Rule of three

Greg Wyatt • March 14, 2024

This is the first in a series on negotiation in recruitment, inspired by a recent listen.

To kick things off, let’s look at the rule of three.

I’ve found throughout my career that engagement and commitment come from tackling the same issue in three ways.

Whether it’s a presentation -

“Say what you’re going to say; say it; summarise it.”

Something we’ve been trained to do even in watching the news, as they attempt to get us to stick around… “later this evening”.

Or in candidate discussions, something I developed when I noticed the problem with selling too hard.

More on that later.

In his insightful (audio)book on negotiation, Chris Voss talks about the psychology of negotiating, influencing and manipulation of antagonists.

His negotiations skills came from hostage situations, yet he adapts this brilliantly to the corporate context. Because people are people.

It feels like my early-career attempts to do the same with candidates.

But candidates aren't antagonists.

In an employer candidate discussion, they should be deuteragonists - everyone wins in a successful job offer.

If you accept candidates can be the dual protagonists, then every candidate must be, including the readers that walk away without you ever knowing.

Because you don’t know at initial stage who the winning candidate is going to be. Especially those you can’t yet know about.

And everyone is a hero of their own story.

A second difference is, that while Chris states everyone wins in his negotiations, those wins are imbalanced - he aims to get more of what he wants while leaving the other feeling they got a good outcome.

The third difference is that Chris’ negotiations lead to a final decision, ideally to his advantage. Yet candidates can decide to do one thing, committedly, then change their mind for what can be impenetrable reasons, for changes in circumstance, or just because they want to.

Regrettably, there is a fourth point which ruins the form of this article. Our negotiations with candidate should also be a double assessment of fit - are they right for the role, and is the role right for them? In this way, a no can be a great outcome for everyone - ‘that's wrong’ riffing off the book's words, because you find out concrete reasons why it was never going to work out as early as possible.

I came to a pivotal moment in my career some years ago, in doing some recruitment for Anglian Water.

The recruitment manager said to me - “you have a problem with your candidates sticking.”

While my immediate inclination, as someone doing their best, is that it’s the candidates at fault, she was entirely correct.

How could it be that candidates seemed enthused by a role I presented to them, yet decided not to go for an interview?

It’s simply this - in conversation, it’s easy to get excited and think what a great opportunity!

Yet with time to reflect, the impassable objections can come up.

Objections that are sometimes easy to ascertain early on, while others are initially philosophical and then utterly practical the closer to offer/start/end of probation you get.

From this, over many years, I came to three adjustments in my candidate engagement.

  1. that an initial part of a first call should be about them and them only, so as not to bias the call to the vacancy. In doing so you can link the vacancy to their aspirations while identifying hard objections (the ones which mean they should withdraw for good reason). Candidates often want to hear about the vacancy first, but it’s in everyone’s best interest that I hear their side beforehand.

  2. that sending an application immediately after that call, can result in the situation with Anglian Water. Therefore at least one follow-up should occur. Perhaps a rare situation, yet a problem which has a solution. The immediacy of flinging CVs over at speed is a consequence of first-past-the-post recruitment and one reason I’ve moved away from the transactional contingency approach.

  3. that combining these with formal competency interviews can be intrusive on a candidate’s time. How could I implement a follow-up to gain commitment and qualify? The answer became my assessment-over-time interviewing technique:

    1. a call as described in point 1

    2. a follow-up call to discuss questions and concerns - to ensure proceeding to the next step is the right decision

    3. a third call, if it is of interest, to make sure I represent them in the right way

Perhaps those three points in the third point might seem like overkill, but this can happen over a couple of days, and isn’t so rigid we can’t adjust things on the fly.

I’ve found three byproducts of this:

  • I build trust naturally for the right reasons. By making a safe place to express concerns, in confidence, these concerns are often raised. And if a role isn’t right - well we’ve saved everyone a lot of time. Equally, it’s hard to fake during what candidates may feel are the ‘in-between’ moments - you can get a sense of what they are genuinely all about

  • this approach contributes to better hiring accuracy and retention. I can’t prove it at scale, because I’m a low volume recruiter, but it is the candidate mirror of my client work, and over the past few years I’ve filled every vacancy (that wasn’t cancelled by economic shenanigans), with an average retention of 3.8 years. But more importantly with feedback my placements are often future leaders, and exceed expectation.

  • this contributes, along other measures, with fewer issues - ghosting, poor/no shows, ‘losing’ people to counteroffers are rare issues for me.

You can apply this rule of three to any part of recruitment.

  1. Offer an interview; confirm the interview; check-in before the interview

  2. Verbal offer; confirm when paperwork will go out; check paperwork ok

  3. Pre-boarding; onboarding; induction

Chris Voss talks about his Rule of 3, to get counterparts to agree three times in conversation. Through calibrated questions, summaries and labels.

It works very well in the scenarios he describes.

But while employers love their ransom lists and the demands they buy from their candidates, candidates have their own non-negotiables too.

This gives an intermediary a unique opportunity to intervene, in the right way, in their negotiations.

Gaining commitment too early on can backfire, so instead we have to help them negotiate their deal with us, in service of the outcomes we want.

Besides, as an employer, if you ‘win’ a negotiation with a candidate and they come aboard cheap, well they may well vote with their feet if a better offer comes up.

Starting my business in 2011, I had an opportunity to build my philosophy of recruitment, in what I now describe as an outside-in approach.

I’ve made a 126-gallon load of mistakes, and continue to do so, but the results for employers, and candidates, are excellent, and I continue to learn and develop my thinking.

In this series, I’ll look at different aspects of negotiation from outside-in process, to owning candidate resentment, to problem-solving.

I'll look at my process in recruitment, alluding to some of Voss’s principles, so you could treat his book as a companion piece of sorts.

You can adjust my notions in line with Voss' negotiation style, adopt it as your own or... well this has always been called Your Mileage May Vary.

Thanks for reading. 

Greg

p.s. I’m bitterly disappointed that World Pi Day hasn’t coincided with British Pie Week.

p.p.s. sorry, I forgot to summarise at the end… rule of 3, recruitment vs Voss, coming soon, etc etc

How to doorknock

By Greg Wyatt • June 11, 2026
What follows is Chapter 43 from A Career Breakdown Kit. Is it a magic salve guaranteed for success? No of course not. But much like anything in a job search, nothing is guaranteed. What we do is identify which avenues can be effective for your context, and form an appropriate strategy. LinkedIn optimisation is great if people search for you on LinkedIn. Except speaking to my recruitment peers, fewer and fewer rely on it. Would it surprise you if I told you I rarely invested in at all before 2019? I've been working in recruitment since 1996 including at CEO level. Applications, networking, referrals, content, CV databases. All have a place and a purpose. Doorknocking on the other hand - some would tell you it has no place in the modern job search. If my daughter*, her friends and other 18 year olds can get a job from an old school technique, while those employers say "only through Indeed" then that might be a hint it still works. Some of whom are socially anxious, but then it's a replicable process, not a cult of personality. Or the periodic messages I get from CxOs who made their own jobs from direct outreach. Not forgetting Granovetter's seminal research and recent LinkedIn-specific studies in Science journal showing weak ties drive more job mobility than strong ties. And why wouldn't doorknocking work on LinkedIn, when you have a weak tie that suggests a viable employer? But no, it's not a guarantee. It's just an arrow in the quiver of a multichannel job search. 43 - How to doorknock Doorknocking is an old-school sales approach you may well have experienced, such as when a salesperson with a clipboard rings your doorbell and asks you to change electricity provider. My wife even once bought from exactly this scenario. While it’s not uncommon in a business-to-consumer situation it can also work business-to-business… if you can get past security. Although technology has moved on, the principle is the same whether in person, by phone, email, letter or LinkedIn: You approach someone cold and create your own opportunity. This isn’t an approach for everyone and requires chutzpah. If you are used to a high failure rate in applications - what do you have to lose by being proactive? More than that - look at all the advice on LinkedIn on how to improve your odds in a job search. It’s all transactional and applicable, available to everyone - if you all follow it, everyone takes the same step forward. While taking steps others are less prepared to do means the approach alone may stand out. If you encounter the equivalent of a sign which says, ‘Trespassers will be shot!’, pay attention. My own career of looking for work includes many non-transactional approaches: Walked into the local Cinema and asked for a job Walked into Office World and asked for a job Worked for Dad Talked to one of my ex-colleagues and gained some by-the-call phone research work Temped through an agency Walked into an Inn and asked for a job Referred to a publishing, training & consulting company In managing their small-scale recruitment alongside my day job I got to know the MD of a recruitment firm as a supplier. I went to work there Tapped up to return to a more senior role Started my business upon being given the boot - thanks Dave! It’s true I did apply through job boards and agencies. It’s mainly through my own means that I have secured my employment. *My daughter even tried doorknocking for her first job in our local town last summer. It didn’t work for her - she found a nice retail job through an application on Indeed. Her experience was positive enough that she helped a friend do the same - who got a job at the first shop they tried. Doorknocking is about approaching companies by category not because they are recruiting. These categories can be: All the employers in your local business park (often they have websites, with directories and job adverts) Companies listed in local newspapers, directories or platforms (local to me this could be Cambridge Evening News, Bury Free Press, Cambridge Network or Business Weekly) Top 100 employers in your domain Companies that have recently had funding and are about to scale Doorknocking companies you’ve come across through networking and its resulting market map Make contact and make a case for yourself on the principle of the right person, right time, right place, right message, right offer, and right price. There’s an element of luck involved for these elements to all come together. A disadvantage is that they may not be recruiting or ever have a need to employ you and even if they do have a vacancy, you still have to establish the right fit. That means a logically low hit rate. Your threshold for an acceptable failure rate will inform whether this is the right approach for you. The difference is the anonymous rejection of a volume-based application versus the ‘personal rejection’ from your direct outbound approach. Right person, right time, right place, right message, right offer, and right price. Let’s reorder and examine this marketing principle: Right Place Those Categories above. The place is the Company, and how you contact them. You can go in blind if you are a bold prospector or research them in advance. ‘site:’ is a useful command in Google. You can search on specific websites: ‘site: linkedin.com ACME jobs’ Right Person Typically this will be the ‘next one up’ - Head of department, Director, CxO or Owner. Who would be the budget holder at work? Those are prospects. Look them up on LinkedIn, PR, news, video platforms. What can you find out? Right Time While time can be happenstance, can timed factors create opportunity? What might be a hiring trigger? Perhaps you could contact a list of companies that have recently announced funding or a big win - news that may lead to hiring additional people. Or maybe you hear through the grapevine that Janine is about to go off on maternity leave. If their process isn’t time-bound, can you make it time-bound? ‘We aren’t hiring right now’ might mean they’ve run out of headcount in the January to June period and may have a new budget in July. What can you learn that helps you both? If you have radio silence, why not try again in a month or three months? Think about how you buy. If you don’t need something how likely are you to respond to a message no matter how well crafted? If you do need something you might think first of someone who keeps in regular touch. Right Offer You have more opportunity for career creativity in being unemployed than someone entrenched in a 9 to 5 permanent job. What problems can you fix for a company in a non-traditional employment capacity? Let’s say an employer has a problem that needs fixing. They don’t have capacity to do it right now. It isn’t burning enough to seek professional help and there isn’t sufficient work in view to make it a job. What if you caught them at the right time? An out-of-work TA Manager who offered to revamp an onboarding process. A web designer who notes lots of issues with their website. A strategic operational issue that is their unknown unknown identified by your expertise. A swamped team that could benefit from their admin burden being reduced. An orchard that needs pickers at harvest time. What starts out as a short-term, project, or part-time piece of work can become proof of concept. While rare, I know a few people whose permanent full-time jobs have come about this way, including at a senior level. Right message This is both specific and crude. It’s specific because nailing the message CAN create an opportunity a poorly written message may miss. It’s crude because sometimes you can catch people at the right time, no matter how cruddy your message is. This is the case in recruitment - I’ve picked up several senior appointments by calling at the right time. ‘I’m glad you called Greg, I’m starting to think about my maternity cover in June.’ Had I not called, that HR Director may well have gone to the specialist HR recruiters she is also in touch with. If you have a strong hook in your message - such as a key area of rare expertise or a clear issue you’ve identified which companies may have - go in with that. If you don’t - done is better than procrastinating: ‘Hi Greg, I live locally to Bircham Wyatt Recruitment. Love what you do. I wondered if you might be recruiting for an apple picker at any point. If you can’t help, could you point me in the right direction?’ Right price I’ve left this until the end because much of this is variable and subjective. What are your needs? What can they afford? What does the market say? How flexible can you be? Research will help if you can get a sense of what they generally pay through Indeed, Glassdoor or others. Or maybe what comparable companies that are advertising will pay. One approach might be to pro-rate your salary over the period you’ll work there. Doorknocking can sometimes give you access to jobs that are being actively recruited. It’s a happy byproduct of your work, if you find yourself in this situation. It’s worth persevering. Otherwise, it’s too easy to think after 10, 20, or 100 unsuccessful efforts that the approach itself is at fault. There is always an element of luck in any activity. This may be out of your comfort zone, in which case it’s an opportunity to grow. The only certain thing is that if you don’t try you definitely won’t benefit.

Root Canal - No problem, pt 2

By Greg Wyatt • June 4, 2026
Listening to the consequences of your recruitment process is an opportunity. I do find it interesting go through my older articles. How has my thinking changed? Has it improved? How was I so cringy? Looking at this article in its August 2023 form, I hadn't yet focused on Candidate Resentment as an opportunity to improve how we recruit. Not because it's decent to treat people better, but because that is a happy byproduct of strategically assessing our work as it supports our goals. Whether that's filling vacancies or finding people that meet our goals long-term and flourish doing so. Root canal If you recognise that speaking to the potential problems of the people you want to engage is a good idea, you may also recognise why you shouldn't create any problems that push them away. Engagement is an ongoing process that carries through every stage of recruitment, even into employment. Yes, bring your candidates forward, in part by showing how you solve their career problems. But, don’t throw up unnecessary issues that undo your good work. Listening to the consequences of your recruitment process is an opportunity. Why did that candidate proceed? Why did another withdraw? What raised concern? What about the potential candidates we don’t even know about? What influenced their decisions? I’ve spoken to tens of thousands of candidates, prospects, applicants, and everything else, during my career. Out of curiosity, I’m always interested in what influences their decisions in their pursuit of a new career. What fascinates me is that these are the Gemba , the unknown unknowns that we can extrapolate into our own recruitment processes. What problems do they encounter elsewhere, that discourage them from applying, that encourage them to withdraw, and why? And how might we be guilty of the same? While if we are guilty, how can we fix these problems, so that the objection never comes up? Imagine that - the reader that might have walked away, who instead chooses to engage. This may seem an unknowable unknown, but one of the benefits of my job seeker work is hearing about the issues they encounter on their side of recruitment and how that may influence their decisions. Considering these are people that are very problem aware, their appetite for bullshit is in some ways higher than the problem unaware (passive in old speak). While in others, what you may consider normal behaviour, they consider red flags. While we can’t control the behaviour of candidates, we can learn what influences their behaviour and form a process that nudges, draws forward or mitigates when needed. What are we accountable for that might present a problem for a candidate we want to employ? Especially when, in normal life, moving jobs is one of the biggest stresses? How might we unnecessarily cause scepticism or anxiety? Auditing your own recruitment process as a mystery candidate is one opportunity. As is surveying your staff for their experience - with the caveat they are happy to be working for you, skewing their perception. Or perhaps they're terrified of losing their jobs. Do they really want to rock the boat with criticism? But it’s the candidates who withdraw, who hesitate, who object that can be the source of the biggest improvements. What would you say their common complaints are? You can look to LinkedIn for the answer, in their high-engagement posts. Salary on the job description (they mean the advert) ATS data duplication Responsiveness and transparency Tardy, bloated and unnecessary recruitment stages A robotic process that forgot they are human Which becomes your choice. Do you look within and challenge yourself with 5 Whys to see how you can improve? Do you take away problems before they can occur? Saving your candidates unnecessary toothache? Or do you lay blame on the areas you can’t control? Those are the questions. Regards, Greg p.s. I’m available for interesting work - UK key hires, fractional talent acquisition and recruitment writing. Maybe we can talk. p.p.s. A Recruitment AiDE is out now - the discipline for UK key hire recruitment