Content strategy and philosophy

Greg Wyatt • April 27, 2026

What follows is Chapter 40 of A Career Breakdown Kit, and part two of a three part series on Personal Branding.

Except it isn't. There are various definitions I revolt against, with good reason, in a job search.

Personal branding, hidden jobs markets, ATS compliance, and all the others. Terms that seem to hide secret wins, not replicable steps, especially when hidden behind a paywall.

I call it the title that's expected because of the questions job seekers ask me.

You may recall my article on the Hidden Jobs Market breaks it apart and rebuilds it into a cohesive multichannel marketing strategy that allows you to access the whole of your jobs market.

And so it is with my personal branding series.

This isn't about your brand. Or even about your reputation.

It's about pushing content that starts conversations with relevant people - such as peers, former colleagues, recruiters with a vested interest in these content areas, and even people that can put you closer to a job. Not forgetting fellow job seekers you can share experiences with - as long as you don't dwell on the negative.

And it's also about writing in a way that is both true to you and your profession - because conversation has to follow in the same voice as you write, and should support your work, when in work.

It's a strategy and philosophy that mirrors earlier chapters on networking, doorknocking, getting found and converting interest.

It isn't about writing credible statements in a content savvy way that shares unprovable anecdotes, hacks that lack substance, and where a funnel means more than a lesson. That way is the way of social media marketing - this is about conversations that matter.

40 - Content strategy and philosophy

While a personal brand might be the goal, your content strategy should be the priority. It can be applied even if you don’t like the idea of branding.

Much is made about LinkedIn’s algorithm and how you need to do this that and the other to get engagement.

You can look at it differently, ignoring the algorithm on the whole, and still achieve much the same.

These are the outcomes I aim for and see when writing content:

Start conversations
Help others
Sharpen and spark ideas
Raise awareness and trust
Have a laugh and a chat

I’ve gained friends I’ve never spoken to and friendly acquaintances I only know through ‘comments.’

As well as paying clients who have benefitted from my service.

Just as importantly, I have more credibility with candidates who place weight on LinkedIn content.

Content makes it easier for me to start conversations.

It’s important for me that I either enjoy the content and its consequences or find it fulfilling.

I don’t talk openly about my personal life, family or challenges. Something I agreed with my wife when I started publishing content.

Instead, I show all of myself in my words - quirks and all. So that if we ever speak in real life, there isn’t much of a disconnect.

Start with other people’s content

Find content writers who inspire you and use them as a catalyst for your own words.

There are two ways to do this.

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 do 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 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.

Commenting on other people’s posts is a good way to find your voice, particularly if the conversation continues.

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

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

The comments you build with them can be the start of a mutually beneficial relationship.

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

These are 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 an effective 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 relevant profiles - connect and follow their content
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
Take note of the most interesting conversations and at the end of the week pick at least one to inspire your own posts
You don’t need to publish them if you aren’t comfortable - save for later if not

I’d avoid the viral content that combines relevance + relatability + entitlement + readability. These writers are more interested in engagement numbers than your specific interest.

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

From a marketing perspective, different types of content have different places in your lead generation:

Awareness
Interest
Consideration
Evaluation
Purchase

Each post, comment, DM and real-life conversation can relate to these steps and support your goals, even if you aren’t treating these as a marketing activity.

Time and time again

There’s a lot of investigation into optimal times to post. It’s more important that you are available to reply attentively in the first hour.

The course of a post is often dictated by the performance during this time.

I actively reply to comments for around an hour a day with LinkedIn on in the background of other work.

How much time can you set aside per week and per day for content?

Even if you only write a couple of posts a week, this will probably take a couple of hours.

You can expect low performance initially, with some exceptions, as it takes time to build inertia.

Set aside a sustainable amount of time each week and commit to it over a period - try for 10-12 weeks and track how things have developed.

You may find it becomes an enjoyable task. Try not to get distracted by engagement for its own sake and keep your goals in mind.

Types of content to try

Engagement on LinkedIn is built primarily on relevance and relatability. Even ragebait, given it drives strong feeling.

You can write a 100% relatable post that everyone takes relevance from and see massive engagement. Though that engagement may not serve your goals.

Or you can write a post that is 100% relevant to the problems you solve in your career, and the people who will find it relevant are from a small niche facing the same problems.

This is why a photo of you with your dog will fly, while a carefully thought out post about the optimisation of widgets in a byzantine setting will appear to be shouting into a void.

Or you can blend the two through storytelling, pivoting observations into business content, and copywriting formulae like AIDA (attention interest desire action) and PAS (problem agitation solution).

Everyone will have different forms of content that will be effective for them.

What do you want your ideal readers to experience?

What would ‘you five years ago’ would find helpful?

Do you want readers to see you as a credible expert?

Someone who is authentically vulnerable?

Your warts and all personality?

Someone who stands out in a sea of competition?

Someone who is thought-provoking, helpful, or altruistic?

The answers are much the same if you posed these questions of interviewing.

This is no coincidence, given your message should be consistently delivered no matter where it is received.

With that in mind, here are some content ideas you can try:

How you might solve a problem specific to your industry
Stories from your everyday life
The challenges in your job search
Observations on a news story and how it relates to your work
A flair post highlighting your availability
Asking for thoughts on an idea you are interested in
Sharing insight you find fascinating, whether that’s films, video games, science or sport
Stories from your career where you can show growth (everyone loves a hero’s journey)
Business frameworks, processes and techniques you find useful - Pomodoro Technique, scientific method, STAR, what do you use?
Equipment you use for work
Developments in your workplace and culture
Thoughts on content you find inspiring
Memes, humour, satire

Google content ideas for LinkedIn or ask ChatGPT, Claude and others.

I wouldn’t use AI to write articles. I do use them for ideation and to sense check.

‘Write me a post for LinkedIn that shows the link between Tesla cars and how to develop an HR strategy.’

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.

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. I can tell you that clicking ‘send’ is always a high point of anxiety for me in sending newsletters. Imagine how I felt when I clicked Publish for this book.

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

Tumbleweed?

If no one reads it, you can always post it again another time.

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 is 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.

Marriage requests?

Unfortunately, dubious and toxic behaviour isn’t uncommon.

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. You will open yourself up to the opportunity of new relevant people starting conversations with you:

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

Weight and depth of opinion

A couple of years ago, I had a message from an out-of-work Sales Director asking for some feedback.

He’d shot a video for LinkedIn where he talked about why he should be snapped up and received a lot of praise for the post. However, he was confused because a CEO he trusts told him it was poor and made him look boring.

He knew I’d give him unvarnished feedback, which was what he needed to find some clarity on what had happened.

Truthfully, the CEO was correct.

What had happened?

All of the positive engagement was from fellow job seekers and people who wanted to support him. That he’d done it was praiseworthy in itself and was rightly celebrated, rather than the quality of what he had produced.

None of them had hiring authority or were in a career similar to someone who would be his line manager.

The video didn’t show him how he comes across in person either.

While the positive feedback was fantastic for validation, his video worked against him. What might happen if a hiring process thought his video was boring when the role being recruited for has persuasion as a key requirement?

I’m pleased to say his redo was excellent, showing off his charisma while delivering the same message.

Who can you rely on to be this CEO for you in your career?

Why you should start now, even if you don’t see any benefit for months.

Starting cold on LinkedIn can take time to get traction.

When your first post bombs you might never think to do a second.

Going in with the expectation of little impact for the first three to six months is healthy in making a sustainable habit.

If you’re out of work though, three to six months may seem too far off to be worthwhile when there are many activities that offer a quick turnaround, such as applying for jobs.

I’ve spoken to many job seekers who’ve been out of work for more than six months and had decided not to write content at the outset of their search.

If they had, they might now be seeing the benefit of their work.

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My new book - A Recruitment AiDE

By Greg Wyatt • April 30, 2026

I'm thrilled to announce the publication of A Recruitment AiDE. A guide, philosophy and discipline for effective key hire recruitment. The timing’s perfect, given the deluge of AI content that floods our feeds. Imagine how these similarly produced generic adverts land with people you want to talk to. "We're thrilled to announce we want, we need, here’s our shopping list, why aren’t you responding and oh what’s this flood of AI CVs?" It doesn’t have to be this way. This has taken twenty-five years of hard graft - talking to job seekers, researching the market and recruitment practice, learning about candidate resentment, problem awareness, marketing, copywriting, and the psychology of what moves people. With the evidence that backs this up. The result is something that may make you rethink your approach to recruitment. That will improve the number of qualified candidates, while reducing the total number of applications. It's too early to prove, but my expectation is this will reduce the number of AI CVs too, given there is less for AI to grab when you speak to professional identity. You’ll have to be bold, go against the grain, do something that feels counterintuitive, especially if someone has their hand on your shoulder saying "This isn't the company style!" But then, what does it take to stand out from the crowd? And if you really want to attract the best people, shouldn’t your first step be focused on them, and not you? Kindle version out now. Here's the link: https://amzn.eu/d/03idlAVM. Paperback in two weeks. If you don’t like Evilcorp, let me know and we can work something out.

Better use of job boards

By Greg Wyatt • April 20, 2026

On Tuesday 28th April at 1pm BST, Simon Ward and I will be joined on our weekly LinkedIn Live by CV Library. I'll share the details of this free interactive session as soon as the event link is available - bring your questions. If you don't know CV Library it's one of the main job boards in the UK. While they might sit behind others in terms of coverage, I find them easy to work with and helpful - they are responsive, they have fewer fake jobs than LinkedIn, they have a CV database I can search across that is in many ways more effective than #OpenToWork. They'll be showing how to get a better mileage from their CV database, as a job seeker, and many other helpful things - points you can apply to LinkedIn too, as an inbound sources of recruiter searches and the principles we use to look for viable candidates. It seems timely to share this updated chapter from A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) , which I will no doubt update with learnings from the session. 38 - Better use of job boards Job boards are often the first port of call when new to a job search. It’s a natural inclination that they are where vacancies are to be found. Quickly followed by disappointment, anxiety and frustration when you get close to 0% hit rate. And not even a single reply. Let’s take a step back, look at the overall picture and make a plan. There are many job boards in the UK that sell their systems to employers and recruitment agencies. You may be familiar with Indeed, Reed, CV Library, Jobsite / Totaljobs, LinkedIn (yes, it is a job board, disguised by being a social media platform). Aside from the generic, there are also many sites specific to your niche. As well as ATS platforms themselves. Job boards sell two things to their clients - advertising and access to their CV database. Although LinkedIn differs in how it is wrapped up with content and networking, it does have a form of CV database in how we can use the Recruiter Licence to search profiles (we can even make do without through more advanced techniques such as X-ray searching and programmable search engines). There are also aggregator websites which scrape content from one job board to their own or a third party. You can often tell because when you click apply it takes you to another website instead of properly starting an application. Job board priorities and what that means for you Job boards want to sell their services and make money, which is entirely sensible. To support their argument they use all sorts of metrics such as the number of CVs on their database and the number of applications made (by job or month). It’s to their advantage that adverts receive as many applications as possible - their advice on improving advert performance is geared around volume. Rather than around suitable candidates. This disconnect happens because clients often lie about how effective adverts have been by the measure of vacancies filled - because of concern it will affect renewal prices. This is feedback given to me from account managers at two different job boards when researching job search advice. Job boards can only prove the number of applications, so that becomes the target. The most effective job adverts have fewer applications and a higher number of suitable candidates - what I aim for in mine. To maximise the number of applications they do things like scraping, aggregation and affiliate arrangements. They offer services like automatic relisting where an advert is reposted as new once a week throughout the term of the listing (could be up to 6 weeks by default, or longer by choice). These are sold as benefits to employers which might help when there are limited candidates, yet often hinder when there are too many candidates for jobs. You may remember the same from Fake jobs (p81). They make it as Easy as possible for you to Apply for these jobs, so that you can be an additional metric. As Goodhart says, ‘When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.’ The consequence for you as an applicant is twofold. You are encouraged to be one of the numbers of applicants to purposefully generic adverts you are not the most suitable for. When you are the most suitable, you are in competition both with people from the line above and people who are wholly unsuitable. I should point out I don’t think job boards do this cynically. They do so because they think high numbers are best. It’s also a problem for recruiters who may find it impossible to deal with this volume unless through automation or by finding ways to manually eliminate applications at scale. Job boards, employers, agencies and candidates are all wrapped up in this cycle of speed and volume. And with use of AI-style automation, so too are many job seekers. Where's the specificity and accuracy? Though it might be the best way to make money. Job seekers are accountable too, partly because of how they have been trained to apply. Don’t blame recruiters. Don’t blame employers. Don’t blame unqualified applicants. Blame the system we are all part of. And if you ever find yourself a hiring authority - be the change you hope for. Better use of job boards Let’s go back to that point about applications. In the current market, it’s not uncommon to see hundreds to thousands of applications per vacancy. Rarely are those applications qualified candidates. For a typical job description templated advert you can expect the high majority of applicants to be wholly unsuitable. What do I mean by wholly unsuitable? People who require work permits when a role doesn’t sponsor them. People who don’t meet the minimum requirements set out in an advert. People who are clearly unsuitable for this role. When you see a number, don’t be disheartened by the number alone. As a job seeker, your minimum requirement to apply for a vacancy should be that you can logically prove to yourself you are qualified based on the evidence provided. Read back through Should I customise my CV? (p178) for more on this. … tips and bits Finding vacancies is as important as applying for them. Collect those synonyms you’ve been tailoring your CV with and use these in your searches. If you find an obscure term which represents what you can do, why not search solely on that term? You might find a horribly written advert whose only correct word is that term. It’s a trick we use to find candidates too - occasionally I might search on something like ‘egnieer’ because typos don’t make a bad candidate. Location is a key search criterion. Most people search from their home address. How about running tight searches where you are prepared to work - e.g. 1 mile from CB4 0WZ (a hub for business parks in Cambridge where I worked many moons ago). How to optimise for CV databases When you apply for a vacancy on a new job board they will likely have a CV database tethered to your application. Your permission to have your CV added may be hidden in their terms and conditions. A CV database is an opportunity for you to be found. Sometimes this will be for vacancies that are never advertised, such as the example I wrote about earlier. You have an opportunity to leverage CV databases to improve the number of inbound enquiries you receive. Log all the job boards you’ve applied through Make a list of all that have CV databases, including login details Ensure your CV is up to date containing the keywords for the job you are most suitable for Check your contact details are correct Check all the details on your account. Salary details, location, preferences should all be current. Register your postcode for where you want to be found. If you plan to move to Scunthorpe in April, that should be your current location. It’s where we will look for you Update your CV and profiles once a week. It shouldn’t take long. If you are active in the past week, this will show up in recruiter searches, assuming a recruiter only looks at activity from the past 14 days The CV databases at the back end of job boards are one of the resources I use to fill roles whether advertised or not. They’re a good marginal gain and may bring you leads you’d never hear about otherwise. A note on the ATS Whenever you come across an advert linked to an ATS like Workable, many companies will use that ATS. These may recruit for relevant vacancies in a commutable location. Try this command in Google - site: workable.com London “Marketing Manager” Site: directs the search to a particular website. Change the location and job title to ones relevant for you. Some of these vacancies may never make it to a job board you are aware of. Why you should hack LinkedIn advert results URLs (website page addresses) are a funny thing - they often contain commands for a website related to your requests. Changing certain points can have interesting results. For example, here’s a URL for a job search for Marketing Manager near me over the past 24 hours: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search-results/?f_TPR=r86400&keywords=Marketing%20Manager&origin=JOBS_HOME_SEARCH_BUTTON Don’t worry about the bulk of the URL. Take note of the bold - r86400 which matches seconds in a day. Let’s say you log on at 9.30am and you want to check jobs posted in the last hour. This feature isn’t available as standard in the search tools. However, you can edit the URL from a standard search to: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search-results/?f_TPR=r3600&keywords=Marketing%20Manager&origin=JOBS_HOME_SEARCH_BUTTON Because there are 3,600 seconds in an hour. Try it and see what happens. (Edit: in error checking for this article, originally updated in January, this particular ‘hack’ no longer appears to work. Why not try it yourself on a job you’re interested in and let me know if it works for you? I’ll update this properly for the next book update. I've left it here to show how this kind of tactical advice can change so quickly as to make it obsolete. Next week's article is on Content Strategy & Philosophy for promoting yourself on LinkedIn. Call it personal branding, call it copywriting - expect some people to jump on with strong opinions without reading the article)