Rule of three

Greg Wyatt • March 14, 2024

This is the first in a series on negotiation in recruitment, inspired by a recent listen.

To kick things off, let’s look at the rule of three.

I’ve found throughout my career that engagement and commitment come from tackling the same issue in three ways.

Whether it’s a presentation -

“Say what you’re going to say; say it; summarise it.”

Something we’ve been trained to do even in watching the news, as they attempt to get us to stick around… “later this evening”.

Or in candidate discussions, something I developed when I noticed the problem with selling too hard.

More on that later.

In his insightful (audio)book on negotiation, Chris Voss talks about the psychology of negotiating, influencing and manipulation of antagonists.

His negotiations skills came from hostage situations, yet he adapts this brilliantly to the corporate context. Because people are people.

It feels like my early-career attempts to do the same with candidates.

But candidates aren't antagonists.

In an employer candidate discussion, they should be deuteragonists - everyone wins in a successful job offer.

If you accept candidates can be the dual protagonists, then every candidate must be, including the readers that walk away without you ever knowing.

Because you don’t know at initial stage who the winning candidate is going to be. Especially those you can’t yet know about.

And everyone is a hero of their own story.

A second difference is, that while Chris states everyone wins in his negotiations, those wins are imbalanced - he aims to get more of what he wants while leaving the other feeling they got a good outcome.

The third difference is that Chris’ negotiations lead to a final decision, ideally to his advantage. Yet candidates can decide to do one thing, committedly, then change their mind for what can be impenetrable reasons, for changes in circumstance, or just because they want to.

Regrettably, there is a fourth point which ruins the form of this article. Our negotiations with candidate should also be a double assessment of fit - are they right for the role, and is the role right for them? In this way, a no can be a great outcome for everyone - ‘that's wrong’ riffing off the book's words, because you find out concrete reasons why it was never going to work out as early as possible.

I came to a pivotal moment in my career some years ago, in doing some recruitment for Anglian Water.

The recruitment manager said to me - “you have a problem with your candidates sticking.”

While my immediate inclination, as someone doing their best, is that it’s the candidates at fault, she was entirely correct.

How could it be that candidates seemed enthused by a role I presented to them, yet decided not to go for an interview?

It’s simply this - in conversation, it’s easy to get excited and think what a great opportunity!

Yet with time to reflect, the impassable objections can come up.

Objections that are sometimes easy to ascertain early on, while others are initially philosophical and then utterly practical the closer to offer/start/end of probation you get.

From this, over many years, I came to three adjustments in my candidate engagement.

  1. that an initial part of a first call should be about them and them only, so as not to bias the call to the vacancy. In doing so you can link the vacancy to their aspirations while identifying hard objections (the ones which mean they should withdraw for good reason). Candidates often want to hear about the vacancy first, but it’s in everyone’s best interest that I hear their side beforehand.

  2. that sending an application immediately after that call, can result in the situation with Anglian Water. Therefore at least one follow-up should occur. Perhaps a rare situation, yet a problem which has a solution. The immediacy of flinging CVs over at speed is a consequence of first-past-the-post recruitment and one reason I’ve moved away from the transactional contingency approach.

  3. that combining these with formal competency interviews can be intrusive on a candidate’s time. How could I implement a follow-up to gain commitment and qualify? The answer became my assessment-over-time interviewing technique:

    1. a call as described in point 1

    2. a follow-up call to discuss questions and concerns - to ensure proceeding to the next step is the right decision

    3. a third call, if it is of interest, to make sure I represent them in the right way

Perhaps those three points in the third point might seem like overkill, but this can happen over a couple of days, and isn’t so rigid we can’t adjust things on the fly.

I’ve found three byproducts of this:

  • I build trust naturally for the right reasons. By making a safe place to express concerns, in confidence, these concerns are often raised. And if a role isn’t right - well we’ve saved everyone a lot of time. Equally, it’s hard to fake during what candidates may feel are the ‘in-between’ moments - you can get a sense of what they are genuinely all about

  • this approach contributes to better hiring accuracy and retention. I can’t prove it at scale, because I’m a low volume recruiter, but it is the candidate mirror of my client work, and over the past few years I’ve filled every vacancy (that wasn’t cancelled by economic shenanigans), with an average retention of 3.8 years. But more importantly with feedback my placements are often future leaders, and exceed expectation.

  • this contributes, along other measures, with fewer issues - ghosting, poor/no shows, ‘losing’ people to counteroffers are rare issues for me.

You can apply this rule of three to any part of recruitment.

  1. Offer an interview; confirm the interview; check-in before the interview

  2. Verbal offer; confirm when paperwork will go out; check paperwork ok

  3. Pre-boarding; onboarding; induction

Chris Voss talks about his Rule of 3, to get counterparts to agree three times in conversation. Through calibrated questions, summaries and labels.

It works very well in the scenarios he describes.

But while employers love their ransom lists and the demands they buy from their candidates, candidates have their own non-negotiables too.

This gives an intermediary a unique opportunity to intervene, in the right way, in their negotiations.

Gaining commitment too early on can backfire, so instead we have to help them negotiate their deal with us, in service of the outcomes we want.

Besides, as an employer, if you ‘win’ a negotiation with a candidate and they come aboard cheap, well they may well vote with their feet if a better offer comes up.

Starting my business in 2011, I had an opportunity to build my philosophy of recruitment, in what I now describe as an outside-in approach.

I’ve made a 126-gallon load of mistakes, and continue to do so, but the results for employers, and candidates, are excellent, and I continue to learn and develop my thinking.

In this series, I’ll look at different aspects of negotiation from outside-in process, to owning candidate resentment, to problem-solving.

I'll look at my process in recruitment, alluding to some of Voss’s principles, so you could treat his book as a companion piece of sorts.

You can adjust my notions in line with Voss' negotiation style, adopt it as your own or... well this has always been called Your Mileage May Vary.

Thanks for reading. 

Greg

p.s. I’m bitterly disappointed that World Pi Day hasn’t coincided with British Pie Week.

p.p.s. sorry, I forgot to summarise at the end… rule of 3, recruitment vs Voss, coming soon, etc etc

Why five? Innovation from Iteration, pt 1

By Greg Wyatt • February 26, 2026
So here were are, the start of a new series. This series may be around 10 editions, looking at the things other industries do that we can implement into recruitment. These were written 3 years ago, right at the start of the AI zazzle, and in some ways have dated quite a bit. In others, the way in which they haven't dated at all, because the principles of how we live our business lives can be universal. So, I'm not sure yet, how much editing I'll do, whether there will be any inclusions, or whether I'll leave articles intact, as a moment in time. I've learnt all of these notions from candidates and clients, as I came to understand the function of their vacancies. Hearing about the daily practice from people doing jobs, I couldn't help but notice the same relevance in recruitment. So while these articles are hardly comprehensive, perhaps they'll make you look at your candidates differently, in what we can learn from them, and how that might improve our recruitment. Why five? December 2022 Ask anyone involved in active recruitment what their key problems are, and they’ll likely talk about skills shortages and candidate behaviour. On the face of it, problems which are out of our control, worthy of complaint with little opportunity to find improvement. But what if these were issues that weren’t entirely out of our control? What if we could apply a replicable process to understand what’s really going on, and how we can make a difference? Fortunately, we needn’t invent the wheel, as other industries have already done this for us. One such is 5Y, or Five Whys, a problem-solving technique that was developed by Toyota in the 1930s. It's part of the Toyota Management System that has inspired much of my work. Five is the general number of “Why?”s needed to get to the root of a problem. Often you can get to the heart of the issue sooner, sometimes later. Often there are multiple root causes. More than just solving problems, it’s about establishing practical countermeasures to prevent these problems from coming up in future. 5Y is an example of Toyota’s philosophy of “go and see”: working on the shop floor to find out how things work in practice to find ways for iterative improvement. This isn’t a theoretical idea to try out on a whim – it’s based on grounded reality and almost always works. There are two costs – time and accountability. Here’s a practical example, then a recruitment one. (Names have been removed to protect my identity) Problem 1 : The children were late for school. Why? Traffic held us up. Why? We left the house late. Why? The children weren’t ready on time. Why? Their school uniforms weren’t prepared. Why? We hadn’t set them out the night before. Here the countermeasure is to get everything ready the night before, rather than blame traffic for being late. Perhaps we might have gotten to school on time without heavy traffic, but that is an element out of our control. Of course, here there is another root cause – very naughty children – but better to focus on the simple changes. And sometimes traffic is the root cause after all, once you’ve ruled out other elements in your control. (2026 note: my eldest now often drives my youngest to school. A time laden solution I hadn't considered three years ago. Now I don't care if they're late 😆) Problem 2: Candidates keep ghosting us. Why? They weren’t committed to responding. Why? They didn’t accept my requirement for a response. Why? They saw no value in my requirement. Why? I didn’t create an environment where this requirement has value ( root cause 1 ). Or because they are very naughty candidates, with a bad attitude. Why have we allowed someone with a bad attitude in our recruitment process? Because we didn’t prequalify them well enough ( root cause 2 ) The first root cause is something we can work on by giving candidates what they need, building trust, and working to mutual obligations. There are many ways to do this – I’ve already talked about examples in previous newsletters. It comes down to good candidate experience and reciprocity. The second root cause requires us to work harder at understanding candidate needs, aspirations, behaviours and attitudes at the outset of a recruitment process. There’s a reason for their behaviour. We can be accountable for finding it. That’s no mean skill to develop, yet an essential one for anyone whose core responsibility is recruitment. And it’s hard to do in a transactional volume process, so the question then becomes, does your process help more than it hinders? You can apply 5Y to any issue you come across, as long as you are prepared to be accountable. At worst you may find that the things that were out of your control are at fault. In this case, you are at least armed with good information to report to your stakeholders, by ruling out other possibilities. What’s the point of doing all this? For me it’s continually improving how I recruit, with the consequence, in the example above, that I am rarely ghosted at all. And you can 5Y any issue you come across. Are poor agency CV submissions their fault, or in part down to your briefing and process? Are skills genuinely scarce, or is your requirement unrealistic? Is it true that your agency hasn’t listened to you, or do you engage the right partners in the right way? 5Y has the answers. Regards, Greg

Map the Market. Jobseeker Basics XVIII

By Greg Wyatt • February 23, 2026
What follows is Chapter 21 in A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . It's a good example of how a job search is an inverted recruitment exercise, but also how the same principles from recruitment can be applied in a job search. Market mapping is one of the first steps of a search process in what is often called headhunting. Here though, instead of an exercise that helps find a person for a job, you help find a job for you. This can be in one chunk, at the outset, and iteratively, as you learn more information. It's a great example of how LinkedIn can be used as a data repository, given the vast majority of professionals are present here. And if they are present here, the insight that is their careers is too, allowing you to identify potential viable employers, who works there, and therefore where else they may have worked, with further potential hiring managers. The snake that eats its own tail. Try doing the iterative work above, every time you come across someone new, whether in an application or in networking . You can use this to build out your network, identify companies to contact proactively. Simon Ward and I will talk more on this in our LinkedIn Live on Tuesday February 24th at 1pm GMT. You can join us, and view the full recording afterwards, here: Is The Nature Of Networking Changing for Job Hunters? If you happen to read this as a hiring authority, market mapping is one of the invisible processes in a structured search. It can often take me 80 to 100 hours to fully map a role for potential viable candidates, given I try to find non-traditional candidates as well as those that are easier to find through sourcing. 21 - Map the market Market mapping is a common activity in executive search. Why wouldn’t you adopt the same approach in your inverse of a recruitment exercise? The idea is to fully understand your market, so that you are better able to navigate it. This is a summary chapter because market mapping is both a strategic and a tactical exercise. I’ll cover some of the How of mapping in Part Three. There are three ways in which to map the market. The vacancies you are qualified for This is about determining which vacancies you should focus your attention on. In which domains does your capability directly apply? This could be context related, if your expertise is in start-ups, growth, downsizing or other contexts. It could be industry related - your process manufacturing expertise might directly apply in food, plastics or pharmaceuticals. It could be job related, with the right applicable skills. Establish where there is a market for you, and if what you offer is needed by that market. Advice on the transferable skills trap (p55) and whether you are qualified (p178) to apply will help. The geography of your job search Where are all the employers and vacancies that you can sustainably commute to? A geographical map can help you target opportunities by region. What resources are available to help you with this map? Searching online for local business parks, even driving around them, can give a list of viable companies to contact. Directories and membership hubs. Local newspapers, social media stories. If you see a company you like the look of, say from an advert, search on their local post code. Who else might be there? The chapter on doorknocking (p241) has more ideas. The people of your network Every time you come across someone you might build a relationship with, connect with them on LinkedIn. Then check out their career history. Who else have they worked with? Where else have they worked? This works for peers, hiring managers, and recruiters - a headhunter in one company may well have worked in a similar domain in a previous one. Is there anyone at these previous companies you should introduce yourself to? What about their listed vacancies? Building out a map of relevant recruiters to develop relationships with (if they answer the phone) can lead to vacancies. Treat it as an iterative exercise. Check out the chapter on networking (p236). This map isn’t just about potential opportunity. It’s also about information that might be helpful now and in future. This might be for job leads. It might be industry insight you can share through content. It may even be topics for conversation in interviews or with peers. Make sure you track it in the right way, whether through Notion, Excel or other resources you have available. With any information, check it is accurate, then prune appropriately. Prioritise on degrees of separation (closest first) and context fit (where what you need is most closely aligned with what you offer).