Brief encounters

Greg Wyatt • November 26, 2023

It was a software company of note, i2, based just outside of Cambridge.

We sat in reception waiting for the internal recruiter to usher in for a group briefing on their Trainer vacancy.

I smiled cordially at one of the competitors who sheepishly looked away.

In we went to their meeting room, to be given a 20 minute brief on the role and their expectations.

“Any questions?”

<yes do you have parking on site?> asked another of the competitors, who I vaguely recalled had gotten out of their Mini at the company’s large private car park.

We all scribbled away our notes, including answers to each other’s q’s.

I left my question to the end, “May I grab five minutes with the hiring manager?”

I like to think they all looked at me begrudgingly as they left the room, leaving me to have a proper chat with the Training Manager.

Probably not, they may have thought I hadn’t listened.

Anyhoo, a day or so later I checked out their adverts and it was the classic rigmarole of

My favourite client is a notable software company on the outskirts of Cambridge which has parking for a Mini.

To be honest, mine wasn’t hugely different in the intro - Tracy always laughed at my myclient opener although she could never tell me why it was funny.

But where mine did differ was that I took care in describing what the role actually was, instead of pasting the JD, and why I thought it was a good career move.

Not because I expressly thought a better advert would attract better candidates, but because I was distilling what I felt were the important parts of the brief into words.

I bumped into David a few years ago, and he’d gone from being a Trainer there to a senior sales guy - exactly the opportunity for career development I’d described and he’d hoped for.

At the time my fill rate was around 50%, IIRC, which isn’t bad for contingency.

Chatting to my Director, she was pleased with my progress and felt a lot of it was down to how I qualified companies and candidates.

Looking back it’s easy to see the path that’s developed me into the recruiter I am now.

When I didn’t do work right at the top of the process, the consequences only magnified the further on we went.

Such as companies I was keen to work with, but when they gave us the chance to send CVs, the only information you could access was their job description.

How are you supposed to gain any insight on a Job Title vacancy, if the only information you have is what a candidate might be able to tell you from that job title alone?

If they already know what the job is and it broadly looks like what they are doing now - why would they go through the stress of changing jobs?

Might as well just say “Software Trainer, Cambridge, free parking, £35k” and leave it there.

On the flip side, often the companies I was most effective in recruiting for were ones I’d recruited for over a few years.

I got to know them, their context and culture, what they really need in their candidates, who would thrive there for the right reasons, and who would leave early.

In other words, my quality of information was better. Information that could be better gained through quality of brief, and iterating over time as we cut through their pitch to the truth of their business.

At the end of my 5-year tenure at Whitehill Pelham, my fill rate was around 70%, a good improvement in a couple of years. But I also know my retention had gone up, and, more than that, anecdotal feedback was that candidates were delivering better than expected.

The quality of work you deliver is defined by the quality of information you gain.

You may call it a brief or a job intake meeting. I call it a consultation.

Whatever you call it, that meeting is key to providing good service.

Otherwise, you’re only measured by the quality and quantity of CVs sent.

CVs that may or may not be viable candidates - who can say?

In 2008, I had an account management meeting with PPD, a large clinical research organisation near Cambridge.

I worked principally on HR roles for them, placing 15 people in 3 years at their centralised head office.

Doug, the HRD who I’d also placed, told me that they took metrics of all their suppliers, and based on the quality of candidates, CVs to interview, vacancies to placement, and retention - I was their most effective recruiter. This was a company of 3,000 staff in Europe, growing 30% YOY, who recruited mainly through agencies.

I didn’t do anything special for them. I just got to know the business and who would or wouldn’t enjoy working there. It was the quality of my brief that distinguished my results.

And yet they were very hard to get meetings out of, and I don’t think they saw the correlation between the quality of the brief they enabled, with the outcomes they could expect.

As we come into the AI era in recruitment, the next few years will automate many transactional steps.

Recruiters that take JDs without a brief, post a job description as an advert, and send unqualified CVs - how many will be replaced by low-cost automation?

AI will be able to give a better experience to candidates unburdened by the challenge of volume - live updates on applications, chatbot-style conversations, efficient interview arrangements and guidance, automated paperwork and onboarding.

These are features of software to be launched next year - Cielo. And it’s only the beginning.

The impact won’t be immediate - Blockbuster hung on for a few years after the advent of Netflix. The delay will be adoption, not technology.

By 2028, I expect the recruitment landscape to be very different - if our AI overlords let us do any work that is.

So to have longevity and add value it becomes incumbent to do the things AI can’t - gain specific situational insight, challenge false assumptions and bias, build trust and engage stakeholders on a human level.

You can’t do these without an effective consultation, whether you’re talking to an employer or a candidate.

Just some thoughts that came to mind having beta tested Mitch Sullivan’s new course on Taking the Job Brief.

It’s going to be a great intro for recruiters who want to move away from a transactional approach, and who want to make more of an impact with their customers.

Good process, enabled by technology, should be a win for everyone.

Sorry, I thought this would be a brief newsletter.

Regards,

Greg

p.s. I’ve now been writing these newsletters for 13 months. Over 100,000 words of content. Should I publish them as a book?

Walk A Mile. A Recruitment AiDE, pt 14

By Greg Wyatt • February 5, 2026
Walk a mile May 2023 “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” That’s how 1984 starts, the classic dystopian novel by George Orwell. What does it make you think of? I don’t know about you, but thirteen to me is both an unlucky number and an improbable one for a clock to strike, evoking curiosity and trepidation. It makes me want to read on. George could have instead written an opening like “it was a dark and stormy night”, to evoke a sense of darkness at night, during a storm. I gather that cracker is often derided as the worst opening line of all time, not just for the words, but for how it’s a representative experience of the entire book. Some people love it. For me, it’s up there with “My favourite client is an innovative market leader” “To apply, send an up-to-date CV, and cover letter, stating your current salary to greg.wyatt@darkandstormyknight.com ” “If you haven’t heard from us within the thirteenth strike of the hour, please assume you were unsuccessful” Or even “We don’t discriminate on the grounds of….” What do you think a dream candidate experiences when they come across them? Especially one that is selfish and feels like they’ve no reason to consider a new role yet happens across yours by happenstance. The irony is that if you dig into the websites of agencies and employers that write these words, they’ll often extoll disruptively good candidate experience, values alignment and culture fit. But what do their words and behaviour show, and how is that experienced? Flipping it around, the questions might be “What can we do to create the best experience for the high-performing person we want to employ at this step in our recruitment process? What can they benefit from? How can we make their journey more palatable? What are we missing?” As smoothly as these questions roll off the tongue, it’s not just the steps taken, but the ones before, in-between and after. While it doesn’t just benefit your next employee, it benefits everyone - your other candidates, you and your stakeholders. Of course, there’s no need to gaze so navelly if you hire people well enough. But, if your adverts aren’t working or if your process doesn’t fill vacancies, you can either work on things in your control or accept those that aren’t. What you shouldn’t do is blame candidates, agencies or the market if your own affairs aren’t in order. Having a recruitment process whose consequence is both good candidate experience and serves to better fill your vacancies – that’s something in your control. It starts with putting yourself in the shoes of your candidates and giving them what they can benefit from. Do this through your words, show it through your actions. You could consider Attention , Ikigai , and Definition for your messaging. What else? How about considering the situation of the “successful candidate”? What if they are likely to be happily employed, sceptical of a move and have no interest (yet) in updating their CV or writing a cover letter? If you require an updated CV, and they don’t have the time, what are the chances of this candidate (who you’d love to employ) not applying, and how would you ever know? What if you offered an informal call or to answer any questions before an application? (Research shows that offering multiple means of getting in touch improves response rates) What experience might they benefit from in the opening salvo of what might be an advert, message or website? What reasons can you give them to build trust, commit to your process and see it through? Do they want to be told something is a brilliant opportunity, or shown why it may interest them? What if they’ve wasted many lifetimes going through never-ending interview processes, and might just benefit from knowing what your process is? Why couldn’t you highlight your interview process in your advert? What if they needed an accommodation? Perhaps they’re ND, have a disability, struggle to find childcare at short notice. Who knows what’s going on in their lives where minor amendments can find suitable gains? Rather than say “we don’t discriminate on the grounds of” (discrimination is illegal for protected characteristics in the UK - what are the reasons it needs to be said in an advert?), why not instead show how you are inclusive and accessible… which IMO, is what the points above contribute towards. That’s just for advertising. What if your job descriptions were clear & concise , suitable & sufficient and true & fair ? What if you provided interview questions in advance of interviews? This is currently advised as good practice in the UK for autistic candidates. Does it give an unfair advantage to people that don’t need this accommodation? If not, why not allow everyone the same access? My answer is it doesn’t give an unfair advantage. It allows everyone to fairly evidence their capability on a more even playing field. How might that affect the experiences of you and your candidates? What if you clearly managed expectations? What if you highlighted bottlenecks and delays, rather than not saying anything? “There won’t be any news this week as Gary is unexpectedly away from the office. Can I come back to you on Monday? How are things with you by the way?” What if you answered questions before they were asked ? The list is endless, and it starts with establishing what your successful candidates could experience. For an example of how it might come together, here is the basic structure of my job board adverts: Attention – the hook that will appeal to a carefully established ‘right candidate’ Ikigai – why they might be interested in further investigation, what they can expect from an employer they might benefit from working for Definition – a line or two on what makes the company the company; two to three lines on what the role is and its context; no more than three minimum viable requirements the successful candidate should have. An invitation to talk to or email me, with any questions or accommodations that may help. No need for a CV if it isn’t to hand. “All applications will receive a reply within three days.” The boring bits: what you can expect from me; what the interview process is, with any notable points; time frames. This is a loose structure and will vary in length, detail and style depending on who it’s for. While some people confuse me as a dedicated Headhunter (I’m an appropriate-multichannel recruiter that does headhunting), I make half of my placements from advertising. Yet many of these adverts produce hires that weren’t actively looking. Two more editions to come: Trust Me, and Negative Space. Then we move on to a new series: Innovation from Iteration. Regards, Greg p.s. the last line in 1984 is “he loved Big Brother”. And that’s the end of the story. And then there were none. And that was that. And so it goes. All was well. Bonus points if you can name any of these books from their final lines. P.p.s. While you are here, if you like the idea of improving how you recruit, and you're a UK employer, why not drop me a line and explore whether we can improve everyone's experience together 

Fake Jobs - Jobseeker Basics XV

By Greg Wyatt • February 3, 2026
What follows is Chapter 14 of A Career Breakdown Kit (2026) . I've updated it yesterday, having done a little digital hygiene and the revelation I have fallen foul of two fake jobs. Or rather they are real jobs I'm recruiting for, which have been scraped without my permission, then hidden behind a signup screen. Why not google "Engineering Manager Bircham Wyatt Recruitment" and see how it looks to job seekers? What makes this particularly egregious is that in both cases AI appears to have been used to alter specific details of the role. Such as including a salary that is well, well above the budget for the role. As well as being a waste of time for someone wanting to apply, there's the cost of their private details, and were the employer to see the advert, potential internal reputational risk of employees seeing a fantasy salary. Looking at Trustpilot reviews, to gain access to one there is a paid subscription. The second appears to sell CV writing services to applicants. Both appear terrible from what customers say. A real job that is worse than fake, if you happen to come across it. I expect people are getting wise to these odd listings; however when one vacancy appears umpteen times in a google search, with only two leading to a real listing, it's easy to assume they are all fake. "Be aware of fake jobs" is one of my top 10 pieces of advice shared in today's LinkedIn Live with Simon Ward. If you are around at 1pm GMT, please join us by clicking here . 14 - Fake jobs Picture the scene. You’ve gone through the emotional turmoil of losing your job. Or maybe something’s happened at work to galvanise your decision to make a change. You take a bit of time to figure out what the right next move is. You go through the obvious channels to see what jobs are out there - job boards and other websites which promote jobs. Your first reaction is one of hope and optimism - there seems quite a bit out there - maybe you’ll secure something quickly. If you happen to be reading this, new to a job search, indeed you might. Many people in this market quickly realise that a significant number of adverts do not represent jobs that exist. A double whammy in your emotional rollercoaster of recent weeks. There are a few categories to go through, but the outcome is the same: an advert that, at best, wastes your time. The recruiter perspective When we advertise a job, we allow time for applications to come in before assessing them and starting the interview process. Let’s say the volume is manageable and the outcome is not guaranteed - for example, when a candidate you want to offer decides to take a different job instead. There are no villains in this scenario. It’s common enough that risk is a factor when advertising. If a recruitment process takes six weeks from advert to offer, it can make sense to leave the advert up in case you need more candidates in your pipeline. What about if your process takes three months? Illness, holiday, lack of availability, unexpected deadlines - all can delay a process. There are many tools and suppliers which support a hiring process, one of which is the job board. Often features are developed to support ‘what happens if things go wrong.’ These same tools can lead to issues you may experience: Scraping Scraping is when one website takes content from another and relists it. This can happen as an affiliate / aggregation / commercial arrangement, or to drive traffic to the scraping website. The idea is that this increases eyeballs on the content. In the context of job adverts, you can see this everywhere. Indeed and LinkedIn have both relisted adverts from elsewhere at various times. It's changing because some job boards have now secured high volumes of traffic and want to monetise that traffic while keeping control of the adverts. An indication that this happens is when you click ‘apply now’ and it takes you to another website other than the employer’s. This can happen multiple times. Every time a job is scraped, there can be parsing errors where data from fields are incorrectly transferred. If the original advert is updated, the scraped adverts won’t necessarily be updated. Scraped adverts can give inaccurate or outdated salary, location, or even job information. They can also stay listed when the original has closed without the employer ever knowing about it. This is a form of 'legitimate' scraping intended to benefit the employer through additional applications. There is a second type of scraping. As of 2nd February 2026, one of my vacancies has been scraped, without my permission, by apparently two different organisations. In the first you can only apply by signing up. It lists a salary that I haven't disclosed elsewhere is not commensurate with role responsibilities. If you click on my Company Name, it will tell you I am a large multinational recruiter, employing 51-100 staff. Which is 51-100 more people than I employ, if you don't include me. Let's ignore the AI word soup company profile they've lumped on me for now. Some of my other adverts this website shares are slop summary overviews. Including the same job at 40% to 60% of the salary in the first advert. It's the same for the second, except here the salary invented is well above the hypothetical top budget. Looking deeper at both companies, on Trustpilot, both offer subscription services to access jobs that are hard to cancel. While one offers what appears to be bait and switch CV writing services. Several reviews are from employers who have experienced similar to me, with instances of outdated vacancies that no longer exist. What a sham. Relisting As a feature for advertisers, many job boards allow an automatic relisting of adverts to ‘bring it to the top of the pile.’ These relists can occur throughout the lifespan of an advert. Six weeks in, an advert may appear new, even though a candidate might be about to be given a job offer. The vacancy is live, but your application may not be considered because the process is too far along. This can also happen manually for many reasons. I’ve taken down a job after a couple of weeks to rewrite it based on fine tuning from an interview process. Or when a candidate has declined an offer put forward to them. Or when a vacancy has been put on hiatus. The reason for a manual relisting might be unknowable if it isn’t stated in the advert. It isn’t necessarily for a bad reason. If I were to relist an advert, it would only be because I need more candidates, in which case your application would be read. In many situations relisting can encourage an application that won’t be assessed. Laziness Adverts can remain listed because someone forgot to take them down. This is more likely to happen if there isn’t a cost per advert, such as on an employer website, or if there is an unlimited contract. Evergreen vacancies Some vacancies are perpetually advertised to enable a candidate pipeline for a specialism. There might be no vacancy now, with anticipation of vacancies in future. This is more common within larger employers or a specialist recruitment agency. I spoke with a Talent Acquisition Manager recently about the positive side of an evergreen vacancy. She told me for that vacancy they are always recruiting, having mad eight hires in six months - it's a business as usual vacancy. I would hope this is made clear in the advert. Fishing Sometimes adverts harvest applications on the off chance that a related vacancy comes up. I remember a Cambridge agency that used to scrape employer adverts, list them as their own, then submit those CVs speculatively to the same employers - without a commercial arrangement in place. Make of that what you will. Is there any way to check for fishing? Probe the advertiser for relevant information and what their relationship is with the hiring process. That’s not proof of bad behaviour because of how the contingency model works. When multiple agencies work on one vacancy, it’s common not to provide company information until later in the process. If an agency is fishing only to build a bank of CVs, it’s unlikely they’ll admit to it. Scam jobs It sickens me that advertising and job scams are on the rise. If it doesn’t feel right, if they are asking for payment, if they do a bait and switch (this job isn’t right but here’s our CV writing service or access to a system beating framework), if they ask for ID that can be used for other purposes: beware. These may be in public advert form. They may also be from direct messages - LinkedIn DMs, WhatsApp messages, or phone calls. Often from ‘recruiters’ that appear to work for big corporates, yet have no connections and use a gmail account. One scam last year cloned a legitimate company website and job seekers lost many thousands of pounds. My scraped example above is, in my book, a likely scam too. It’s worth reading through www.jobsaware.co.uk , which is a great resource on scams and employment exploitation. The disappearing act This last category may or may not be a fake job. Here’s the scenario - it looks like a vacancy, it sounds like one in discussion. Perhaps you even interview there on site. You may even go so far as to do a 5 hour presentation at final interview on your 90 day strategy. Then it disappears - either permanently, or it reappears with no further communication from the employer or agency. I hear this happening a lot, particularly at a senior level, in the UK market. There are a few reasons it can happen: Company had budget to recruit; changes in the business, or external factors, mean the vacancy isn’t viable at least immediately Company didn’t have budget to recruit and only realises there is no budget later in the process Company runs an interview process to get free consultancy in the form of a final interview presentation (scumbags) Company dipping a toe in the market to see what’s out there, with no intent to hire Company benchmarking an internal hire for future planning purposes Agency finds out there may be a need for an employer to hire and runs a speculative process that doesn’t get approval I’m sure there are many more reasons this can happen and there isn’t a huge amount you can do, given the appearance is of a real vacancy. You can ask if budget has been approved, research the business on Glassdoor, or speak to alumni. It’s unclear what proportion of job adverts are fake. It is a notable problem, and one which takes attention away from legitimate adverts that can put you closer to employment. For the adverts that are real, Part Three of the book will help you assess which you are best suited for and how to effectively use job boards.