The god of small things (redux)

Greg Wyatt • June 21, 2024

I read a comment about Ikigai yesterday.

ikigai (small i) is the i in my adaptation of AIDA for job advert writing - AiDE.

Attention, ikigai, Definition, Experience. You can see an example of it in action in this advert:

I try to write effective, rather than imaginative adverts - response has been good so far, in what is a niche role with few active candidates.

I use ikigai in its original meaning, a conversational Japanese notion and the subject of last year’s article, part 8 in my series that breaks down AiDE, how and why it works:

It’s 9.08am and I’ve just logged on to write this.

I’ll clock off again around 11am to make my daughter’s birthday cake, although we didn’t actually call her Leia, unlike the original text to my colleagues 13 years ago.

This is my ikigai.

Part of the sovereignty running a small business allows, and why I’ll decline any approach about working for someone else, no matter how brilliant that opportunity might be.

Of course, if you knew that, you might appeal to it in how you contacted me.

With sovereignty comes accountability too.

But ikigai doesn’t always have to be about the positive -

one of my most evocative recent memories is standing in a field with the Border Terrier, during the first part of the pandemic.

Half a mile away, my wife was in week 4 of a severe case of Covid, back when the Daily Mail was vomiting headlines about 41 year old healthy mums dying from it.

My business had vanished over night, leaving me to fill my days with helping job seekers find jobs that didn’t exist, while trying to pretend everything was fine with children who were going stir crazy.

But those allowable dog walks were an oasis, in a storm of worry and uncertainty.

They too were my ikigai, finding fulfilment in the smallest of moments, despite what was going on elsewhere.

If you’re familiar with ikigai, you are likely familiar with the Westernised version of it - one that has little to do with the Japanese concept it derives from.

You may know it as this, the Purpose Venn Diagram:

«image description: not ikigai»

It seems a worthy and lofty goal, to have all these elements come together.

Yet while it feels important, it can be knobbish and condescending, leading away from a concept that can change how you look at candidate attraction.

What about people who hate their jobs, and do it only to pay the bills and feed their children?

Are they not achieving something worthy?

I think about that when I get a bad experience with the market checkout attendant. What’s going on in their lives?

Indeed they likely have an ikigai in the real sense of the word, fulfilment in knowing they have looked after their loved ones.

That’s a goal to write home about.

In Japan, ikigai isn’t a big deal. It’s hardly a deal at all, it just means ‘what makes life worthwhile’ and what you get out of bed for.

It’s a conversational notion found in both the small and big things, which can change over time as our priorities change.

A cup of coffee on a Spring morning.

Watching your daughter perform at the Christmas play.

Your end-of-year bonus.

Someone unexpectedly replying to your 99th job application, the first of none.

The joy of brow-beating an underperforming team with the threat of mass dismissal (the people we hate have things they thrive on too).

Commuting 90 minutes each way, listening to an audiobook, so you don’t have to think about work or home.

Ikigai.

Because it’s these moments that appear trivial, indifferent or even damaging to others, which define who we are and what we want from our lives and careers.

Moments that can delay, prevent, facilitate or drive decisions.

And if we know the ikigai of our ideal candidates, we can appeal to them.

Typically they will relate to why people leave jobs for others and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

But they will also relate to the ikigai your vacancy fulfils, whether the role, the culture, the compensation or the seemingly trivial.

Define the ikigai of your role with meaning for your candidates, and you’ll appeal to people whose own ikigai is a match.

That’s the principle of it anyway, the ‘I’ in AIDE: attention ikigai definition experience.

I’ll write about the practice, and how to apply to every touch point, from a job advert to an offer letter, in the next edition.

Thanks for reading.

Regards,

Greg

p.s. If you’re curious about the title of this article, it’s from the exceptional novel by Arundhati Roy. The title has a few meanings. One is that seemingly small things shape our lives, while another is that our society shapes how we enjoy the small things. It’s the perfect title for this post.

p.p.s. you can read the rest of the series in the archive. You’ll need to scroll back to March last year for part 1.

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.