The pain mirror (redux)

Greg Wyatt • June 15, 2024

“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 are swept up in a career even if it is against 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

P.s. I’ve written over 100,000 words since launching Your Mileage May Vary, and my subscriber numbers have doubled in the past year. So I’m republishing some of the articles I found more interesting to write, over the next few weeks, which will be new for many.

Introduction to personal branding

By Greg Wyatt • March 30, 2026
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? 

Nothing but the truth. Innovation from Iteration, pt 4

By Greg Wyatt • March 26, 2026
I was tempted to use another Tom Cruise AI image for this article, but his hands ended up looking like feet, which wasn't a true representation of him. Probably not fair to use AI in this way either, stealing copyrighted material without permission. And so I use this AI 'stock image' instead, which is probably also highly unethical, but feels more suitable and sufficient . Anyway here's an article about why the same principles are crucial for good recruitment: ‘True and Fair’ is an accountancy concept that lies at the heart of reporting, and can be applied effectively in recruitment. Its meaning is that any financial statement made about a company should accurately and completely represent its financial position and performance. The role of auditing is to confirm that documentation meets this definition. Do so and everyone knows what they are dealing with. HMRC, shareholders, customers, suppliers, employees – useful, and in many cases necessary, to have access to a true and fair view of a company’s accounts. Can something be true and not fair? In 2001, Enron went bust, a huge scandal with real-life repercussions that led to new legislation in the US. Their accounts were true, in that they conformed with the required laws and standards. However they had an incredibly complex reporting structure which made it impossible to see the overwhelming debt they had. Poof! Bye-bye a $100bn company when this all came out in the wash. How about fair but not true? This can happen if a situation is described which gives a fair picture but lacks accuracy. An example here could be the UK politician who HMRC deemed behaved fairly but made errors in his tax reporting. Only a few million quid plus penalty. What types of recruitment documentation does this apply to? Three key ones that spring to mind (although there’s no reason it can’t be applied everywhere): The job description. The job advertisement. The CV. If these three documents were always a true and fair representation of either a job or a candidate, you’d interview and hire better candidates who stick around longer. With the caveat that these documents should also be ‘suitable and sufficient’, if you remember last week's edition. Documents are the first step in a recruitment process, relating to a decision to apply and the decision to interview. Is it not the case, that the second most common complaint in recruitment is “not what we expected”? Therefore, if we nipped this complaint in the bud, with true and fair documentation, wouldn’t life be better for everyone in the recruitment process? What does true and fair mean in recruitment documentation? I think it has to cover three points. 1/ factually correct 2/ shows context suitably 3/ describes sufficiently An immediate objection might be that job descriptions are always true and fair, but I’d argue this is actually rarely the case. If you recruit for a new role, do you audit your job description against the current context? If you have a generic job family description does it show the specific day-to-day duties of a role? Have things changed in the current role that makes it different to the last time you recruited? A common scenario in recruitment is that Greg resigns, and the hiring manager says “we’d love someone just like Greg”. Yet if Greg resigned, wouldn’t someone just like Greg be at risk of resigning for the same reasons in future? Would now-Greg have applied for the same role that then-Greg applied for? Which definition of Greg is the true and fair one you’d hire? It feels strange writing my name like this. There are lots of different situations in which a job description that was true and fair a few years ago is no longer so. The only way to ensure it is true and fair, is to audit documentation prior to going live. You may think a fully representative and accurate contextual analysis is too time-consuming for most vacancies, especially where it doesn’t actually matter if there is some inaccuracy. “Oh yeah, that’s not relevant anymore”. But if you have a key hire that can make a difference in your business, ‘true and fair’ should be the starting point, each and every time. If you have a systematic process that finds truth and fairness, you’ll see the benefit of applying the same across any vacancy – for the reason that the time invested at the outset is offset by interviewing fewer unsuitable candidates and wasting less time and resources overall. And what should be the more important reason of better recruitment outcomes. For any project I take on, this is the first step – getting the documentation in order. Get it right and everything flows from there. It’s a key reason behind my nearly 100% fill rate. It’s also one of the reasons my average tenure is over 4 years for key hires. These achievements don’t come down to chance. They come from my process. If you've forgotten why suitability and sufficiency is the other pillar, here's an example that isn't suitable: Nineteen experiential bullet points might be true and fair but will also encourage ideal candidates to run away screaming. See you next time. 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 (available for no more than two vacancies) - manage part or all of your recruitment on an individually designed basis for one client. This can be a large as end-to-end delivery of a programme of vacancies, or as small as writing one job advert for a key hire- recruitment strategy setting - outplacement support