How to experience a job advert. Jobseeker Basics XIX

Greg Wyatt • March 23, 2026

This might seem a weird chapter.

Surely you look at a job advert, maybe even read it, then decide to apply or not?

Yet a job advert is more than just what's presented on a job board.

It's a microcosm of everything in recruitment, including everything wrong, and you can learn a lot about what to expect in your job search by the least intentional of words.

And when you do read a job advert, in its entirety, there are only two questions you should ask of it:

Am I qualified?
Should I be interested?

It's somewhat odd that 99% of job adverts don't actually try and help you answer that.

But maybe that's why employers say job adverts don't work.

And why you don't think they do either.

While you're here, why not check out A Career Breakdown Kit in its entirety?

This series of always free chapters is an advert, after all.

But it was never supposed to be an easy book to read, just accessible and comprehensive.

I expect most readers are over 50, ND, or other marginalised demographics, considering these will likely be the longest out of work in our 'diverse and inclusive' world.

If you're 'in demand' though, you'll probably click apply and wonder what the fuss was about.

44 - How to experience a job advert

This chapter is about job adverts, what they are and aren’t, how you might experience them, how they might inform your decisions and your responses.

I say experience rather than read because not all adverts are written or read.

What’s a job advert?

A job advert is the first step in a multichannel commercial approach to filling a vacancy. It’s the inverse of your job search taking a multichannel, through-the-line approach - we go where the candidates are.

It’s the first step because it’s the first thing you experience of that vacancy irrespective of whether it’s a:

Listing on a job board
A post on social media
A DM from a recruiter
A phone call from a hiring process
A referral
Or any other means by which you become aware of a vacancy

Each of these is a marketing or sales channel that may result in a candidate's application.

It’s regrettable employers don’t necessarily see it this way because of the transactional nature of much recruitment process.

They think it’s sticking a job posting up on LinkedIn.

Employers forget that when you experience such an advert you first make the choice to entertain that advert rather than a yes or no to ‘Should I apply?’

Indeed much advertising neglects the psychology of a job move, which principally relates to problem awareness.

How you experience an advert, what may encourage you to progress an enquiry and what you are prepared to put up with in the process relate to your situation and the problems you currently face.

Are you out of work, needing any job to pay the bills?

Are you in work, desperate to escape a toxic culture?

Are you gainfully employed yet wouldn’t mind a bit more flexibility to pick the children up from school?

Are you apparently smashing it, with that missing something you don’t even know about, and the right vacancy might improve your lot?

And everything in between.

The answer to these questions informs your experience of any advert.

Because many employers don’t consider what informs an experience and think people would be lucky to work there, it’s rare that more than the minimum acceptable skill will be applied to an advert.

As discussed in Better use of job boards, the emphasis is on more rather than better. It’s often thought that ‘if we can reach more candidates, we might fill the job.’

Rather than appeal to the right people for the right reasons.

And so we are in a market where an advert attracts hundreds if not thousands of applications, most of whom are wholly unsuitable.

What isn’t a job advert?

A job advert isn’t a fake job, although many of these are listed.

They aren’t Job Descriptions either - the next chapter explains why this distinction is important.

While you may spend much time perusing job boards and talking with fellow job seekers, reading their posts on LinkedIn - I’d expect most employers have little awareness outside of their own sphere of what happens in the job seeker community.

They’ll advertise how they advertise, instruct agencies how they instruct agencies and run their process how they run their process.

I wonder how many great employers use Workday as an ATS, fill their jobs suitably, and have no knowledge of how Workday is viewed by job seekers who have dozens of Workday accounts, one per application?

It’s true terrible employers might do the same.

In one of my job advert consultations I had a detailed conversation with a Talent Acquisition Manager of a local technology consultancy. I can say that they are a jewel in the crown of technology development in the UK, have top 1% compensation, offer career development, and are a fantastic place to work.

I know this because I have spoken to many people who have worked there. All speak highly of them.

Yet the advert we reviewed had a number of red flags:

£Competitive salary
Generic company first text
Confusion around job titles

If you were an ideal candidate who decided not to apply because of these red flags you’d have missed out.

There are two considerations in how an advert might be put together.

The first is whether it is a product of a transactional process or whether the hiring team recognises potential candidates are driven by selfish reasons and seek to understand ‘what’s in it for them.’

(I’ve mentioned WIIFM (What’s in it for me) a few times now - answering that is key to good marketing)

The second is the direction of travel - are you reading a job board advert or have you been contacted proactively about the vacancy?

A transactional process is defined by information transactions with a focus on speed and volume.

It places less emphasis on qualitative measures such as accuracy, specificity, relationships, and empathy.

Instead you can define the process by a series of information transactions and exchanges:

Job description
Advert
Suitable number of relevant applications
Suitable number of interviews
Offer
Starter

The goal is to fill a vacancy.

A non-transactional process recognises the importance of relationships and that to build trust the right information needs to be put forward.

Though the steps are much the same, at each stage the question is asked: ‘Does this give the candidate the right information to make an informed decision?’

Here a candidate is everyone who interacts with the vacancy outside of the hiring end - even a reader who chooses not to apply.

The goal is to create a process that draws the right person forward while leaving everyone with a good experience.

It’s not just about decency - it’s about long-term commercial outcomes.

If you want the right person to thrive over the long term the process has to reflect this goal.

While all the ‘nos’ might be commercial opportunity in future - future candidates, future customers - who knows?

These are the archetypes. In reality, recruitment falls somewhere along this spectrum, often changing at different stages in the process.

Intent matters even if the execution is flawed.

Why does it matter?

Because a healthy rule of thumb is to reciprocate the level of care you experience.

If you come across a transactional process - treat it transactionally. This isn’t inherently bad - it’s just the way of the process.

The employers may still be good to work for.

When and whether to apply

Irrespective of how a role is recruited, there will be non-negotiable essential criteria that inform whether or not you are suitable.

If you can establish these criteria you can confirm whether to apply.

The problem is these criteria aren’t always stated.

Sometimes they are implicit to the context - if the role is employed by a rapidly growing scale-up, it’s likely they’ll need someone with that experience.

Hopefully this context is alluded to in the advert. It will need critical thinking to parse.

Sometimes these aren’t defined at the outset and become mandatory when there are too many candidates in view.

Sometimes these are hidden by Goldilocks or illegal discrimination - not too experienced, not too inexperienced, not too old.

Sometimes the employer can’t divulge essential criteria.

The other problem is that some essential criteria aren’t essential, such as when a company writes unrealistic shopping lists.

Yes, it’s a FUBAR situation given it’s pretty hard to tell whether you’re a suitable candidate or whether you should even apply.

Nonetheless - if you choose to apply your application must show how you can meet any essential criteria you can identify.

If that’s the only thing your application does - it must do this.

In my experience, transactional processes are the hardest to unpick, with adverts going something like:

Here at genericorp we are proud to be recruiting for a <job title> in our market leading innovative environment.

You’ll be doing

You’ll need

In return you can expect a £competitive salary.

Apply with a full cover letter and updated CV.

Only successful candidates will be contacted.

Familiar?

Whereas the rare non-transactional adverts give more of a narrative about why the right person might think to apply or give you avenues for finding more information.

A note on inbound enquiries.

With automation allowing volume outreach the effort to produce transactional DMs, emails and messages is pretty low.

You might think when you receive such a message that you are already in the running - in many situations you are a transactional prospect.

I’ve even heard some recruiters InMail #OpenToWork profiles only to improve their response rates.

While not all messages are this way these are potential reasons you might not hear back when you reply to a recruiter.

It’s not quite the case with phone calls which have yet to be executed through automation (some platforms promise AI call automation already).

Again, you can separate transactional from non-transactional straightforwardly.

Transactional leads with selling the job.

Non-transactional seeks to explore if you are the right candidate. If the vacancy isn’t right it’s best to find that out as early as possible and save everyone time.

Inbound enquiries are still adverts, in a different medium.

Try not to treat your job search transactionally by default.

Your goal isn’t to apply for hundreds of jobs. Your goal is to start conversations that count.

By prioritising adverts in the right way you’ll improve your odds with high stakes applications. You’ll gain time and energy for other activities, including taking time away from your job search to recharge.

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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).