable connections are up to Engage and comment on each Check out new relevant profiles - connect and follow their content On each post, look at who is engaging and respond naturally Try to connect with 5 new relevant people from these interactions Perhaps follow up with a message Take note of the most interesting conversations and at the end of the week pick at least one to inspire your own posts You don’t need to publish them if you aren’t comfortable - save for later if not I’d avoid the viral content that combines relevance + relatability + entitlement + readability. These writers are more interested in engagement numbers than your specific interest. You can see the truth of their words in how they respond in the comments sections. From a marketing perspective, different types of content have different places in your lead generation: Awareness Interest Consideration Evaluation Purchase Each post, comment, DM and real-life conversation can relate to these steps and support your goals, even if you aren’t treating these as a marketing activity. Time and time again There’s a lot of investigation into optimal times to post. It’s more important that you are available to reply attentively in the first hour. The course of a post is often dictated by the performance during this time. I actively reply to comments for around an hour a day with LinkedIn on in the background of other work. How much time can you set aside per week and per day for content? Even if you only write a couple of posts a week, this will probably take a couple of hours. You can expect low performance initially, with some exceptions, as it takes time to build inertia. Set aside a sustainable amount of time each week and commit to it over a period - try for 10-12 weeks and track how things have developed. You may find it becomes an enjoyable task. Try not to get distracted by engagement for its own sake and keep your goals in mind. Types of content to try Engagement on LinkedIn is built primarily on relevance and relatability. Even ragebait, given it drives strong feeling. You can write a 100% relatable post that everyone takes relevance from and see massive engagement. Though that engagement may not serve your goals. Or you can write a post that is 100% relevant to the problems you solve in your career, and the people who will find it relevant are from a small niche facing the same problems. This is why a photo of you with your dog will fly, while a carefully thought out post about the optimisation of widgets in a byzantine setting will appear to be shouting into a void. Or you can blend the two through storytelling, pivoting observations into business content, and copywriting formulae like AIDA (attention interest desire action) and PAS (problem agitation solution). Everyone will have different forms of content that will be effective for them. What do you want your ideal readers to experience? What would ‘you five years ago’ would find helpful? Do you want readers to see you as a credible expert? Someone who is authentically vulnerable? Your warts and all personality? Someone who stands out in a sea of competition? Someone who is thought-provoking, helpful, or altruistic? The answers are much the same if you posed these questions of interviewing. This is no coincidence, given your message should be consistently delivered no matter where it is received. With that in mind, here are some content ideas you can try: How you might solve a problem specific to your industry Stories from your everyday life The challenges in your job search Observations on a news story and how it relates to your work A flair post highlighting your availability Asking for thoughts on an idea you are interested in Sharing insight you find fascinating, whether that’s films, video games, science or sport Stories from your career where you can show growth (everyone loves a hero’s journey) Business frameworks, processes and techniques you find useful - Pomodoro Technique, scientific method, STAR, what do you use? Equipment you use for work Developments in your workplace and culture Thoughts on content you find inspiring Memes, humour, satire Google content ideas for LinkedIn or ask ChatGPT, Claude and others. I wouldn’t use AI to write articles. I do use them for ideation and to sense check. ‘Write me a post for LinkedIn that shows the link between Tesla cars and how to develop an HR strategy.’ The vulnerability of writing You can be a content creator without ever publishing a post if you continue conversations through comments, connections, DMs and real-life. This avoids sticking your head above the parapets and is low risk, but misses the gain of publishing your own content. I know that some people are held back for fear of failure. I can tell you that clicking ‘send’ is always a high point of anxiety for me in sending newsletters. Imagine how I felt when I clicked Publish for this book. What’s the worst that can happen with a carefully thought-out post? Tumbleweed? If no one reads it, you can always post it again another time. Disagreement? Loads of people disagree on my posts - you’ll see from my comments that I am always constructive in my dialogue and typically this supports the intent of my post. Everyone has an opinion and they are welcome to theirs - as long as it’s constructive, there is always a learning opportunity. Trolls? These people exist and will at some point rear their ugly heads. I imagine them naked on the Underground, which takes the sting out of their vitriol. I’m sure it’s their unhappiness that drives their behaviour. Marriage requests? Unfortunately, dubious and toxic behaviour isn’t uncommon. Don’t be afraid to block and report if you receive harmful messages. As long as you are constructive in what you write and you work to build a conversation, it’s unlikely anything bad will happen. You will open yourself up to the opportunity of new relevant people starting conversations with you: hiring managers, recruiters, peers, fellow job seekers, and friendly strangers. Weight and depth of opinion A couple of years ago, I had a message from an out-of-work Sales Director asking for some feedback. He’d shot a video for LinkedIn where he talked about why he should be snapped up and received a lot of praise for the post. However, he was confused because a CEO he trusts told him it was poor and made him look boring. He knew I’d give him unvarnished feedback, which was what he needed to find some clarity on what had happened. Truthfully, the CEO was correct. What had happened? All of the positive engagement was from fellow job seekers and people who wanted to support him. That he’d done it was praiseworthy in itself and was rightly celebrated, rather than the quality of what he had produced. None of them had hiring authority or were in a career similar to someone who would be his line manager. The video didn’t show him how he comes across in person either. While the positive feedback was fantastic for validation, his video worked against him. What might happen if a hiring process thought his video was boring when the role being recruited for has persuasion as a key requirement? I’m pleased to say his redo was excellent, showing off his charisma while delivering the same message. Who can you rely on to be this CEO for you in your career? Why you should start now, even if you don’t see any benefit for months. Starting cold on LinkedIn can take time to get traction. When your first post bombs you might never think to do a second. Going in with the expectation of little impact for the first three to six months is healthy in making a sustainable habit. If you’re out of work though, three to six months may seem too far off to be worthwhile when there are many activities that offer a quick turnaround, such as applying for jobs. I’ve spoken to many job seekers who’ve been out of work for more than six months and had decided not to write content at the outset of their search. If they had, they might now be seeing the benefit of their work. 

On Tuesday 28th April at 1pm BST, Simon Ward and I will be joined on our weekly LinkedIn Live by CV Library. I'll share the details of this free interactive session as soon as the event link is available - bring your questions. If you don't know CV Library it's one of the main job boards in the UK. While they might sit behind others in terms of coverage, I find them easy to work with and helpful - they are responsive, they have fewer fake jobs than LinkedIn, they have a CV database I can search across that is in many ways more effective than #OpenToWork. They'll be showing how to get a better mileage from their CV database, as a job seeker, and many other helpful things - points you can apply to LinkedIn too, as an inbound sources of recruiter searches and the principles we use to look for viable candidates. It seems timely to share this updated chapter from A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) , which I will no doubt update with learnings from the session. 38 - Better use of job boards Job boards are often the first port of call when new to a job search. It’s a natural inclination that they are where vacancies are to be found. Quickly followed by disappointment, anxiety and frustration when you get close to 0% hit rate. And not even a single reply. Let’s take a step back, look at the overall picture and make a plan. There are many job boards in the UK that sell their systems to employers and recruitment agencies. You may be familiar with Indeed, Reed, CV Library, Jobsite / Totaljobs, LinkedIn (yes, it is a job board, disguised by being a social media platform). Aside from the generic, there are also many sites specific to your niche. As well as ATS platforms themselves. Job boards sell two things to their clients - advertising and access to their CV database. Although LinkedIn differs in how it is wrapped up with content and networking, it does have a form of CV database in how we can use the Recruiter Licence to search profiles (we can even make do without through more advanced techniques such as X-ray searching and programmable search engines). There are also aggregator websites which scrape content from one job board to their own or a third party. You can often tell because when you click apply it takes you to another website instead of properly starting an application. Job board priorities and what that means for you Job boards want to sell their services and make money, which is entirely sensible. To support their argument they use all sorts of metrics such as the number of CVs on their database and the number of applications made (by job or month). It’s to their advantage that adverts receive as many applications as possible - their advice on improving advert performance is geared around volume. Rather than around suitable candidates. This disconnect happens because clients often lie about how effective adverts have been by the measure of vacancies filled - because of concern it will affect renewal prices. This is feedback given to me from account managers at two different job boards when researching job search advice. Job boards can only prove the number of applications, so that becomes the target. The most effective job adverts have fewer applications and a higher number of suitable candidates - what I aim for in mine. To maximise the number of applications they do things like scraping, aggregation and affiliate arrangements. They offer services like automatic relisting where an advert is reposted as new once a week throughout the term of the listing (could be up to 6 weeks by default, or longer by choice). These are sold as benefits to employers which might help when there are limited candidates, yet often hinder when there are too many candidates for jobs. You may remember the same from Fake jobs (p81). They make it as Easy as possible for you to Apply for these jobs, so that you can be an additional metric. As Goodhart says, ‘When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.’ The consequence for you as an applicant is twofold. You are encouraged to be one of the numbers of applicants to purposefully generic adverts you are not the most suitable for. When you are the most suitable, you are in competition both with people from the line above and people who are wholly unsuitable. I should point out I don’t think job boards do this cynically. They do so because they think high numbers are best. It’s also a problem for recruiters who may find it impossible to deal with this volume unless through automation or by finding ways to manually eliminate applications at scale. Job boards, employers, agencies and candidates are all wrapped up in this cycle of speed and volume. And with use of AI-style automation, so too are many job seekers. Where's the specificity and accuracy? Though it might be the best way to make money. Job seekers are accountable too, partly because of how they have been trained to apply. Don’t blame recruiters. Don’t blame employers. Don’t blame unqualified applicants. Blame the system we are all part of. And if you ever find yourself a hiring authority - be the change you hope for. Better use of job boards Let’s go back to that point about applications. In the current market, it’s not uncommon to see hundreds to thousands of applications per vacancy. Rarely are those applications qualified candidates. For a typical job description templated advert you can expect the high majority of applicants to be wholly unsuitable. What do I mean by wholly unsuitable? People who require work permits when a role doesn’t sponsor them. People who don’t meet the minimum requirements set out in an advert. People who are clearly unsuitable for this role. When you see a number, don’t be disheartened by the number alone. As a job seeker, your minimum requirement to apply for a vacancy should be that you can logically prove to yourself you are qualified based on the evidence provided. Read back through Should I customise my CV? (p178) for more on this. … tips and bits Finding vacancies is as important as applying for them. Collect those synonyms you’ve been tailoring your CV with and use these in your searches. If you find an obscure term which represents what you can do, why not search solely on that term? You might find a horribly written advert whose only correct word is that term. It’s a trick we use to find candidates too - occasionally I might search on something like ‘egnieer’ because typos don’t make a bad candidate. Location is a key search criterion. Most people search from their home address. How about running tight searches where you are prepared to work - e.g. 1 mile from CB4 0WZ (a hub for business parks in Cambridge where I worked many moons ago). How to optimise for CV databases When you apply for a vacancy on a new job board they will likely have a CV database tethered to your application. Your permission to have your CV added may be hidden in their terms and conditions. A CV database is an opportunity for you to be found. Sometimes this will be for vacancies that are never advertised, such as the example I wrote about earlier. You have an opportunity to leverage CV databases to improve the number of inbound enquiries you receive. Log all the job boards you’ve applied through Make a list of all that have CV databases, including login details Ensure your CV is up to date containing the keywords for the job you are most suitable for Check your contact details are correct Check all the details on your account. Salary details, location, preferences should all be current. Register your postcode for where you want to be found. If you plan to move to Scunthorpe in April, that should be your current location. It’s where we will look for you Update your CV and profiles once a week. It shouldn’t take long. If you are active in the past week, this will show up in recruiter searches, assuming a recruiter only looks at activity from the past 14 days The CV databases at the back end of job boards are one of the resources I use to fill roles whether advertised or not. They’re a good marginal gain and may bring you leads you’d never hear about otherwise. A note on the ATS Whenever you come across an advert linked to an ATS like Workable, many companies will use that ATS. These may recruit for relevant vacancies in a commutable location. Try this command in Google - site: workable.com London “Marketing Manager” Site: directs the search to a particular website. Change the location and job title to ones relevant for you. Some of these vacancies may never make it to a job board you are aware of. Why you should hack LinkedIn advert results URLs (website page addresses) are a funny thing - they often contain commands for a website related to your requests. Changing certain points can have interesting results. For example, here’s a URL for a job search for Marketing Manager near me over the past 24 hours: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search-results/?f_TPR=r86400&keywords=Marketing%20Manager&origin=JOBS_HOME_SEARCH_BUTTON Don’t worry about the bulk of the URL. Take note of the bold - r86400 which matches seconds in a day. Let’s say you log on at 9.30am and you want to check jobs posted in the last hour. This feature isn’t available as standard in the search tools. However, you can edit the URL from a standard search to: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search-results/?f_TPR=r3600&keywords=Marketing%20Manager&origin=JOBS_HOME_SEARCH_BUTTON Because there are 3,600 seconds in an hour. Try it and see what happens. (Edit: in error checking for this article, originally updated in January, this particular ‘hack’ no longer appears to work. Why not try it yourself on a job you’re interested in and let me know if it works for you? I’ll update this properly for the next book update. I've left it here to show how this kind of tactical advice can change so quickly as to make it obsolete. Next week's article is on Content Strategy & Philosophy for promoting yourself on LinkedIn. Call it personal branding, call it copywriting - expect some people to jump on with strong opinions without reading the article) 

(With luck she won't sue me for copyright infringement) I was reminded about the imperative to lie at times, when commenting on a post about namism this week. Namism is discrimination against uncommon names, with proof that a change of name improves the likelihood of getting an interview from an application. A lie that mitigates the worst behaviour in a recruitment process seems reasonable behaviour to me. What follows is an article released around the same time as my sister's book, as a tribute to her fine work. At the time I planned to call it "Nothing but the truth" the name she refused to use, because her publisher told her negative titles don't sell - he clearly hasn't seen a Bond film. Instead, I went for a House quote, "Everybody lies", because like it or not, everybody does. June 2023 At the end of her speech, my sister made a simple request: “Put your hand in the air if you’ve lied today.” Only one person didn’t put their hand up – me. Lying’s not in my nature, except in a couple of specific situations where no harm is caused. You can believe that or not, up to you. The earlier part of the speech touched on all those little moments in our lives where we tell a little lie, either to ourselves or someone else. Sometimes it’s to protect feelings. Sometimes to protect ourselves. Sometimes it’s to keep up the narrative of how we are perceived because we don’t want to share our secret selves. It was a great launch for a book on how society doesn’t just put up with lies to function, it may even rely on them. She interviewed a wide range of experts on lying including spies and toddler scientists, showed how the face can lie, and talked about her amnesia and what it was like to be in the closet. She didn’t interview me about recruitment, so I’m putting that right today. Lies are rampant everywhere you look in recruitment. In a survey last year, 51% of respondents admitted to lying on their CVs. I expect the true number to be higher, considering some won’t even admit a lie to themselves. It’s common to extrapolate behaviour from what we experience. One lie may lead to more, and that may be the only reason you need to reject a candidate. Not all lies are born equal. Broadly I differentiate them between lies of impact, lies to protect, and lies of inconsequence. A lie of impact is one which leads to a decision based on that lie. Here an example would be John Andrewes , who lied about his experience and qualifications to land a top NHS job. He was jailed for 2 years and required to pay £100k, the remainder of his assets. Fraud. Or lying about reasons for departure – they say redundancy, they meant gross misconduct. Misrepresenting capability and qualifications. Mispresenting a role to make it more appealing. £Competitive salary, when you meant lowball to get a deal. The lies we should find and cull at the earliest opportunity. A lie to protect can be many things. I remember an HR candidate early in my career who changed her name twice. It was highly suspicious to me at the time. “Apunanwu Oluwayo” became “Apunanwu Roberts” became “Judith Roberts”. This first change suggested a marriage or divorce. The second I couldn’t fathom. What a liar, 2005 Greg thought. Of course, now I know better. It’s likely she changed her name to a British one because she suffered from namism – one report indicates candidates are 60% less likely to receive a call-back with a foreign-sounding name. Despite my ignorance, I gave Judith the benefit of the doubt and invited her to interview. You can see why blind CVs are a fair measure to prevent this happen, although I wonder if it’s better to treat the illness rather than rely on palliative measures. How about not disclosing identifiable education for the same reasons? What about disability and neurodivergence? If a condition requires an accommodation to fulfil a role, is non-disclosure a lie by omission? Another could be lying about reasons for departure – they said ‘left to focus on a job search’, they meant they couldn’t put up with a harmful environment any longer. A lie of protection, which isn’t one of impact, should be clarified but, in my opinion, not penalised without investigation. The lie above is one of protection – I changed the names to protect the individual, one of the situations in which I will lie deliberately, with good reason. How about a lie of inconsequence? By this I mean a lie that doesn’t impact employability, reflect capability or have any bearing on what that person is like to work with. Examples here might be fudging employment dates to prevent the question “Why were you unemployed for 2 days in 2012?” Or perhaps they might say People Business Partner on their CV, which they fulfilled functionally, yet had a misrepresentative job title of Operations Manager. Sometimes what seem to be lies of impact, might be lies of inconsequence: I once had a candidate withdraw from an interview. Aladdin said his father had passed away, and he had decided to suspend his job search. I spoke to the hiring manager, Jaffar, and said “This smacks of lying” principally because of a change in behaviour that didn’t seem related to grief, and the very high mortality rate candidates sometimes experience throughout recruitment. It was a tough vacancy to fill, so we made a plan. Jaffar would contact him directly a couple of weeks after, to check in and see if he fancied a pint. We put our suspicion aside, while also considering how he might have perceived his relationship with me. Long story short Aladdin took the job and was there for eight years. He gave me a lovely recommendation too. I’m pleased to say his father made a full recovery. While this appears to be a lie of impact, it’s actually one of inconsequence. He lied because he didn’t feel safe telling me he was having second thoughts. That’s on me, because it is my job to create a safe space for candidates so that they trust me and tell me inconvenient truths. It’s not dissimilar to the hilariously high rate of car breakdowns in recruitment. Have we considered our part in that lie? These three types of lies are a gross simplification to paint the picture. Our perception of lying is highly subjective, and there is no one right answer. I think it’s understandable to feel a lie is a dealbreaker. For lies of impact, this should be the case. For other lies though, perhaps a judgment call is better than an assumption. Why did that person lie? Could it even be something we did? Does that lie really matter? And if it does matter – how many times have you lied in the same way today? The next eminently-an-epistole is on technical debt in recruitment, and why we should consider the long-term impact of a short-term compromise.  Regards, Greg P.s. if you’re interested in Kathleen’s book, you can read about it here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Social-Superpower-Truth-About-Little-ebook/dp/B09MDWNL44

What follows is Chapter 37 of A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . I expect you've read and heard many arguments about how important is to have a discoverable LinkedIn profile - one where recruiters can find you for their vacancies, including the ones that aren't advertised. Indeed, when you hit the market, your LinkedIn profile is one of the first activities you should try and get right - because your job search can optimise for inbound leads before you think about anything else. Yet a lot of the focus is on getting found, and there's a consequence to this that I think is worse than not getting found at all: the recruiter who reads your profile for an ideal vacancy and decides not to contact you. And because Recruiter Licence accesses your data in a different way to the platform you use, you'll never know. So this Chapter is the direct follow up to LinkedIn Profiles that Get Found , one which aims to convert an invisible reader to someone that contacts you for legitimate reasons. I'm going to be updating that chapter soon, with some additional findings, such as why your headline doesn't carry quite as much weight as you might think. I should point out, as a recruiter I am quite happy for you to have a weak profile, given it means I am more likely to find you through rigour, if others rely on well specified information. For example tomorrow I will be setting up an interview for someone who has 1 LinkedIn connection and only a job title and company name - nothing else. He came up for me because his job title matched my search, and I used an industry term in the "Company Name" section - an approach that is common for employers in that niche industry. But as I always say - it's better to help the weakest link in the chain see you as a viable candidate because same work helps everyone. 37 - LinkedIn profiles that convert An Amazon (job) search When I buy a commodity item on Amazon there are two stages to my buying process. I know what I want and I have to find an acceptable shortlist of possibilities. Only then do I assess and decide on what to buy. As a sweaty runner that clocks up 50-60km a week, I burn through Bluetooth headphones regularly. I’m also deaf in one ear and can’t tell the difference in higher quality sound. My context is a little different to the normal buyer although likely no more different than most buyers are from each other. A search on ‘Bluetooth headphones’ brings up over 2,000 results, which is hardly manageable. I change the search to ‘waterproof Bluetooth headphones’, and filter by: £15-£30, in ear, Prime, running. 125 results. Much better. Now I scan down the list and I ignore Sponsored. I’m not sure why. Click on the first one with a relevant headline promising 50hrs playtime and skim past all the marketing twaddle. Who cares what they say - what do their buyers think? I go straight to the three-star reviews because they are generally good with caveats. One of the three-star reviews says they were offered a discount to change it to five. That’s BS that turns me right off. I click through a few more products and buy one. The decent guarantee swung it for me. I didn’t get past the first 40 results. Now think about your own commodity purchases, where you have to do differing levels of research to get what you need. What kind of search criteria do you use? How do you filter? What informs your decision to buy? Perhaps you already know what you want to buy, having researched buyer guides, YouTube videos and user forums, and are just sourcing the best price. Or maybe you need something adequate, and literally anything above an acceptable threshold will do - 5 minutes and done. These are examples of a buyer’s journey across a transactional process. Which isn’t far removed from how recruiters might search for candidates. On LinkedIn and other channels. Bringing it back to your job search LinkedIn and Amazon - what’s the difference? In a hiring process, they are both volume, transactional marketplaces that allow searches and filters to create an appropriate shortlist to read through. As with a product on Amazon, your LinkedIn profile is one of many that fit similar criteria and might be found at any stage in a recruitment process. From a search through the Recruiter Licence A hiring manager reading more on a shortlisted candidate Their boss researching you at final interview Out of curiosity from a comment or post you wrote Checking it out on receipt of an application Because you were recommended Because you worked at a certain company In the same way customers might visit a product page on Amazon, so too might someone hiring visit your profile. This means that it doesn’t have to just stand on its own merits, it has to corroborate and support any other documentation a reader might have come across: Your CV or application Your LinkedIn posts and comments Something you did that’s in the public domain - an interview, video, article Where there’s a conflict, such as an overly customised CV that contradicts your LinkedIn profile - that can be a problem. Assuming your contents all support each other, the aim is to prompt an action. Unlike an Amazon purchase, you aren’t expecting a sale, simply for the right people to start a conversation that meets your goals. To convert interest into an action, first, you have to be found. Think about an Amazon product page and the process you go through to buy - what do you typically read and in which order? It’s probably something like . My reading journey on a product page is . How does your profile page cater to the reading psychology of a recruiter? While a recruiter likely has access to the Recruiter Licence, you won’t. I’ll write this in a way you can emulate as a standard or Premium Member. A standard search might go across . Leading to this reading priority of someone who wants to read everything (!): #Open to Work banner (your choice) Headline Banner Location / Contact details (depending on connection and privacy settings) Activity / Featured Section / About (the order depends on whether you have Creator mode or not) Experience Education Projects Skills Recommendations Unlike Amazon reviews, I rarely look at recommendations - if I’m still interested by that point, I’ll get in touch. You can also download your profile as a PDF, which looks like a CV with contact details, headline, summary and experience. In both your profile and the downloadable PDF, your headline and summary / About section are going to be read before your experience is. This is where a lot of the decision to contact you will come from. While the career section is important, if an attention-short reader doesn’t get that far, it won’t help convert interest. An exercise to guide your approach to updating your profile Imagine you have been promoted and are tasked with recruiting your replacement. The rules are that you are only allowed to search for candidates on LinkedIn through your standard membership. You have 10 minutes to run and scan through a search and 20 minutes to form a shortlist of 3 top candidates from the results. Location and salary don’t matter for now. It’s likely you’ll search on your job titles, job specific skills and qualifications. What do the results look like? Pick your three favourite profiles from the results. Now compare them against your own profile, step by step. Would you make your own shortlist based purely on the content? If not, what is it about their profiles that is preferable and how can you emulate the same in yours? What is it in their content that has converted you from being a passive reader to having them on your imaginary shortlist? Actionable points to update your profile (and CV too) You want people with hiring authority to look at your profile and want to contact you. How can you help them see you as a candidate of choice? 1. A punchy headline that says what you do and how you can help. The first four words count - those Amazon product headlines. If you don’t read further than the first four words, you’ll never know what you missed. Check out how other people’s headlines look on your mobile phone when on their profile or if they are replying to a comment on a post - lead with relevance 2. Scrap ‘I help companies by’ because it’s meaningless. Start with your job title then add a flourish or context. ‘CTO - deep tech scale-up. Equity backed and privately owned. £20m to £120m in three years’ 3. Your banner - it’s free advertising real estate. Use Canva; include your contact details in case a reader doesn’t have access through your account 4. Make it easy to contact you by phone or email. Put it in multiple spots 5. About section - who do you help and how? What are your key skills and achievements? Keep it concise and focused on your ideal audience - move away from the ‘responsibilities led’ approach to CVs that get copied onto LinkedIn. Show context 6. While your career section is further down and may not even be read, it should still be fully populated and credible 7. How can you highlight posts, videos and articles to support your candidacy? The Featured Section is a useful facility in Creator mode 8. Keywords. Recruiters search on keywords. Remember all the job adverts and required skills you’ve read - does your LinkedIn profile show these suitably? While these need to be true how might differing acronyms and terminology mean the same thing? 9. Personal branding. How can you showcase your personality in your words? Your About Section is a form of elevator pitch. While it highlights your professional credibility you can also show your personal qualities. What are you most passionate about or best at? Lead with that 10. It’s not about you. It’s about the needs of your reader - tell us what we need to know to make an informed decision on your candidacy. Answer the questions that we should have through your content 11. Keep it simple and authentic 12. If there’s something you want us to know, make it clear. This could be anything from the job you want, to part-time status, to highlighting a recommendation you are proud of  I've mentioned ‘CV too’ because the same principles that let you get found apply in all of your documentation - such as on an ATS, on a job board, or with a referral. And because an optimised LinkedIn profile is a further reason why you might not customise your CV (p178).

One of the reasons I've always loved recruitment is because of systems thinking. It's such a multifaceted business, built on marketing, sales, contextual analysis, psychology, copywriting and many other endeavours. Many of which are fields built on replicable systems that we can apply to recruitment. What are the systems that drive behaviour, opinions, decisions and action in recruitment? Well of course psychology has a key part to play. And isn't it just a little bit fascinating into how we can dig into what keeps people in jobs they shouldn't love? Where they could substantively improve their lot by taking a brave decision to make change. Why couldn't we instigate that change through recognising what prevents a decision, through simple messaging? The pain mirror March 2023 “I didn’t realise how unhappy I was until my husband told me,” commented a Strategic Marketing Manager, when she accepted an offer I put forward. I encourage candidates to talk through an offer with their nearest and dearest, as much to allow objectivity, as for the mirror it holds to their emotions. This isn’t the only time I’ve heard this from candidates, when reflecting on their role, before moving on to a new employer. The psychology of ‘loyalty’, self-perception, behaviour and decisions is not discussed enough in recruitment. Psychology that can inform how we approach, engage and build relationships with candidates, especially for those tricky vacancies with a niche requirement. Three concepts to think about in exploring this, then practical takeaways: 1/ Stockholm Syndrome A phenomenon in which hostages develop feelings of affection or loyalty towards their captors. Replace with employee and an employer who is demanding and stressful to work for. 2/ Region Beta Paradox People are more likely to take action over a distressing situation than an acceptably bad one, even if the possible improvement for both is the same. Someone in a mediocre employment relationship is less likely to consider a career move than someone in a Very Bad Situation. These two concepts are linked to 3/ Career inertia – you can be swept up in a career even if diverges from your core values and aspirations. Anyone who has been made redundant, or put on furlough, has an opportunity to break this inertia and find something more aligned with who they want to be. Perhaps that’s something you’ve experienced too. What a great opportunity for recruiters to help candidates identify where they can break inertia and find a better path. For anyone to consider a career move, they will need a ‘good enough reason’ and their situation will dictate what experiences they either need or will put up with. Someone who is unemployed may place paying the bills over long-term happiness. They may put up with an acceptably bad recruitment process to get what they need. Someone who thinks they are happily employed may place their self-perception and loyalty above the promise of something we think is better… even if it is. What does it take to engage them? Of course, for many people, not moving jobs is the best decision they can make. Something we should establish as recruiters as early as possible. When there is ‘good enough reason’, it is individual to every candidate. It’s the pain that needs healing and an illness they may not even have symptoms for. Our job is to hold a mirror up to that pain so that they can identify it for themselves and take measures to rightly improve their lot. It goes to follow that, in any recruitment endeavour, we can aim to understand the situations, needs and drivers of ideal candidates as a priority. What’s in it for them? What Candidate Experience do they need? Whether they might unknowingly suffer from Stockholm Syndrome, and whether they are in Region Beta. As well as the inertia of a career that may or may not be taking them in the wrong direction. Write a bad job advert and you’ll only appeal to people who either need a job or find their current situation bad enough to force change. Who else will they be applying to? (Everyone) Run a bad process, and candidates will stay in it only if its level of badness is acceptable. The same goes for your “brilliant vacancy that matches your LinkedIn profile. Can you send me your CV in Word format?” outreach. Shoddy will work in some situations, but not because of your words – in spite of your words, when situation forces action. It’s easy to think that, when you appeal to candidates, the people you hear back from are the best available. Yet if you haven’t given a candidate ‘good enough reason’, what reason do they even have to respond? Do you even know what you don’t know? I can tell you, that Marketing Manager at the top had seen my good enough advert and chose not to apply. Hers was a great job that met her family needs, and this was a solution to a problem she hadn’t identified. I knew she had chosen not to apply because I coincidentally called her, and during that conversation, we discussed the advert. We had a great chat, and she said towards the end of the call “it does sound good, but I’m not sure it’s right for me”. I asked her to think about it, and perhaps we should speak again on Monday. I also encouraged her to think critically about her current situation, as she divulged she knew she was not content, but couldn’t put her finger on why. What had prompted her to read my advert in the first place? Perhaps this wouldn’t be the right move, but the next one might be. Anyway, she got the job – they made it bigger for her and £5k above budget. The MD tells me she is a future director, and she tells me she is enjoying it. All because we got to the crux of pain she didn’t know she had. Yes, the opposite holds true. If recruitment is easy and candidates are plenty, shoddy may be good enough, so why bother improving? That’s what the unsubscribe button is for. Thanks for reading. Regards, Greg

What follows is an updated version of Chapter 10 from A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . I've made some additions around what it means to be overqualified, and why this doesn't always mean an employer is ageist. I'm mindful that the market has been extremely tough for many over the past few years, disproportionately affecting more experienced (older) job seekers. So it can be easy to assume that what may be practical business decisions may hide an ism. Yet, that's not always the full picture. In this addition I show that the same advice I give to job seekers about keeping cards close to their chest increases risk of flight risk for employers. This chapter challenges assumptions that are widely held for good reason: experienced workers have faced genuine discrimination. But as with the ATS mythology, incomplete narratives can lead to strategic missteps. What follows is the fuller picture, even where it's uncomfortable. The newsletter format is ideal in this way, given I can update the book on the fly, and that even if I repeat releasing a chapter, it's only because there is significant new or changed information to share. You'll get these chapters here first, with the 2027 edition due for release in the New Year. And don't worry - if you've already bought this year's edition, contact me when the new release is out and I'll send you a free digital version. 10 - On feedback and discrimination Any fair and reasonable recruitment requires three criteria to be met in filling a vacancy: capability, fit and stick. Capability answers the question, ‘Can you fulfil the needs of the vacancy?’ This relates to the immediate problems a vacancy solves and can include you being available in the right time frame. This also includes other dimensions such as forward-planning - for example, looking at the next job as well as this one through succession planning, or having confidential plans that will affect this role in future. I classify the wrong work permit here in the same way a lack of a hard minimum qualification can be a deal breaker. If you aren’t seen to be able to fulfil the role, for whatever reason, this is a capability rejection. The good thing about capability is that this is feedback which should be straightforward to give in an objective process. Fit is whether you are perceived to fit in or add to the business, culture and team. Stick is when you are perceived to remain in post long enough for the employer to see a return on their investment. This includes points like salary affordability and even location, if the employer doesn’t believe your commute is sustainable. And ‘flight risk’ for those considered overqualified. Unlike capability, both these points are mainly subjective. What even is a culture or a sustainable commute anyway? Unfortunately, bias and assumptions are a common occurrence. I say ‘fair and reasonable’ because some employers are not, and even fair and reasonable employers make unfair or unreasonable assumptions. So - three reasons only, yet each comes together in unique ways, both for selection and rejection. A typical process In the market we’ve found ourselves in during the last few years, many vacancies have many candidates who meet all of those criteria above. The sheer volume alone can make it hard to identify the right candidates, more so when applicants may not know how to make their candidacy discoverable. By discoverable, I mean enabling the weakest link in a recruitment chain to see your suitability through the principles covered in Part Three. Here is what a typical vacancy might look like, working backwards, in a 2-stage interview process from a public job advert: One candidate offered the position 2-3 candidates at final interview 5-8 candidates at 1st stage interview 40-50 applicants who show suitable candidacy Another 40-150 applicants who aren’t directly suitable yet have transferable skills A further 150-200 applicants who are wholly unsuitable, which may be for reasons of work permit status or wrong background That could be a total of 400 applications, where only one person gets the job. Now let’s say those 5-8 candidates at 1st stage interview are all excellent, with little to choose between them. What separates those who are selected and those who are declined? You might be a qualified candidate. What’s to say the others aren’t as qualified in their own ways, some of whom might be more suited? Sometimes it’s such fine margins that feedback may be meaningless. I use this example to set the scene - there are other approaches to recruitment, such as headhunting, where the numbers look different. I expect if you are reading this, you have at some point battled your way through a competitive process. If you were ‘pipped to the post’ as a 2nd choice candidate, take solace in being 2nd out of possibly hundreds - that’s an effective performance to build on. When feedback goes wrong If you’ve ever worked in a hiring capacity, you may know that giving feedback can be fraught with consequences. Some years back, an early lesson on what can happen was a conversation I had with a candidate for an HR Director role. This was a maternity leave contract. He was a close 2nd to a strong candidate. There wasn’t anything he might have done differently and, had that candidate declined, they would have been pleased to offer him the position. He took the news and my feedback well, and we agreed to speak again at the earliest opportunity. The following morning, I had a call from the HR Director, who was aghast. She’d received a vitriol-filled email from the candidate after my conversation with him. Accusations, ill wishes and swear words aimed at a professional who was heavily pregnant. Even with the best intentions, seemingly good people can be triggered to act abhorrently. Given that feedback may seemingly overlap with discrimination areas, such as being overqualified, it's no wonder many companies choose to either give platitudes or not to give feedback at all. Generic feedback These all tether to the list at the top, either directly or in a way that doesn’t cause issues. What feedback would you give to someone that is abrasive or offensive at interview? How about someone with atypical body language or communication style? Someone who is down in the dumps? Someone who likes cricket when you like football? Someone who is arrogant and blind to the damage they’ve caused in previous jobs? Someone who is a maintenance mode manager in an environment of rapid change? Some of these descriptions relate to people who are illegally discriminated against, others to people who are simply unpleasant, and many more. ‘ Cultural fit’ may sometimes be the straightforward way to explain a decision. An easy way out with an individual you shouldn’t employ, something that hides poor process, something that hides discrimination, or something else. And sometimes a simple way not to hurt someone’s feelings. Whatever the reason, the worst it can invite is frustration for the candidate, rather than specific feedback which opens a can of worms. Let’s talk about overqualified. A popular social media post is that it’s impossible to be overqualified. The more accurate truth is that there are only two states - you are either qualified or not qualified for a vacancy. You are qualified if you meet the measure of capability, stick and fit. You are unqualified if you don’t meet all three. The use of the word overqualified is a lazy fallback that creates problems unnecessarily in a fair and reasonable process. The common perception is that overqualification relates to seniority, a level of expertise above the requirements for the role, expense or even age, and this can be true. But these aren’t necessarily the reasons behind the use of the word. The real issue with the word is its ambiguity. Hidden context When I recruit for any vacancy, there is typically a context not visible in the employer’s job description. This might be kept back for an interview or remain forever trapped in their heads. One example might be the role trajectory - how it will change over time. It might be a salary budget that has the balance of the team in mind. It might be that the role won’t change at all. From a retention perspective, more junior candidates have more room to grow before it becomes blindingly boring to them. Or it could be that the role is hands-on. A strategic expertise may be too far removed. These might not be articulated clearly yet can be fair selection criteria for declining a candidate - where the recruiter might say overqualified instead. By identifying these points, I can make them clear in my adverts and conversations, and applicants aren’t left bemused by decisions from hidden information. And when I am wrong in my decision, I welcome constructive disagreement to allow clarity. The examples here are simplified - the devil is always in the detail. In most adverts and job descriptions, this key hidden context is often missing, making overqualified hard feedback to take. I’d be annoyed if given that from an application to a generic job description-led advert full of innovative adjectives and no insight. Regrettably, overqualified can also used to hide discrimination. ‘Flight risk’ is a reason for declining a candidate that is often bundled with overqualified. “We think you’ll get bored.” Is intended to take the sting off, complimenting the candidate on their capability. It feels anything but, given candidates interview with intent and all available facts at their disposal. Yet, if you consider that one of the primary decision drivers in recruitment is risk, is there a legitimate concern here. There is a common long term thought process in a tough job search. The first is to compromise and consider why more junior jobs might be sustainable. Maybe it will let you focus on the work you enjoy without the baggage of further responsibility. Then if you were to gain the job, simply to be open minded about better opportunities that might be presented to you. Who knows what the future might bring, and you are likely to commit to this junior role long-term. Should that better opportunity present itself, you simply make an informed decision based on new information that presents itself. This is advice I give to job seekers who are offered a more junior job. Yet, with my recruitment hat on, over the past 2 years, I’ve never seen so many people leave recently taken jobs for better opportunities. Where the employer had “given them a chance”, something any job seeker wants, then lost that colleague with all the disruption it entails. This includes referring a friend to a peer, when they were desperate to leave their job. They’d even have taken minimum wage so bad was their current situation. My peer, following a two interview process, gave them a decent offer, only for them to accept a counter offer shortly after. I wish my friend well – he made the best decision that he could. Yet I have let my peer down through the value of that referral – personal equity. And my peer has let their hiring manager down through the same. These things happen – a common phrase in recruitment. Yet, every time a risk actually happens, it makes it harder to consider that risk in future. What these types of feedback have in common is that they can mean fair, neutral and unfair (and possibly illegal) reasons for declining your application. Unless you have evidence of the harmful connotation, you should assume there is fair reason. Here’s another common reason to unpick - industry experience. Not so much to discuss whether it’s right to reject someone on this basis. More so because it’s often a rejection that happens after an interview process, leading to the common question, ‘Why did they waste my time, when they knew I didn’t have industry experience?’ Industry experience is an example of how selection criteria shift throughout a recruitment process. This might be because of the hierarchy of decision-makers. It’s not uncommon for additional decision-makers to become involved late in the process, who may have a strong objection that wasn’t present earlier. Or how tight calls are judged between candidates. The closer you get to the offer stage, the fewer candidates you compete with. What weren’t issues before can become decision-making factors at the final hurdle, everything else being even. Is feedback worth it? Feedback can be a game changer, particularly when we help candidates overcome blind spots, improve how they play the game, and deliver a better interview. It’s always worth asking for feedback or ways to improve your performance. If that answer isn’t forthcoming, I’d question whether it’s worth pursuing, or if that energy is better spent elsewhere. Assuming you perform well at interview, the question to consider is - when has feedback made a difference to you? If feedback doesn’t make a difference you should act on, is it worth worrying about? Or is it healthier to draw a line through that application, and move forward? What can you do instead? Self-reflection is key. After an interview, think back on the areas you did well and what you might have done differently. For problem questions, write them down and think of better answers for future reference. For questions you felt you answered well - run through them with a friend and ask them to time your response. Waffling never helps. If you find yourself BSing, ask why. Was it a lack of confidence, rusty knowledge, or a gap to overcome? Did you prepare well enough? If answers aren’t coming from elsewhere, look within. How can you better show that you solve the employer’s problems, through your capability, fit and stick? 

What follows is dated in some ways and never more relevant in others. Originally published in January 2023, pretty much a month after ChatGPT was launched and E formalised. What E? "Experience", part of EEAT in how Google prioritises quality of content for organic search rankings. Here it means that content is written by people who have depth of experience in what they claim expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. Trustworthiness has never been more important, with what's changed in content in the past 3 years. Something I find lost when wading through the vast amount of quiet signals in LinkedIn AI content. Something increasingly hard to find in the rising wave of Candidate Resentment , as job seekers wade through conflicting advice and seek succour in beating the ATS bots. And ironically, in that last point, advice from people who often don't have Experience in any recruitment. EEAT is a mechanism for improving how the words of your recruitment process rank with the candidates you want to employ, when they compare you to others on the market. Such as the 12th generic advert of 37, a sloppier communication process than your competitor, or neglecting to show why someone should entertain a conversation with you. It may not be a ranking factor outside of google, yet they've formed it based on their understanding of what consumers should need from content. The same question we must pose of our recruitment. I find we are in a time of low trust, and this has to be the priority, flowing from Experience, Expertise and Authority. The solution for trustworthiness for me, is to place trust in the people we want to bring forwards. Through finding the right balance of radical candour and appropriate transparency, and through simple steps like clearly describing your recruitment process, responding to candidates and listing the salary. As with previous articles, I leave this intact for posterity, warts and all. January 2023 I’m sure we all have Google searches we’d prefer didn’t show up in our browsing history. And while you may not think of researching how to hide a body, no doubt when you have run searches you’ve played around with keywords to get the best results. Maybe you’ve even surfed job boards looking for a (“HR Manager” or “Head of Personnel” or “People Partner”) or some such Boolean string / semantic search, knowing full well there can be ambiguity in nomenclature. I don’t know about you, but when I see a page of search results, I’ll typically ignore the paid ads, and dodgy-looking links, then skim down to find headlines that most closely match my intent. Take my research for this article – “what are the pillars of SEO”? Crikey the results are confusing, with anything from 3 to 900 key pillars on which you must build your SEO, before requiring me to buy their stuff. And ChatGPT is unavailable for comment. Yet each has the common pillars which search engines prioritise to boost those sites’ rankings: 1/ user experience 2/ EAT – expertise, authority and trustworthiness Interesting isn’t it that a company (Google; YMMV) that spends a huge amount of money on their internet technology and makes £billions from securing users into their ecosystem place emphasis on what is written, how it’s written and how it’s experienced by the reader. While companies who trade on the internet build their websites around the rules set by those same search engines. Do they do this because expertise, authority, trustworthiness and experience are nice to have, or do they do it because of the commercial benefit? Yes, yes, there are technical elements to SEO from web page optimisation, to backlinks, to tools and processes like Ahrefs and SEMrush, to meta tags and so on. But think about your own internet searches. Which websites do you trust and why? I’ve no doubt these four content elements have an impact, and with good experience you’ll come back for more. You can boost the search rankings of a website solely by writing good landing pages, informative blogs with the right content, becoming an expert others ask for content from (driving more people to your own content). All for the consequence of shifting product. What happens if we apply those content pillars to recruitment? Let’s consider that people may come across you because they are interested in a which you either have now, have had or will have in future. They’ve become aware of you because of the potential of you being a viable employer at some point. The point of applying these SEO principles is that, when you are ready to hire, and they are open to considering such a vacancy, you’ve done the leg work so that your content sets them in the right direction. I’d start by asking these questions of any content you may have: Does it show expertise? Do you know your stuff? Does it show authority? Or are you hoping for a bite? Does it build trust? Or is it promises promises with no substance? What does the reader experience of these words? What content you ask? Your job adverts Job descriptions Career page ATS LinkedIn posts, comments and connection requests Videos and webinars Interview confirmations Communications, written, verbal and in person Employment contract These latter points may be ‘in process’ yet why wouldn’t you show trustworthiness and authority, or improve their journey and experience? Any piece of content someone you may wish to employ, or otherwise work with, comes across is an opportunity. Of course, I’ve written about similar topics before while discussing the commercial benefit of good candidate experience, conversion rate optimisation (CRO - fundamentally linked to SEO) and last week on branding. Yet while they are similar topics, with overlap, they are different parts of the same conversation. Brand raises awareness, SEO helps you look in the ‘right’ place when you need something, CRO converts, while the overall experience informs your final decision and your advocacy. If you’d like a reminder, click on my email archive . It’s no wonder there are marketing agencies that specialise in each field, while some offer a one-stop full-service mix, all with the purpose of helping clients sell more. From a consumer perspective, if you were aware of Nike as a reputable shoe company, love their marketing, needed a specific type of lightweight trainer, searched on google for shoes that meet these criteria, Nike crops up and the click-through leads to an informative enjoyable optimised experience? Well, you may just end up buying cheap knockoffs at the market, and your feet won’t thank you later. Or you may see that all these elements can come together to improve how you recruit, and the likelihood of filling your vacancies. The next email is on the misleading nature of active and passive candidates. Thanks for reading. Regards, Greg

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?