Black swan

Greg Wyatt • March 21, 2024

When everything else is known, it’s hidden context that completes the puzzle.

I’ve written about the importance of context in recruitment on a number of occasions. It’s the basis of what, who, how, when and why you should recruit.

You can read one such article here.

And I was reminded of its importance by listening to Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. (incidentally narrated by Michael Kramer who also narrates Wheel of Time)

He describes that one of the defining aspects of a complex negotiation is the Black Swan: a high-impact event that is difficult to predict under normal circumstances, but in retrospect appears to have been inevitable.

In recruitment, finding the black swan means looking at reasons you wouldn’t or couldn’t otherwise have considered that have led to undesirable outcomes.

This article shows a number of ways in which you can find the black swan, so that you improve both how you recruit and the outcomes of your efforts.

You may have also come across the same theme in ‘known unknowns’ and ‘unknown unknowns’ terms made famous by Donald Rumsfeld when discussing the invasion of Iraq in 2002, in which it is accepted you have to make pivotal decisions without full information.

Yet, in any negotiation, which can be any interaction, known or otherwise, with a candidate, full facts are the only way to predict, with confidence, the outcome.

You are right negotiation isn’t just about persuasion and influence, conversations and offers, it’s also about how you negotiate the journey beforehand.

An example.

Let’s take the Chief Operating Officer (COO) position in a company.

Typically this is the role that oversees all operations of a business and is the right-hand to the CEO.

This week I’ve been talking to a number of COO job seekers.

Let me tell you all of their CVs are pretty much identical.

And they all express dismay at having breadth and depth of transferrable skills, yet not being able to have a look-in for the various COO vacancies they go for.

If you look at the COO vacancies they apply for, they typically look pretty much the same:

  • Company info

  • Job responsibilities

  • Essential and desirable requirements

  • Benefits (often only the contractual ones)

  • £Competitive salary

  • Diversity statement

Compare the responsibilities and requirements, and the terminology is often pretty much interchangeable both between themselves, and the CVs of the many excellent COOs out there.

None of these vacancies stand out, nor do any of the COOs.

Yet are any of them in any way identical?

Of course not.

What’s missing is context.

When everything else is known, it’s the hidden context that completes the puzzle.

A COO of a bootstrapped £1m business has a similar CV to the COO of a multinational’s division.

A COO vacancy for a downsizing business in turnaround has the same advert as a COO for one in maintenance mode and another growing rapidly.

While all are market-leading progressive innovators.

If employers and candidates thought to show suitable and sufficient context, everyone would find recruitment a lot easier.

An obvious point, yet not one most people think to show.

Because it’s an unknown known.

In a sense, all these unknowns and knowns are like playing Jeopardy (you know that game show where they give you the answer and you have to ask the right question).

Answer: You haven’t shown suitable and sufficient context

Question: Why are all these applications completely unsuitable?

Answer: Candidates consistently ghost us.

Wrong question: What’s wrong with candidates? Why can’t they behave?

Good question: Why are candidates ghosting us?

Better question: How can we find out why candidates ghost us?

Right question: What can we do systemically differently to reduce the risk of candidates ghosting us?

Ghosting, counteroffers, bad behaviours - yes candidates are people who can change their minds. But for every strange decision is a black swan that is their hidden context.

Which might be as simple as trained distrust from widely bad recruitment experiences.

So while this is a simplified example, it’s used to show that problem solving can find unknown unknowns, by looking at known issues, finding their root cause, and then applying learnings against future events.

Another opportunity to find the black swans that can improve recruitment is to check your blind spots.

A wing mirror and shoulder check works well enough in driving.

Why not in recruitment?

Recruitment is a business where candidate and employer activity directly reflect each other.

Indeed a recruitment exercise is a reverse job search and vice versa.

Which makes learning from candidates a valuable exercise in improving recruitment.

But not just the candidates you know about, those in your process, but the ones you’ve rejected, ignored and even the ones who read your advert and chose never to get in touch.

I write about this in my 11-part Recruitment Reflected series, part 1 of which is here.

Of course, the problem with blind spots and bias is that often you aren’t aware you have them, which is why they are unknown unknowns in the first place.

But if these same are also black swans, then there is a significant opportunity to find improvement in recruitment by identifying them.

One such opportunity is through Diversity.

But not just the diversity of your people, but the diversity of problem-solving.

In this way retaining consultants who have insight you don’t is advantageous for many companies.

And a good recruiter can do the same at the outset of a recruitment project, by asking the right questions.

After all, if each unknown unknown has a simple question at its root, you need simply ask the right questions to find the black swan that can lead to the best recruitment outcomes.

Unfortunately, the opposite of this notion is why much recruitment is the way it is.

Companies who don’t proactively challenge their own assumptions, biases and unknown unknowns, will believe that’s just how recruitment should be done.

It’s the illusion of explanatory depth.

And so, any improvement is only down to skill or good fortune, rather than better principles and process.

But while you can always build skill and find luck from the right principles and process, you can’t do it the other way around.

How do you fix shoddy foundations once the house is built?

Perhaps the cracks you have in your walls are the symptom not the cause.

Thanks for reading.

Regards,

Greg

p.s. buy my stuff - recruitment, writing, projects. I can be your black swan.

A standard diagnostic

By Greg Wyatt • October 22, 2026
The other day I read a LinkedIn post about the iron triangle as it relates to recruitment. That you can be fast and good, but it will be expensive. That you can be fast and cheap, and it will be bobbins. Or that you can be cheap and good, but it will take longer than the heat death of the universe. At first glance it’s always made sense, with caveats, though that sense has been ablated with the promise of AI. Something that promises to be quicker, cheaper and better than people can manage. The only thing this triangle lacks is judgement-with-responsibility, something AI-style LLMs are currently incapable of, which is why they can be such problematic technology for recruitment. Though if your priority is speed, saving money, and filling jobs, the lack of judgement in even those algorithms that promise black box bias freedom might not be a problem you’d think much about. And when the top is spinning in an elegant way this might seem a standardisation you can apply everywhere, while you get on with your day job. Sadly the only place a spinning top doesn’t stop is when you were dreaming all along. AI has made me think about why the fundamentals of recruitment are so important, using judgement before we launch our projects. Which is why I like the 5Cs of project management as a way to look at recruitment: complexity, criticality, compliance, culture, compassion. With an adaptation and an additional C to be fit for purpose. It’s a great way to consider what approach to deploy: Complexity: the number of moving parts in a role, supply and demand in the candidate market, resources required to engage and bring forward the right people Criticality: the impact a vacancy has on the organisation. The opportunity a great hire brings. The damage the wrong hire can cause. And everything in between Channels: we go where the candidates are, whether at the end a headhunt, from an advert, from sourcing across LinkedIn Recruiter/equivalent tools, CV Databases, ATS records, other platforms, internal applicants, suppliers, consultants, temps, networking, referrals or even from a little black book, which I suspect will become more relevant again when data becomes noise Compliance: not just employment law, but how technology is used to find, engage and assess candidates in a fair, equitable and inclusive way Context: the full picture of the company – its organisational and local cultures, principles and values, mission, vision, goals, challenges and trajectory. The nuts and bolts, what that means for your candidates, and trying to understand the same in them Compassion: recognition of the impact a vacancy has on the employer and its team, balanced with how everyone can be brought together. And compassion for everyone that interacts with our recruitment, in process or invisibly Yes, I swapped context for culture. Hiring for context necessarily includes culture, and goes much further. And I've added Channels, which should always be established before going to market. I like these because they’re a way to ensure that how you recruit is proportionate and appropriate. They may even highlight you shouldn’t hire at all. But what you shouldn’t do is assume one recruitment process is the same as the next, nor that the investment made in reaching desired outcomes should be. What may seem expensive to you might bring an unexpected return on investment. What seems slow at the outset might bring a starter quicker than hoped – proper planning and all that. What seems good quality might fall apart, when the promises prove inadequate. That’s why it’s so important to diagnose first, before standardising. Greg p.s. You're welcome to try my free Hiring Diagnostic & Plan . It's not based on the 6Cs, which I think require more depth than a free tool can reasonably provide. Instead, it draws on principles from other disciplines: True and Fair from accounting, and Suitable and Sufficient from health and safety. It's free and private. Give it a go, and let me know if you'd like to chat through how the 6Cs might apply to your recruitment and enhance the resul 

Introduction to the hidden jobs market

By Greg Wyatt • October 14, 2026
On Wednesday 21st, I'll be doing a LinkedIn Live on The Hidden Jobs Market, joined by Paul Woodhouse. Paul is a marketing leader who has been looking for work in our challenging market. A previous role was a Hidden Job, and has also hired people himself. We'll be looking at his experiences to give a little substance to what can be a nebulous term. I'll show the steps anyone can take to become available for unadvertised vacancies, and for advertised vacancies that are filled by other means - after all employers consider more than only applications when taking a standard approach to recruitment. As a recruiter I don't advertise around half my vacancies, which might be for reasons of confidentiality, a lack of definition in the brief, a on the QT replacement for someone about to be dismissed, or mass availability of candidates. I'll use LinkedIn Recruiter to look for potential candidates, CV databases that can be more effective for immediate hires, my network for referrals and recommendations. My previous candidate pools for other vacancies - some of whom might have once open a time been applicants. Indeed, that last point shows the absurdity of much job search advice. If you apply for a vacancy on an ATS, you might be rejected, yet still be considered for future vacancies in the same employer. A hidden job hidden by an advertised job, where tailoring your CV with AI might make you less likely to be considered. Join us on Wednesday, or if you aren't free, the recording will be available immediately. Both can be found here: https://www.linkedin.com/events/7516049669924225027?viewAsMember=true . The chapter below from A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) shows a simple metaphor for the hidden jobs market, why it's such a silly term, and a better way to think about your own job search. 3 - The hidden jobs market In most of the calls I have with job seekers they will ask me about The Hidden Jobs Market. What is it? Is it real? How can I access it? Before we get into that, we should talk about tomatoes. As you read this next section, imagine a tomato is a job. So, you want to procure some tomatoes. How would you? Your local farm shop. The supermarket. Wednesday’s stalls. Maybe you subscribe to a weekly box of veg. Maybe you grow your own. Maybe you trade for the tomatoes from Tim’s allotment. Maybe you look at people funny when they ask for an intro to Tim because his tomatoes are wonderful. You likely wouldn’t buy some from Amazon - they don’t sell fresh food. Not to me anyway. Though you might buy tomato seeds from Amazon if you grow your own. Maybe even cans of crushed tomato, sauce, puree, or whatever meets your needs. As the channel you use to source tomatoes isn’t the only consideration, so too is the configuration of what you need. While you and others all access tomatoes in different ways, some of which overlap, and some of which are mutually exclusive - none of these channels are hidden. It’s just that you may not know how to access some channels, while others won’t be available to you. Now I want you to read that section again. Instead of being your desired job, you are an employer whose desired tomato is a candidate of choice. While recruitment is the inverse of a job search (more on this later), the analogy is better from the employer perspective because they are on a buyer’s journey where you are the product. Employers want to fill their vacancies through the best means. Some vacancies are easy to fill, others not so, and they will access the channels necessary to find the right people. In many situations, they won’t advertise a vacancy, which might be for reasons of confidentiality or convenience. Some say this is as much as 80%, a flawed figure which comes from a flawed survey, or perhaps it comes from a newspaper article in 1974 before computers were a thing. In my recent small-scale research, it was indicated more than 62% of vacancies are advertised. 53% responded they advertise more than 75% of vacancies. Many of the respondents were headhunters, whose business may be based on not running public adverts. I expect this will have skewed the results lower than the true figure. What employers don’t do is hide vacancies systematically. To access these vacancies, you need to understand the channels through which employers hire and invert these channels to form your strategy. Much like how tomatoes are sold through channels which consumers buy from. Is the hidden jobs market real? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that not all jobs are advertised. Some are confidential, some for reasons as mundane as not wanting to deal with hundreds of advert applicants. No, because it isn’t a term that has inherent meaning. Speak to people who advocate for it, often a career coach, and they’ll tell you it’s anything from personal branding and networking to going direct and being referred in. When vacancies aren’t advertised by employers, they often fill them through sourcing - this is a specialist skill related to finding people where they may be found: LinkedIn, CV databases, corporate databases, GitHub, Facebook, YouTube. These are all channels you can access as part of an appropriate multichannel strategy. Which means if you have the right multichannel strategy (I call this Through-the-Line, which we’ll cover in parts 2 and 3), you access all jobs available to you, including those which are hidden and those which are in witness protection on another continent. Who are the headhunters that specialise in your domain? Who are the people who can refer you to jobs? How can you be more discoverable on LinkedIn and CV databases? How can you gain an understanding of the ways in which your ideal job is recruited, so you can take advantage of those channels? Those are better questions to answer to allow an effective through-the-line, multichannel strategy involving outbound and inbound leads. Despite me being vocal about why Hidden is a flawed notion, two people have thanked me for advice that led to their new roles claiming they’d accessed the hidden jobs market. As I gritted my teeth in hidden rage and congratulated them on their success, they unveiled the truth. What they actually did was map out their real life network of people they’d worked with and got in touch. If the people you know don’t know that you are looking for a role, what reason would they have to tell you about a vacancy? It’s simple marketing - right place (LinkedIn), right person (ex-colleague), right message (looking for work), right time (we’ve a vacancy). Of course, that takes a bit of luck to achieve the right congruence. Odds you increase through volume and follow up. And when you do find those opportunities, they are easier to win because you are a known name, not another unknown CV. There it is, the hidden tomato market.