Personal Branding, pt 3

Greg Wyatt • May 14, 2024

This is the final part of this mini-series.

If you want to write content that gets you closer to a job it has to support, contribute to and start conversations with the right people.

With that in mind, I’ve had a change of heart in this post.

I was going to share some content writers who I think nail personal branding; however, the problem is that all it does is reflect my own interests.

There is no one right way to write content on LinkedIn, and we all have different strengths and weaknesses, personalities and goals.

Some authors focus solely on thought leadership, some on selling, some on humour, some combining them in a variety of ways.

You can try and copy others, but isn’t it better to help you find your own rhythm, that works for you?

Today’s article is about these points:

finding content writers who may inspire you, and using that as a catalyst for your own words
the vulnerability of writing
how and why to write a flair post that promotes you
fine-tuning to form a habit
what else?

If you are new to this newsletter, don’t forget to check out the archive , and Part 1 & Part 2 of this mini-series.

finding content writers who may inspire you, and using that as a catalyst for your own words

There are broadly two ways to find writers that can seed your ideas for content.

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 are the key criteria 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 personally, 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.

Replying to other people’s posts is a great way to find your voice, particularly if they reply to your comment.

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

If a comment sparks interest from other readers, it can be a great 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.

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

Great 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 a great 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 authors’ profile - connect and follow their content, if you like what you see
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 continuing the conversation
Take note of the most interesting conversations, and at the end of the week pick at least one to try and write your own posts
You don’t need to publish them if you aren’t comfortable - save for later if not

Personally, I’d avoid the viral content that combines relevance + relatability + entitlement + readability. These writers mainly aren’t interested in your engagement specifically, just the numbers.

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

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 comms.

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, and I can tell you that clicking “send” is always a high point of anxiety for me in sending these newsletters.

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

Tumbleweed ?

If no one reads it, you can always try that post again later.

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’s 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 too.

Marriage requests?

Unfortunately, dubious and toxic behaviour isn’t uncommon. I’m fortunate I’ve only come across a handful of loons in my time on LinkedIn, but you may well come across them.

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, while you open yourself up to the opportunity of new relevant people starting conversations with you:

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

how and why to write a flair post that promotes you

If you only ever write one LinkedIn post, it can be the one that announces your availability to the world.

I’ve no doubt you’ve read the many posts highlighting that someone’s position has been made redundant / laid off, and that they are excited for the next challenge. Perhaps they are even grateful for the time they had with their now former employer.

These often get a ton of engagement, primarily from fellow job seekers, recruiters and friendly strangers.

If their real-life network sees this, they may not even be aware that person was soon to be available. In a lucky coincidence, they may even have a vacancy or know someone recruiting for a suitable role.

But when you read these posts yourself, what can you tell about that person’s credibility from what they’ve written, if all you have is the evidence of their words?

Writing a post that announces your availability is a good idea.

Writing something similar that highlights what you are looking for, your key strengths and how you can help - that’s a post you can take forward.

Because as well as announcing your availability, you’ll show people you don’t know what you are suited for, helping them potentially help you.

While people who check out your profile first, say if you’ve sent an application, may read that post in support of the other information they have. And you can share it in DMs with your real-life network when you catch up with them.

I’d write this post in the classic advertising framework - AIDA: attention interest desire action. It’s the basis of many adverts that influence you to buy.

Attention.

This is your elevator pitch to set the scene. It can be clever or to the point.

“Following the layoffs at ABC Corp I’m now available for my next HR Director challenge, where I can set the people strategy and help scale your business by hiring great people who will improve your bottom line”

Interest.

Highlight your key qualities, which make you stand out.

“I’m MBA and CIPD qualified, with experience growing venture backed Biotech companies as they commercialise, through workforce planning and fostering a great culture”.

Desire.

Turn the screw on what makes you great.

“At ABC corp, I was instrumental in growing their team from 50 people at R&D stage to 350 with a turnover of £110m, leading to the sale of the business to Evil Overlord ltd, who promptly scrapped my job”

Action.

Make it easy for them to contact you (although don’t include email addresses or websites in the post, which LinkedIn will penalise).

“Please get in touch if you know of a suitable role or agency. I’d be grateful if you could like, comment and share for your network”

In your own words, of course.

I helped one of my connections with her first flair post.

As someone who had low engagement (less than ten reactions and few comments per post), this form of flair post led to:

Impressions: 12128
Reactions: 106
Comments 39
Reposts: 13
Additional profile views since posting: 188
Additional connection requests since posting: 50

Within a week of posting.

You may think of this as a salesy approach (there’s nothing wrong with selling btw, it’s a noble art), but I look at it as raising awareness with your network, to help them help you. Few decent people will judge you for asking for help.

fine-tuning to form a habit

It’s a good idea to set a sustainable plan for content writing, which you can adjust on the fly.

Maybe it will look something like this:

Comment on 5 posts a day
Send 5 connection requests a day
DM 5 existing connections a day
Write 5 posts a month

Gamifying helps.

Expectation setting is a good idea too. I see many great writers get zero engagement and it takes time to build - LinkedIn is a hungry beast and penalises time away, especially early on.

But even if you have a long-term plan, posts that fly, such as a timely flair post (make sure to DM me if you write one), can galvanise you to write more.

While, there will be times you don’t have the motivation to write, in which case you can re-purpose your previous content.

If someone didn’t see your flair post, for example, the first time around, you’re helping them by re-posting. While those who have seen it will only be reminded of your availability.

Besides, few people remember or notice repeated content online. While, when you watch TV adverts, you’ll always enjoy seeing a good one again.

what else?

Writing content is, for me, a low-friction way of promoting yourself. From relationships I’ve started through content, I’ve been invited on podcasts, LinkedIn lives, and other marketing activities.

It’s led to many real-life conversations where I’ve been able to help employers and job seekers, including paid recruitment.

However, it is easy to get swept up in LinkedInnitis, where you do it for its own sake.

If you find you’re on LinkedIn because of how it makes you feel, it’s worth taking a step back and revisiting what you want to achieve.

LinkedIn is a business and wants to trap you into its platform - check out the Social Dilemma on Netflix for why and how this happens.

But if you keep intentional, it’s a wonderful marketing platform, research tool, and community. And something you can take advantage of.

That’s the end of this mini-series. Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions, or need some help writing content.

Thanks for reading.

Regards,

Greg

< Older Post

Newer Post >

Jump the shark. A Recruitment AiDE, pt 13

By Greg Wyatt • January 29, 2026

May 2023 You’ve heard the phrase, I take it – “jump the shark”? It’s the moment when one surprising or absurd experience can indicate a rapid descent into rubbishness and obscurity. When it’s time to get off the bus. Typically in media. Jumping the Shark comes from an episode of Happy Days in which the Fonz does a water ski jump over a shark. 👈 Aaaaay. 👉 A sign creators have run out of ideas, or can’t be bothered to come up with fresh ones. In movies, sequelitis is a good example of this – an unnecessary sequel done to make some cash, in the hope the audience doesn’t care about its quality. Sometimes they become dead horses to flog, such as the missteps that are any Terminator film after 2. It’s an issue that can lead to consumers abandoning what they were doing, with such a precipitous drop in engagement that the thing itself is then cancelled. Partly because of breaking trust in what was expected to happen next. And because it’s a sign that the disbelief that was temporarily suspended has come crashing down. If you don’t believe that your current poor experience will lead to further, better experiences, why would you bother? Once you’ve had your fingers burnt, how hard is it to find that trust in similar experiences? It doesn’t have to be a single vein of experience for all to be affected. Watch one dodgy superhero movie and how does it whet your appetite for the next? You didn’t see The Eternals? Lucky you. Or how about that time we had really bad service at Café Rouge, a sign of new management that didn’t care, and we never went again? Just me? Did they sauter par-dessus le requin? Here’s the rub – it matters less that these experiences have jumped the shark. It matters more what the experience means for expectation. So it is in candidate experience. It’s not just the experience you provide that tempers expectations – it’s the cumulated experience of other processes that creates an assumption of what might be expected of yours. If you’re starting from a low trust point, what will it take for your process to ‘jump the shark’ and lose, not just an engaged audience, but those brilliant candidates that might only have considered talking to you if their experience hadn’t been off-putting? Not fair, is it, that the experience provided by other poor recruitment processes might affect what people expect of yours? Their experiences aren’t in your control, the experience you provide is. Of my 700 or so calls with exec job seekers, since The Pandemic: Lockdown Pt 1, many described the candidate experience touchpoints that led to them deciding not to proceed with an application. These were calls that were purely about job search strategy, and not people I could place. However, one benefit for me is that they are the Gemba , and I get to hear their direct experiences outside of my recruitment processes. Experiences such as - ‘£Competitive salary’ in an advert or DM, which they know full well means a lowball offer every time, because it happened to them once or twice, or perhaps it was just a LinkedIn post they read. Maybe it isn’t your problem at all, maybe your £competitive is upper 1% - how does their experience inform their assumptions? Or when adverts lend ambiguity to generic words, what meaning do they find, no matter how far from the truth? How the arrogance of a one-sided interview process affects their interest. The apparent narcissism in many outreaches in recruitment (unamazing, isn’t it, that bad outreach can close doors, rather than open them). Those ATS ‘duplicate your CV’ data entry beasts? Fool me once… Instances that are the catalysts for them withdrawing. I’d find myself telling them to look past these experiences, because a poor process can hide a good job. It’s a common theme in my jobseeker posts, such as a recent one offering a counterpoint to the virality that is “COVER LETTERS DON’T M4TT£R agree?” Experiences that may not be meant by the employer, or even thought of as necessarily bad, yet are drivers for decisions and behaviour. I can only appeal to these job seekers through my posts and calls. What about those other jobseekers who I’m not aware of, who’ve only experienced nonsense advice? What about those people who aren’t jobseekers? What about those people who think they love their roles? What about all those great candidates who won’t put up with bad experiences? The more sceptical they are, and the further they are from the need for a new role, the less bullshit they’ll put up with. What happens when an otherwise acceptable process presents something unpalatable? Might this jumping the shark mean they go no further? Every time the experience you provide doesn’t put their needs front and centre or if it’s correlated to their bad experiences…. these can prevent otherwise willing candidates from progressing with your process, whether that’s an advert they don’t apply to, a job they don’t start, or everything in between. Decisions that may stem from false assumptions of what a bad experience will mean. Instead, look to these ‘bad experience’ touchpoints as opportunities to do better: instead of £competitive, either state a salary or a legitimate reason why you can’t disclose salary (e.g. “see below” if limited by a job board field and “we negotiate a fair salary based on the contribution of the successful candidate, and don’t want to limit compensation by a band”) instead of a 1-way interrogation… an interview instead of radio silence when there’s no news - an update to say there’s no update, and ‘How are things with you by the way?’ instead of Apply Now via our Applicant Torture Sadistificator, ‘drop me a line if you have any questions’ or ‘don’t worry if you don’t have an updated CV - we’ll sort that later’. Opportunity from adversity. And why you can look at bad experiences other processes provide as a chance to do better. With the benefit that, if you eliminate poor experience, you'll lose fewer candidates unnecessarily, including those ideal ones you never knew about. Bad experiences are the yin to good experience’s yang and both are key parts of the E that is Experience in the AIDE framework. The good is for next time. Thanks for reading. Regards, Greg

How To Network For A Job - Jobseeker Basics XIV

By Greg Wyatt • January 26, 2026

The following is Chapter 42 in A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . In a sense it's a microcosm of how any commercial activity can see a better return - which is to put the needs of the person you are appealing to above your own. It feels counterintuitive, especially when you have a burning need, but you can see the problem of NOT doing this simply by looking at 99% of job adverts: We are. We need. We want. What you'll do for us. What you might get in return. Capped off by the classic "don't call us, we'll call you." If you didn't need a job, how would you respond to that kind of advert? In the same vein, if you want networking to pay off, how will your contact's life improve by your contact? What's in it for them? 42 - How to network for a job Who are the two types of people you remember at networking events? For me two types stand out. One will be the instant pitch networker. This might work if you happen to be in need right now of what they have to offer or if mutual selling is your goal. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this but it’s a selling activity pretending to be networking. If you want to sell, go and overtly sell rather than disguise it with subterfuge. Lest we mark your face and avoid you where possible in future. The second is the one who gets to know you, shows interest and tries to add to your experience. You share ideas, and there’s no push to buy something. They believe that through building the relationship when you have a problem they can solve, you’ll think to go to them. It’s a relationship built on reciprocity. One where if you always build something together there is reason to keep in touch. And where the outcome is what you need if the right elements come together: right person, right time, right message, right place, right offering, right price. Job search networking is no different. The purpose of networking in a job search is to build a network where you are seen as a go-to solution should a suitable problem come up. In this case the problem you solve is a vacancy. Either because your active network is recruiting, or because they advocate for you when someone they know is recruiting. It is always a two-way conversation you both benefit from. Knowledge sharing, sounding board, see how you’re doing - because of what the relationship brings to you both. It is not contacting someone only to ask for a job or a recommendation. A one-way conversation that relies on lucky timing. That second approach can be effective as a type of direct sales rather than networking. If you get it wrong it may even work against you. How would you feel if someone asked to network with you, when it became clear they want you to do something for them? You might get lucky and network with someone who is recruiting now - more likely is that you nurture that relationship over time. If your goal is only to ask for help each networking opportunity will have a low chance of success. While if your goal is to nurture a relationship that may produce a lead, you’ll only have constructive outcomes. This makes it sensible to start by building a network with people that already know you: Former direct colleagues and company colleagues Industry leaders and peers Recruiters you have employed or applied through Don’t forget the friends you aren’t in regular touch with - there is no shame in being out of work and it would be a shame if they didn’t think of you when aware of a suitable opening. These people are a priority because they know you, your capability and your approach and trust has already been built. Whereas networking with people you don't know requires helping them come to know and trust you. Networking with people you know is the most overlooked tactic by the exec job seekers I talk to (followed by personal branding). These are the same people who see the hidden jobs market as where their next role is, yet overlook what’s in front of them. If you are looking for a new role on the quiet - networking is a go-to approach that invites proactive contact to you. Networking with people who know people you know, then people in a similar domain, then people outside of this domain - these are in decreasing order of priority. Let's not forget the other type of networking. Talking to fellow job seekers is a great way to share your pain, take a load off your shoulders, bounce ideas off each other, and hold each other accountable. LinkedIn is the perfect platform to find the right people if you haven't kept in touch directly. Whatever you think of LinkedIn, you shouldn’t overlook its nature as a conduit to conversation. It isn’t the conversation itself. Speaking in real life is where networking shines because while you might build a facsimile of a relationship in text, it's no replacement for a fluid conversation. Whether by phone and video calls, real life meetups, business events, seminars, conferences, expos, or in my case - on dog walks and waiting outside of the school gates. Both these last two have led to friends and business for me though the latter hasn’t been available since 2021. Networking isn’t 'What can I get out of it?' Instead, ‘What’s in it for them?’ The difference is the same as those ransom list job adverts compared to the rare one that speaks to you personally. How can you build on this relationship by keeping in touch? Networking is systematic, periodic and iterative: Map out your real life career network. Revisit anyone you’ve ever worked with and where Find them on LinkedIn Get in touch ‘I was thinking about our time at xxx. Perhaps we could reconnect - would be great to catch up’ If they don’t reply, because life can be busy, diarise a follow up What could be of interest to them? A LinkedIn post might be a reason to catch up When you look up your contact’s profile look at the companies they’ve worked at. They worked there for a reason, which may be because of a common capability to you Research these companies. Are there people in relevant roles worth introducing yourself to? Maybe the company looks a fit with your aspirations - worth getting in touch with someone who may be a hiring manager or relevant recruiter? Maybe they aren’t recruiting now. Someone to keep in touch with because of mutual interests. Click on Job on their company page, then "I'm interested" - this helps for many reasons, including flagging your interest as a potential employee Keep iterating your network and find new companies as you look at new contacts. This is one way we map the market in recruitment to headhunt candidates - you can mirror this with your networking The more proactive networking you build into your job search, the luckier you might get. While you might need to nurture a sizeable network and there are no guarantees, think about the other virtues of networking - how does that compare to endless unreplied applications? I often hear from job seekers who found their next role through networking. This includes those who got the job because of their network even though hundreds of applicants were vying for it. While this may be unfair on the applicants sometimes you can make unfair work for you. It can be effective at any level.