The pain mirror. Innovation from iteration, pt 7

Greg Wyatt • April 9, 2026

One of the reasons I've always loved recruitment is because of systems thinking.


It's such a multifaceted business, built on marketing, sales, contextual analysis, psychology, copywriting and many other endeavours.


Many of which are fields built on replicable systems that we can apply to recruitment.


What are the systems that drive behaviour, opinions, decisions and action in recruitment?


Well of course psychology has a key part to play.


And isn't it just a little bit fascinating into how we can dig into what keeps people in jobs they shouldn't love?


Where they could substantively improve their lot by taking a brave decision to make change.


Why couldn't we instigate that change through recognising what prevents a decision, through simple messaging?


The pain mirror


March 2023


“I didn’t realise how unhappy I was until my husband told me,” commented a Strategic Marketing Manager, when she accepted an offer I put forward.


I encourage candidates to talk through an offer with their nearest and dearest, as much to allow objectivity, as for the mirror it holds to their emotions.


This isn’t the only time I’ve heard this from candidates, when reflecting on their role, before moving on to a new employer.


The psychology of ‘loyalty’, self-perception, behaviour and decisions is not discussed enough in recruitment.


Psychology that can inform how we approach, engage and build relationships with candidates, especially for those tricky vacancies with a niche requirement.


Three concepts to think about in exploring this, then practical takeaways:


1/ Stockholm Syndrome


A phenomenon in which hostages develop feelings of affection or loyalty towards their captors. Replace with employee and an employer who is demanding and stressful to work for.


2/ Region Beta Paradox


People are more likely to take action over a distressing situation than an acceptably bad one, even if the possible improvement for both is the same. Someone in a mediocre employment relationship is less likely to consider a career move than someone in a Very Bad Situation.


These two concepts are linked to 3/ Career inertia – you can be swept up in a career even if diverges from your core values and aspirations.


Anyone who has been made redundant, or put on furlough, has an opportunity to break this inertia and find something more aligned with who they want to be.


Perhaps that’s something you’ve experienced too.


What a great opportunity for recruiters to help candidates identify where they can break inertia and find a better path.


For anyone to consider a career move, they will need a ‘good enough reason’ and their situation will dictate what experiences they either need or will put up with.


Someone who is unemployed may place paying the bills over long-term happiness. They may put up with an acceptably bad recruitment process to get what they need.


Someone who thinks they are happily employed may place their self-perception and loyalty above the promise of something we think is better… even if it is. What does it take to engage them?


Of course, for many people, not moving jobs is the best decision they can make.


Something we should establish as recruiters as early as possible.


When there is ‘good enough reason’, it is individual to every candidate.


It’s the pain that needs healing and an illness they may not even have symptoms for.


Our job is to hold a mirror up to that pain so that they can identify it for themselves and take measures to rightly improve their lot.


It goes to follow that, in any recruitment endeavour, we can aim to understand the situations, needs and drivers of ideal candidates as a priority.


What’s in it for them? What Candidate Experience do they need?


Whether they might unknowingly suffer from Stockholm Syndrome, and whether they are in Region Beta.


As well as the inertia of a career that may or may not be taking them in the wrong direction.


Write a bad job advert and you’ll only appeal to people who either need a job or find their current situation bad enough to force change.


Who else will they be applying to? (Everyone)


Run a bad process, and candidates will stay in it only if its level of badness is acceptable.


The same goes for your “brilliant vacancy that matches your LinkedIn profile. Can you send me your CV in Word format?” outreach.


Shoddy will work in some situations, but not because of your words – in spite of your words, when situation forces action.


It’s easy to think that, when you appeal to candidates, the people you hear back from are the best available.


Yet if you haven’t given a candidate ‘good enough reason’, what reason do they even have to respond?


Do you even know what you don’t know?


I can tell you, that Marketing Manager at the top had seen my good enough advert and chose not to apply.


Hers was a great job that met her family needs, and this was a solution to a problem she hadn’t identified.


I knew she had chosen not to apply because I coincidentally called her, and during that conversation, we discussed the advert.


We had a great chat, and she said towards the end of the call “it does sound good, but I’m not sure it’s right for me”.


I asked her to think about it, and perhaps we should speak again on Monday. I also encouraged her to think critically about her current situation, as she divulged she knew she was not content, but couldn’t put her finger on why.


What had prompted her to read my advert in the first place?


Perhaps this wouldn’t be the right move, but the next one might be.


Anyway, she got the job – they made it bigger for her and £5k above budget. The MD tells me she is a future director, and she tells me she is enjoying it.


All because we got to the crux of pain she didn’t know she had.


Yes, the opposite holds true. If recruitment is easy and candidates are plenty, shoddy may be good enough, so why bother improving?


That’s what the unsubscribe button is for.


Thanks for reading.

Regards,

Greg

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) 

A social superpower - the big truth about little lies

By Greg Wyatt • April 16, 2026
(With luck she won't sue me for copyright infringement) I was reminded about the imperative to lie at times, when commenting on a post about namism this week. Namism is discrimination against uncommon names, with proof that a change of name improves the likelihood of getting an interview from an application. A lie that mitigates the worst behaviour in a recruitment process seems reasonable behaviour to me. What follows is an article released around the same time as my sister's book, as a tribute to her fine work. At the time I planned to call it "Nothing but the truth" the name she refused to use, because her publisher told her negative titles don't sell - he clearly hasn't seen a Bond film. Instead, I went for a House quote, "Everybody lies", because like it or not, everybody does. June 2023 At the end of her speech, my sister made a simple request: “Put your hand in the air if you’ve lied today.” Only one person didn’t put their hand up – me. Lying’s not in my nature, except in a couple of specific situations where no harm is caused. You can believe that or not, up to you. The earlier part of the speech touched on all those little moments in our lives where we tell a little lie, either to ourselves or someone else. Sometimes it’s to protect feelings. Sometimes to protect ourselves. Sometimes it’s to keep up the narrative of how we are perceived because we don’t want to share our secret selves. It was a great launch for a book on how society doesn’t just put up with lies to function, it may even rely on them. She interviewed a wide range of experts on lying including spies and toddler scientists, showed how the face can lie, and talked about her amnesia and what it was like to be in the closet. She didn’t interview me about recruitment, so I’m putting that right today. Lies are rampant everywhere you look in recruitment. In a survey last year, 51% of respondents admitted to lying on their CVs. I expect the true number to be higher, considering some won’t even admit a lie to themselves. It’s common to extrapolate behaviour from what we experience. One lie may lead to more, and that may be the only reason you need to reject a candidate. Not all lies are born equal. Broadly I differentiate them between lies of impact, lies to protect, and lies of inconsequence. A lie of impact is one which leads to a decision based on that lie. Here an example would be John Andrewes , who lied about his experience and qualifications to land a top NHS job. He was jailed for 2 years and required to pay £100k, the remainder of his assets. Fraud. Or lying about reasons for departure – they say redundancy, they meant gross misconduct. Misrepresenting capability and qualifications. Mispresenting a role to make it more appealing. £Competitive salary, when you meant lowball to get a deal. The lies we should find and cull at the earliest opportunity. A lie to protect can be many things. I remember an HR candidate early in my career who changed her name twice. It was highly suspicious to me at the time. “Apunanwu Oluwayo” became “Apunanwu Roberts” became “Judith Roberts”. This first change suggested a marriage or divorce. The second I couldn’t fathom. What a liar, 2005 Greg thought. Of course, now I know better. It’s likely she changed her name to a British one because she suffered from namism – one report indicates candidates are 60% less likely to receive a call-back with a foreign-sounding name. Despite my ignorance, I gave Judith the benefit of the doubt and invited her to interview. You can see why blind CVs are a fair measure to prevent this happen, although I wonder if it’s better to treat the illness rather than rely on palliative measures. How about not disclosing identifiable education for the same reasons? What about disability and neurodivergence? If a condition requires an accommodation to fulfil a role, is non-disclosure a lie by omission? Another could be lying about reasons for departure – they said ‘left to focus on a job search’, they meant they couldn’t put up with a harmful environment any longer. A lie of protection, which isn’t one of impact, should be clarified but, in my opinion, not penalised without investigation. The lie above is one of protection – I changed the names to protect the individual, one of the situations in which I will lie deliberately, with good reason. How about a lie of inconsequence? By this I mean a lie that doesn’t impact employability, reflect capability or have any bearing on what that person is like to work with. Examples here might be fudging employment dates to prevent the question “Why were you unemployed for 2 days in 2012?” Or perhaps they might say People Business Partner on their CV, which they fulfilled functionally, yet had a misrepresentative job title of Operations Manager. Sometimes what seem to be lies of impact, might be lies of inconsequence: I once had a candidate withdraw from an interview. Aladdin said his father had passed away, and he had decided to suspend his job search. I spoke to the hiring manager, Jaffar, and said “This smacks of lying” principally because of a change in behaviour that didn’t seem related to grief, and the very high mortality rate candidates sometimes experience throughout recruitment. It was a tough vacancy to fill, so we made a plan. Jaffar would contact him directly a couple of weeks after, to check in and see if he fancied a pint. We put our suspicion aside, while also considering how he might have perceived his relationship with me. Long story short Aladdin took the job and was there for eight years. He gave me a lovely recommendation too. I’m pleased to say his father made a full recovery. While this appears to be a lie of impact, it’s actually one of inconsequence. He lied because he didn’t feel safe telling me he was having second thoughts. That’s on me, because it is my job to create a safe space for candidates so that they trust me and tell me inconvenient truths. It’s not dissimilar to the hilariously high rate of car breakdowns in recruitment. Have we considered our part in that lie? These three types of lies are a gross simplification to paint the picture. Our perception of lying is highly subjective, and there is no one right answer. I think it’s understandable to feel a lie is a dealbreaker. For lies of impact, this should be the case. For other lies though, perhaps a judgment call is better than an assumption. Why did that person lie? Could it even be something we did? Does that lie really matter? And if it does matter – how many times have you lied in the same way today? The next eminently-an-epistole is on technical debt in recruitment, and why we should consider the long-term impact of a short-term compromise.  Regards, Greg P.s. if you’re interested in Kathleen’s book, you can read about it here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Social-Superpower-Truth-About-Little-ebook/dp/B09MDWNL44