How to doorknock

Greg Wyatt • March 19, 2024

Doorknocking is an old-school sales approach you may well have experienced, such as when a young person with a clipboard rings your doorbell and asks you to change electricity provider.

My wife even bought from exactly this scenario.

But while it’s not uncommon in a business-to-consumer situation, it can also work business-to-business… if you can get past security.

Although technology has moved on, the principle is the same, whether in person, by phone, email, letter or LinkedIn:

You approach someone cold and create your own opportunity.

This isn’t an approach for everyone, and certainly requires a modicum of chutzpah, but if you are used to a high failure rate in applying through job boards and agencies - what do you have to lose by not gaining a job through being proactive?

And more than that - look at all the advice on LinkedIn on how to improve your odds in a job search.

It’s all transactional and applicable, available to everyone - if you all follow it, everyone takes the same step forward.

While taking steps others are less prepared to do means the approach alone may stand out.

Of course, if you encounter the equivalent of a sign which says ‘Tresspassers will be shot’, that’s something to consider if the rules are important.

I’ve never applied through traditional means to a job. Here’s my successful application history -

  • Walked into the Cinema and asked for a job

  • Walked into Office World and asked for a job

  • Worked for Dad

  • Talked to one of my ex-colleagues and gained some by-the-call phone research work

  • Temped through an agency

  • Walked into the Pickerel Inn and asked for a job

  • Referred to Workplace Law

  • In managing their (small-scale) recruitment, I got to know the MD of Whitehill Pelham as a supplier. I went to work there.

  • Tapped up to return to a more senior role at Workplace Law

  • Started my business upon being given the boot


It’s true I did apply through job boards and agencies, but it’s mainly through my own means I’ve secured my employment.

Doorknocking has one key advantage and one key disadvantage as a route to a job.

The key advantage is that you approach companies by category, not because they are recruiting. These categories can be:

  • All the employers in your local business park you can walk around

  • Top 100 employers in your particular domain, whether industry or tech

  • Companies that have recently had funding and are about to scale

Or however you choose to categorise a list.

The point is to make contact and make a case for yourself, on the principle of

the right person, right time, right place, right message, right offer, and right price.

So of course, there’s an element of luck involved, for these elements to all come together.

We’ll dig into this in the next section.

The key disadvantage is that they may not be recruiting, or ever have a need to employ you, and even if they do have a vacancy, you still have to establish the right fit.

That means a logically low hit rate.

But again, let’s go back to job board applications - how many hours have you spent applying for jobs where you never even heard back?

The difference is the anonymous rejection of a volume based application versus the personal rejection from your direct approach.

Your threshold for an acceptable failure rate will inform whether this is the right approach for you.

Right person, right time, right place, right message, right offer, right price.

This is a principle of any marketing activity, including other means of looking for work.

Let’s reorder the list and see how we can make them work for us:

Right Place

Those Categories above. The place is the Company, and how you contact them. You can go in blind, if you are a bold prospector by nature, or you can research them in advance.

Right Person

Typically this will be the ‘next one up’, Head of department, Director, CxO or Owner.

Who would be the budget holder at work? Those are a good target. Research, as usual, can help - look them up on LinkedIn, PR, news, video platforms. What can you find out?

Right Time

In most situations, if you categorise by anything not time-related, this will be pot luck.

What if, instead, you categorise by timed factors? What might be a hiring trigger?

Perhaps you could contact a list of companies who have just announced funding, or a big win - events that can trigger investment in the business through hiring.

Or maybe you hear through the grapevine that Janine is about to go off on maternity leave.

If their process isn’t time-related, can you make it time-related?

“We aren’t hiring right now” might mean they’ve run out of headcount in H1 (Jan to June), and may have a new budget in July. What can you find out that helps you both?

And if you have radio silence, why not try again in a month or three months?

Think about how you buy - if you don’t need something it doesn’t matter so much about how good the message is.

If you do need something, someone who keeps in regular touch might sell you what you need.

Right Offer

You have more opportunity for career creativity, in being unemployed, than someone entrenched in a 9 to 5 permanent job.

What problems can you fix for a company, in a non-traditionally employed capacity?

Let’s say an employer has a problem that needs fixing. They don’t have capacity to do it right now, it isn’t burning enough to seek professional help, and there isn’t sufficient work in view to make it a job.

What if you caught them at the right time?

An out-of-work TA Manager who offered to revamp an onboarding process.

A web designer who notes lots of issues with their website.

A strategic operational issue that is their unknown unknown, but your expertise identifies.

A swamped team who could benefit from their admin burden being reduced.

An orchard that needs pickers at harvest - no shame in that.

Who knows what that might be?

What starts out as a short-term / project / part-time piece of work can become proof of concept. The FD of one company I’ve recently recruited for created his own job, contacting them a couple of years ago because he loved their products.

Right message

This is both nuanced and vulgar.

It’s nuanced because nailing the message CAN create an opportunity a poorly written message can miss.

But it’s vulgar because sometimes you can just catch people at the right time, no matter how cruddy your message is.

This is very much the case in recruitment - I’ve picked up several senior appointments by happenstance.

“I’m glad you called Greg, I’m just starting to think about my maternity cover in June.”

Had I not called, that HR Director may well have gone to the specialist HR recruiters she is also in touch with.

If you have a strong hook in your message -such a key area of rare expertise, or a clear issue you’ve identified which companies may have - great, go in with that.

But if you don’t - done is better than procrastinating:

“Hi Greg, I live locally to Bircham Wyatt Recruitment. Love what you do. I wondered if you might be recruiting for an apple picker at any point? If you can’t help, could you point me in the right direction?”

Right price

I’ve left this til the end because much of this is variable and subjective. What are your needs? What can they afford? What does the market say? How flexible can you be?

Research will help, if you can get a sense of what they generally pay through indeed, glassdoor or others. Or maybe what comparable companies who are advertising will pay.

One approach might be simply to pro-rate your salary over the period you’ll work there.

As a related aside, door-knocking can sometimes inadvertently give you access to jobs that are being actively recruited. Consider it a happy byproduct of your work, if you find yourself in this situation.

Like any activity in a job search, it’s worth persevering. Otherwise it’s too easy to think, after 10/20/100 unsuccessful efforts that the approach itself is at fault.

There is always an element of good fortune in any marketing activity.

This may be out of your comfort zone, in which case it’s an opportunity to grow.

Or it may be out of your capacity, which is understandable.

You may even find other approaches are more effective than you.

But the only certain thing is that if you don’t try you definitely won’t benefit from it.

Thanks for reading.

Regards,

Greg

p.s. if you found this article helpful, may I ask that you share it with fellow job seekers? This will always be a free publication, and I have no intent to monetise career coaching, which I hope allows it to be as accessible and objective as possible.

I’ve no idea if ‘liking’, commenting or reposting helps. What about ‘commenting for coverage’ 😂?

Why not share it in a LinkedIn post? You may start some interesting conversations, and help others you don’t yet know.

De Facto Automated Rejection & You

By Greg Wyatt • November 12, 2026
While 2027 remains surprisingly far away, with plenty of time to start applications, attend interviews, gain an acceptable job offer and even start work, I'm already thinking about the biannual update to A Career Breakdown Kit. Only, nothing's really changed in terms of what might affect the steps you take, overall, since the last update, so any changes are likely to only be minor. This might surprise you, if you feel that AI has increasingly eaten into how applications are administered and assessed. While the changes that are actually happening make the treatise of this article more important, which is to look at how recruitment actually happens in informing your strategy. Changes that may not be widespread but are emerging - deprioritising advertising roles in favor of sourcing (looking for candidates), because of the volume of applications; adding extra friction into applications, penalising relevant candidates because of AI applications made automatically; even discounting applications wholesale if they come from they are sent by a mass-apply service. I do see people regularly showcasing features of various ATSs over the years that seem to show automated rejections, yet these features rarely worked well, and haven't changed much in two decades. As I mentioned to Martyn, at a recent Recruitment Technology standards launch in the UK, "it doesn't matter how good the technology layer is, if the human layer is the problem". Martyn Redstone is Head of Responsible AI at Warden, and I'm fortunate that he will be joining me and Simon Ward on a LinkedIn Live as we discuss what this topic means for job seekers. I'll update this newsletter with the event when it's live. In the meanwhile, Martyn is well worth following to understand what's actually happening with AI in recruitment. It's still important to acknowledge the poor experiences job seekers have, and to try and shed light on what is happening, in what I call: 6 - De Facto Automated Rejection and You When there’s any discussion over Beat the Bots, job seekers often assume they are unfairly treated, while people from the recruitment profession deny it happens at all - “that’s not how the ATS works”, “we don’t use AI that way”, and so on. The best objection I see to the common recruiter stance is, “What does it matter how we are rejected, if we were never fairly considered?” That question is the heart of this chapter and, to answer it, I need to propose a new term: De facto automated rejection. Definition: where an element of a recruitment process leads to an application being either rejected or not considered, irrespective of capability, contribution, or potential alignment. That may sound an awful lot like Automated Rejection, yet it isn’t the same thing. Examples: No application after number 100 considered Illegal discrimination Legal discrimination - location, salary, industry, qualification, etc - legally permissible decisions driven by assumption Relying on configured ranking within an ATS to prioritise applications Not considering candidates who aren't picked up by a Boolean search (sourcing) Filter questions at advert stage (e.g. do you have a work permit?) Applying after the vacancy is at interview stage And many more All de facto automated rejections have one thing in common, and it isn’t automation - it’s human decision-making, including shortcuts and assumptions. Some of those examples above are cited when talking about auto-rejects. However, these are all consequences of human intervention and the choice not to intervene. There are an increasing number of AI products that automate these steps, with the requirement of human oversight - I've yet to speak to a recruiter that wholly relies on them, and few who don't view every application. This is one reason why ATS Compliance and Beat the Bots are a red herring. The advice fails not because it’s wrong, but because it optimises the wrong layer. The system is only a component in the process, governed by humans. If you misdiagnose de facto automated rejection as a technical problem, you’ll keep trying to outsmart systems instead of changing how you’re seen, found, and prioritised by people. Understanding how recruiters handle their process and giving them what they need in an application has to take priority. While the same steps that “optimise human compliance” are implicitly system-compliant. The challenge is that human compliance relies on what makes us individual: our skill level, our insight, our psychology, our biases, our resources and the time available to us. As well as how you navigate these. Without forgetting that we are people like you, often trying to do too much with too little. It’s no wonder our frustrations mirror yours, with the difference that we earn a salary for our experiences. ATS Compliance feels more comfortable, because it gives a clear direction, even if it’s the wrong one. It is true we use filters and keywords to prioritise how our applications are presented to us. We do the same when we look for candidates, whether on LinkedIn, job boards, our ATS or other means. All this does is present results in a way that allows us to spend more attention on those that meet the criteria we have set. When we review those results, the way that information is presented informs whether we progress them or not. To be human compliant, your application has to be discoverable, then it has to convert interest. Fail on either front and you’ll either be rejected or you won’t hear at all. If humans are the reasons you are rejected for reasons unrelated to capability or contribution... well, I think that’s rather more problematic than technology. Beat the Bots and ATS Compliance aren’t just a red herring - they can actively hold you back. Because they place the wrong priority by presenting a strategy, rather than simple hygiene. Your wider strategy should encompass far more than applications - getting found, starting conversations, doorknocking, networking and all these other opportunities that can get you closer to a job: These are fundamentally covered in a human compliance strategy. I just happened to call it A Career Breakdown Kit instead, with how to do these in Parts 2 and 3. I realise this may create a feeling of overwhelm, when you realise there is much more to a better application than the transactional steps of ATS compliance. Yet these same steps will improve every aspect of your job search and some are straightforward to take - go to www.bwrecruitment.co.uk/resources for the free CV template that is an easy starting point. 

Salary on the job description

By Greg Wyatt • November 11, 2026
I've written many variations on the article below, over the years, and it seems sensible to revisit given the UK government's announcements around salary transparency. On the whole, I'm for it, with the many advantages it brings. But like a lot of things in recruitment, there is a more involved discussion to be had, especially when this fix treats the symptoms, not the rot. That's not to say the fix isn't worth doing, just that it won't fix many of the problems underlying a lack of transparency. This article is a little dated, in terms of the research shared, but I think the points are as relevant as ever. Originally published May 2023 Salary on the Job Description? Yes, the headline is trolling. The question should be ‘salary on the job advert?’ You wouldn’t confuse a job description with an advert, would you? This is a subject rife with disagreement around ethics and practicality, and worth broaching again considering recent campaigns in the UK to increase salary transparency and ban the ‘what’s your current salary?’ question. Let’s focus on some practicalities first, based on UK research I ran last year for my “Accessing a Candidate Short Market” guide:  Job boards can penalise you for not listing salary. As of December 2021, Totaljobs penalises adverts that don’t list salary, and these aren’t sent out as job alerts to candidates (who may be passive). These adverts are considered sub-standard. Unlisted salaries attract fewer qualified applications. This was estimated to be between 20% and 45% fewer, across the job boards I talked to. LinkedIn reported that not only can you expect more applications, you may also expect better-qualified applications when the salary is advertised. My work supporting senior job seekers confirms this - many would not apply to adverts that had no salary or "competitive salary" because they felt this was a waste of their time. There is less emphasis on salary negotiation from the candidate side, due to transparency in pay. This is a key part of equity, relating to gender, race and intersectional identity. According to Payscale 's research, white men are most likely to negotiate the highest salary. It’s simple – if you advertise vacancies and don’t list salary, you risk receiving fewer, less suitable applications. Then there’s the ethical question, where a common argument is that there is ‘no ethical reason that salaries can’t be listed’. Now, while I’m a proponent for advertising salaries, where possible, I think this ethical argument isn’t the right one - ‘can’t be’ is a strong statement. I think a better question is ‘how does this do harm’ when establishing reasons for not listing salary. This balances pragmatism with the most important aspect of ethics. It can be a complicated question too in scenarios like this: How do you establish salary transparency for job families across multiple regions where the local pay is established by HQ in one country? Currency exchange rates and cost of living mean that a fair salary one day may not be the next, therefore flexibility in not listing salary may be ethically the right thing to do if the intent is right. What about new vacancies that serve to solve a business problem and can be recruited at different levels? What about practical situations like recruiting hard-to-fill vacancies during a wider redundancy programme, whereby listing a salary would create concern in unrelated areas of that unsettled business? It's not always as simple a question as we’d like to think. If you’re facing a complex situation in advertising a role, I recommend describing your stance in the advert itself, if you legitimately can’t state the salary. At the same time, as we’ve seen in the US, legislation to enforce salary transparency creates situations such as Netflix apparently advertising a range of $90-900k. Who does that help? The problem with this kind of legislation is that companies can comply while continuing the behaviour that led to the legislation in the first place. It’s palliative, rather than treating unfairness at its root. We should also consider the unforeseen consequence of salary transparency, such as this research which appears to show a reduced link between performance and pay: Influence of Pay Transparency Helping candidates negotiate better pay or terms is a privilege I enjoy. And there's more to understanding someone's existing remuneration than simply establishing whether they can afford to move. Sometimes these conversations reveal that someone is being underpaid. With evidence of what their experience and contribution might command elsewhere, they can go back to their current employer and make the case for a pay rise. That might mean they decide not to move at all. Which is a perfectly good outcome for them, even if it isn't for the vacancy in the short term. It also opens up the counteroffer conversation early. If their employer could resolve the reason they're considering leaving, I'd rather understand that before they accept an offer elsewhere. There's a benefit for prospective employers too. A new employer may budget £52,000 for a role, believing that to be market rate, based on historic data. But if conversations with suitably experienced candidates reveal that their existing remuneration, expectations and other opportunities consistently indicate otherwise, there's good reason to revise either the budget or the requirements. If that budget does prove unrealistic, and it's the same budget other team members are measured against, it can also create the argument to revisit everyone's salaries - subject to affordability, of course. After all, it's cheaper to retain fairly paid staff with all the knowledge they have than to replace them. Of course, conversations with candidates aren't a substitute for proper salary benchmarking. But they can reveal problems that wouldn't otherwise be apparent. There are also situations where understanding the whole package matters. What if someone currently receives a 16% pension contribution and moves to a role offering a 10% pay rise but only a 5% pension? Car allowances, RSUs, tax-efficient packages? Remuneration is a more involved conversation than simply salary. And none of this means someone's existing salary should determine what they're worth to their next employer. If their previous salary was unfair, using it to determine their next salary risks perpetuating that unfairness. And if an employer routinely offers a 15% increase on previous earnings, the new salary may have little relationship to the contribution that person can make. It makes sense to pay commensurately with contribution and capability, rather than what may be irrelevant history. So I understand the reasons for wanting to ban questions about previous salary. They're often used badly. But I think there's an important distinction between asking to establish someone's worth and asking to understand their circumstances. One can perpetuate unfairness. The other can help identify and correct it. If legislation restricts these conversations, I'll adapt how I offer this support. But I'd hope any restrictions recognise the difference between using salary history to determine an offer and voluntarily discussing remuneration to help someone make better decisions. I hope you’ve found these thoughts helpful to start a broader conversation in your business. My thoughts aren’t set in stone, so please let me know your opinions if you disagree. Thanks for reading. 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 Manage part or all of your recruitment on an individually designed basis for one client Outplacement support Email me on greg.wyatt@bwrecruitment.co.uk if you'd like to discuss.