Insights

Let me introduce myself before you invest seven minutes reading this blog. I'm not a guru, or a thought leader. I'm not a copywriter, or a marketer. What I am is a recruiter with 27 years' experience, who's made thousands of hires. And more misses than I'd like to admit. What I do know, is what hiring managers, TA, and recruiters actually look for, in people, in CVs, in LinkedIn profiles. The thing that makes someone curious enough to reach out, or actually get back to you after you've applied. Here's a wild guess: when you apply, you want a reply. A real one. From an actual human who looked at your profile and said 'let's chat,' or even 'no, and here's why.' Fast. Rare, huh. I wrote this blog because most career advice sounds credible right up until someone actually follows it. Then it just doesn't work. Most of it's well intended, whether paid or free. It's just poor, or so generic it could be about anyone. Logical on paper, maybe. Formulaic and dated in practice. That's what I want to unpack here. Here's what this blog is NOT about: 1. Job search strategy. 2. Networking (this is about getting your positioning clear first, not tactics). 3. CV templates (length, formatting, all of it). 4. Interview prep. 5. The ATS rejecting good candidates. That particular myth has had a long run for something that mostly isn't true. If it interests you, Greg Wyatt's piece on the subject covers it properly. Here's what this blog IS about: It's the thing underneath all of those. How to think about standing out, before you touch a CV, a LinkedIn profile, a cover letter. Before you set up a job alert, network, or send off your CV. Most advice never gets there. It stops at formatting, keywords, and activity, and calls that a strategy. It isn't one. It's a to-do list dressed up as one. Here's the mess, as it actually stands. The Mess 1. "Optimize your CV for the ATS." This chases a robot instead of a human. Most ATS rejection stories are myth, you're not getting filtered because a keyword didn't register with the algorithm. There's a more useful question though: did you actually answer the screening questions? If not, that's on you, not the algorithm. 2. "Tailor every application to the job ad." This keeps you reactive, permanently responding to someone else's posting instead of building a position people come looking for. It's the wrong end of the transaction to be perfecting. There are tools now that'll auto-tailor your CV to any job ad in seconds. That doesn't fix the problem. You're not being more relevant, you're just gaming a system that was already broken before AI got involved. And most of these job ads are badly written to begin with: they talk about the company, the mission statement, the perks, the "fast-paced culture," then a wish list of requirements underneath. What they should talk about is the actual challenge on the other side of the hire, and the impact you'd have solving it. 3. "Apply to more roles. Network more." Same advice, different outfit: volume. Apply to fifty roles, or have fifty coffees, doesn't matter which. If nobody can tell what you're actually offering, you're just multiplying the number of people who get to ignore you. 4. "Keep a few different CV versions on hand." One for the sales-adjacent roles, one for the technical ones, one for whatever "multi-skilled" is supposed to mean this week. Be honest about what that actually is: maintaining three or four documents, then tailoring each one per posting on top of that, is a part-time job nobody is paying you for. It's the same wasted effort as tailoring to a bad job ad, just multiplied by however many versions of yourself you're keeping on file. 5. "Pay a professional CV writer, or spend weeks with a traditional outplacement firm." I've had plenty of friends reach out after losing their job, made redundant, going through an outplacement firm's programme. Modules, workbooks, the full package. Every one of them came out the other end with a CV so bland it could belong to anyone in their function. Twenty hours in, and it wasn't free, wasn't rushed, and still didn't work. Couldn't make this sh*t up if I tried. This is what's actually out there, repeated across a thousand LinkedIn posts and a hundred PDFs that all say the same handful of things in a different font. None of this is on you. You're working with advice built for gaming a system, against job ads written from a template by someone with neither the time nor the brief to write a better one, and through a process nobody designed with you in mind. The frustration is fair. It just needs pointing somewhere useful. The Thinking Gap Being found and being chosen are different problems. A recruiter can find a hundred CVs with the right keywords in an afternoon. What they rarely find, because it barely exists, is a clear, specific answer to one question: what does this person do better than the other ninety-nine, and how do I know? Or picture a founder reading your profile, asking a harder version of the same thing: can this person actually deliver the change I need to move the needle, not just do the job competently. That's not a formatting gap. It's a thinking gap. And it shows up consistently in the work of people who study this properly, even though none of them are necessarily talking about CVs. Dorie Clark writes about professional differentiation and reinvention ( dorieclark.com ). Her work keeps returning to the same point: most people can't articulate what makes them different, not because it isn't there, but because nobody's ever asked them to say it out loud. William Arruda has built a career around personal branding ( williamarruda.com ). His central argument: the traits people dismiss as 'just how I am' are usually the exact things worth naming and building a reputation around. Put those two together and a pattern shows up. Standing out isn't about more accomplishments, a longer skills list, or a cleverer CV trick. It's about closing the thinking gap: getting clear on a few things about yourself, before you write anything down. Three Areas To Get Clear On First 1. Who are you, really, what's your POV, and where do you do your best work. 2. What do you do differently to the people around you. 3. What are you actually looking for next, and why. Most people are never asked about these areas before crafting their CV. So their application ends up in the generic or 'maybe' pile with everyone else. A question like: 'How have you changed as a leader over the last five years. What did you used to believe that you've since unlearned?' That's a different kind of question. It doesn't ask what you did. It asks what you've become. Most people freeze on it, not because the answer isn't there, but because nobody's ever made them find it. Most exercises that force introspection assume you have hours to spare, a book, a course, a 35-page manual. Most people have an hour, maybe two, squeezed between everything else. Pointed questions, asked in the right order, close that thinking gap faster. Getting clear on these areas is the actual work. Everything else in this piece has been building to that one point. Where This Shows Up Get those three areas wrong, or never answer them at all, and it doesn't stay theoretical. It shows up. Fast, and more than once. You apply. You wait. Nothing comes back. Not a rejection, not a reason, not even an auto-reply. Silence has become the default, and somewhere along the way, everyone just accepted it. Sometimes the process does move. That's not always better. Two interviews in, hours of your life spent, and only now does the real discovery start, what the role actually needs, whether you actually fit it. Should've been question one. It was question fifty. Neither is bad luck. Nobody structured what you bring clearly enough for someone else to act on it, fast. Not the recruiter deciding whether to reply. Not the hiring manager two interviews deep. Same fix, either way. Why I Built A Playbook That Does The Asking For You You've just read what most career advice gets wrong, and where that leaves you: ignored, or two interviews deep before anyone asks what actually matters. Here's the fix. Not another book. Not another course. A playbook that asks you the same questions I'd ask you in a room, minus the room, minus the calendar back-and-forth. It's built to help you think through, and finally put into words, your actual value and positioning. This one takes 1-2 hours, not a weekend. It interviews you, one sharp question at a time, the same way a good conversation would, and it comes with AI prompts built in so you can move through it fast rather than staring at a blank page. It's built to work solo, start to finish, no calls, no back-and-forth needed. And it doesn't ask what you'd say about yourself. It asks what you've actually done, which is closer to what Lou Adler has spent decades saying predicts a good hire. Interested? Fill out the short form below and we'll send you a copy. We keep it gated on purpose. The moment everyone has it, it stops giving anyone an edge. You know the problem now. The form's right there. Blog author: Craig Bagshaw I help Heads of Software Engineering go from slow, unscalable hiring cycles to securing high-calibre engineers within budget and timeline, by replacing subjective, low-signal screening with a structured, evidence-based hiring system. I spend most of my time these days advising companies on what NOT to do when it comes to hiring strategy, and how to market or position jobs so they actually stand out from the hundreds of other software engineering roles posted every month.

Does hitting the "apply" button 20 times a week, only to be met with the deafening sound of crickets, sound familiar?

Referencing deception and how to avoid a mishire

Billing Manager / Contract Team Lead (SYD)

Around 7-8 years ago, which was when I first started talking about how retained recruitment was the way forward for proper recruiters, most people thought I was an idiot.

The Big-Bet Recruiting Trends at the Top 10 Companies It’s a dream of every recruiting executive to accurately predict the future direction of talent acquisition. Unfortunately, current recruiting-trends surveys (like LinkedIn’s annual Global Talent Trends report) can only reveal what the average firm is planning (because they are filled out by hundreds of average recruiters). You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that you would get a much more accurate and advanced picture of the future of TA if you knew the areas in which the top 10 elite companies (like Amazon, Salesforce, Facebook, and Alphabet) are currently making “big bet” investments. If you knew their future direction, following their lead would make a lot of sense because these firms have such tremendous resources to invest in forecasting. You can safely assume that their directions will be more accurate than the assumptions made on your meager budget. In addition, knowing the TA investment areas of industry leaders will make it easier to remain competitive with them. Fortunately, the authors of this article had the opportunity to survey the top 10 companies on LinkedIn’s Top Companies Where the US Wants to Work Now list. Why the First Recruiting Big-Bets Survey of Elite Firms Was Created After discovering the value of knowing where the vanguard of top firms was headed, we created what we eventually called “The Big Bets in Recruiting Survey” because it revealed the talent acquisition areas where the top firms were investing. The survey went further and also revealed in which investment areas the top firms expected to have the highest business impacts. The key to getting an amazing 90% participation rate was promising each of the firms that their individual results would be kept anonymous. Knowing what the other top 10 firms were planning allowed individual firms in the group to understand where they stood compared to other elite companies. A Snapshot Picture of the Results The survey of the top ten elite firms revealed that at least one of the firms was investing in the following 10 areas. The big-bet investment areas listed below are ranked in descending order, with those with the highest expected business impacts appearing first. Shifting to data-driven recruiting Business-impact recruiting The application of AI/machine learning Other technology applications beyond AI Pipeline continuous recruiting Targeted and diversity hiring Recruitment marketing Collaborative recruiting Competitive-advantage employer branding Flexible/fluid workforce Big-Bets Areas That Received at Least One No. 1 Ranking Data-Driven . It received the No. 1 rank from three different firms. AI/Machine Learning. It received the No. 1 rank from two different firms. Business-Impact Recruiting, Collaborative Recruiting, Recruitment Marketing, and Pipeline Continuous Recruiting. All received a No. 1 ranking from a single firm. **3XP does all of these activities & and has invested heavily in technology to deliver at scale** The Weighted Votes in Each Big-Bet Area

X10 RPO Focused Technical Recruiter | Offshore / Remote (Philippines)

It would seem that recruiters are disliked. Even internal recruiters. How much they’re disliked will probably depend on the part of the market they work.

Heads up: you are probably unwittingly damaging your firm’s hiring results. Slow hiring during periods of record low employment means that top candidates will be gone long before you make an offer. In fact, a CareerBuilder 2012 survey revealed that even when the unemployment rate was double what it is today, a full 22 percent of offered candidates were lost because the firm “didn’t offer the position quickly enough and the candidate was already hired somewhere else.” And because of the bird-in-the-hand principal, during this current extremely overheated job market, I estimate that some firms are losing a majority of their top candidates in highly competitive positions to other quicker-acting firms that have adopted an expedited hiring process known as “same-day hiring.” If you think same-day hiring is not possible, realize that college grads, interns, and most temps are now already hired in a single day. How Slow Hiring During Low Unemployment Times Will Hurt You Low unemployment dramatically impacts hiring results because the competition or bidding for talent is so stiff. Top candidates don’t just receive multiple offers, but they receive multiple compelling offers. And with so many great options, few top candidates are willing to wait for the 23.8 days that it takes most U.S. firms to complete their interviews ( Glassdoor survey ) or the 42 days it takes to make a hire (SHRM survey). A Robert Half “timing is everything” survey revealed that when faced with a lengthy hiring process, nearly 6 out of 10 (57 percent) candidates will pursue other roles or stay put in their current job. And this multimillion-dollar loss is why many hospitals and high-tech firms have shifted to some variation of what is known as a “same-day hiring process.” Here’s an example, “A lot of times we’ll bring people in, and they get same-day offers. We’ve had to do it … recruiting keeps me up at night” (Sherry Whiteley VP at it Intuit). The old axiom of hiring slow to get quality has now been replaced … because top candidates will be quickly off the market, quality hires now result from matching the interview and the offer speed of your best talent competitors. There Are Four Variations of Same-Day Hiring Depending on your firm’s needs and capabilities, there are four variations of the same-day approach to consider. Same-day hiring — this is the most aggressive of all of the variations. It begins by scheduling all finalists for an all-day assessment (all candidates come in on the same day). After the assessments are completed, an offer is made to the best candidate at the end of the day. But under this variation, the finalist is encouraged or incented (with an exploding bonus) to accept the offer before they leave the building. If getting every candidate in a new single day is a problem, consider “same-week hiring” where all finalists know that the decision will be made before the end of the week. Same-day offers — the Robert Half survey revealed that nearly six in ten candidates “find the most frustrating part of the job search is the long wait after an interview to hear if they got the job.” So, under this variation once again all interviews are scheduled on a single day but at the end of the day an offer is made to the best candidate, and the others are told their ranking. Then the offered candidate is allowed to wait several days before making their final decision. Same-day interviews — this same-day interview approach is the easiest to implement. Under it, you merely schedule all of the interviews (for all of your finalist’s candidates) on the same day, so that all of your candidate assessment is completed during one day. Having all interviews on a single day also makes it much easier to compare candidates side by side. Under this approach, the actual candidate selection decision may occur as many as several days later. A shorter variation is “same evening interviews,” where the assessment is squeezed into a single work night evening. A national hiring day — this increasingly popular approach publicizes the fact that the firm is hiring thousands of employees on a single day. It is effective because it garners a great deal of free publicity and a buzz about working at the firm. It also adds value because hiring managers only need to focus on hiring for a single day. 6 Critical Design Features of an Effective Same-Day Hiring Process You may be worried that same-day hiring may result in fast but inaccurate hiring decisions. The accuracy of any same-day hiring process will be increased dramatically if you include one or more of these six key critical success factor components. Use a hiring committee — the most important quality improvement component by far is to use a hiring committee to make the same-day hiring decision. This is because many individual managers hire infrequently, and that makes them prone to mistakes. Firms like Google and Intuit have found that a formal hiring committee with a structured process is clearly superior. The hiring committee approach is more consistent, and it’s easier to monitor. It also makes more accurate one-day decisions because it is staffed with trained professionals who have proven to have reduced biases and an eye for talent. And because of their volume of hiring, members are much more up-to-date with the talent marketplace and with what it takes to sell a hard-to-land candidate. During times of low unemployment, a much smaller percentage of candidates will be easy to sell active jobseekers. So overall the importance of having a great selling capability becomes paramount. Developing a talent pipeline provides more time for assessment — the second component that improves results is a talent pipeline where you identify quality prospects before you have an immediate opening. This “pre-need” feature provides you with enough lead time so that you can slowly assess and check the references of top prospects from a distance. Stretching out the assessment time also allows you to narrow down the areas that you need to assess on interview day. Rely on “I know them well” referrals for an extra level of assessment — the next important feature is to rely primarily on referrals from your top-performing employees. Make an effort to populate your same-day referrals from top employees. This is effective because if a top employee has already seen their work and assessed and recommended a same-day candidate, this added layer of screening will dramatically reduce your error rate. Give them real problems — because candidates are there all day. You can supplement standard structured interviews with more predictive actual problem-solving assessments like whiteboard tests. Determine the jobs and the candidates where speed matters the most — it’s not necessary to use same-day hiring for jobs that are easy to fill or for candidates who are not in high demand. So, instead, it makes sense to focus same-day hiring where speed really makes a difference. So, periodically, call top candidates in each of your key job families to determine how many days on average that they remain active in the job market. When that “still available” time for the best candidates dips below 10 days, same-day hiring becomes essential. Also, hold peer interviews — because you have all day to assess the candidate, add a peer interview to the mix. That is because potential coworkers are more likely to accurately identify potential toxic employees. The Top 10 Benefits of Same-Day Hiring If you or your superiors need to be convinced about the value of one-day hiring, here is a quick summary of the many benefits that result from using this approach. You will land a higher percentage of top performers — this is the highest value of all benefits. There is simply no public data that shows that a longer time to fill has a positive impact on hire quality. And to the contrary, one study showed that the top 10 percent are gone within 10 days. With speed, you will hire more top performers, technologists, and innovators who simply wouldn’t still be available if you waited the traditional average 42 days. And additionally, if you force candidates to make an acceptance decision quickly, you will also end up hiring decisive employees. Improved offer acceptance rates — because nearly one-third in the Robert Half survey said, “a protracted hiring process makes them question the organization’s ability to make other decisions” (when they become an employee). As a result, fast decision-making improves your image and in turn offer acceptance rates. In addition, giving candidates lots of time to think about whether they want to work for your firm may actually raise doubts and questions. Because the selection process lasts all day, the candidate also gets more time to know and like your team. And finally, the advanced selling ability of your hiring team will also help improve offer acceptance rates. Less lost productivity due to fewer vacant position days — filling the job faster means fewer expensive “position vacancy days” where no work is getting done. Filling positions quickly will also lessen the burden on an overworked team that is now being forced to fill in. Reduce your candidate dropout rate — there is nothing more frustrating than having a top candidate field interest and then apply. But after this initial success, you lose them because your interviewing and hiring process takes too long. Tell candidates upfront that you will make a decision in a single day, and this will excite candidates and keep them from dropping out. You can also mandate “Interview Fridays” in order to ensure that everyone is available for candidate meetings during the interview Same-day hiring impresses both top candidates and hiring managers — same-day hiring impresses top candidates with your ability to make fast decisions. Quick hiring also impresses hiring managers because they get better quality talent much faster, and because it’s over quickly, they can quickly get back to their normal work. Stop your best-yielded candidates from applying for additional jobs — simply knowing that a decision will be made quickly would prohibit many from continuing to apply for more jobs. Not applying for additional jobs will effectively decrease your competition. You can reduce the chance that a candidate will stay in their current job — the previously cited Robert Half survey revealed that a lengthy hiring process would cause nearly 1 out of 5 candidates “to stay put in their current job.” Because most in-demand candidates are currently employed, they are likely to get a counteroffer from their current boss. However, getting them to say yes on interview day before they leave your facility can dramatically reduce the chance of them even receiving a counter offer from the current boss. It provides a competitive advantage — because the average time to fill is 42 days. Concluding interviews and making offers quickly provide your firm with a significant competitive advantage over other talent competitors. In this case, “the early bird catches the worm” analogy is true. It will improve your external brand image — candidates themselves want the — often painful — hiring process to be over quickly. And when it takes too long in their view, they are likely to post that complaint on external sites like Glassdoor. And the praise that you receive by reducing interview and hiring time may build your employer brand image and help you attract more candidates. Recruiters also like the approach — a long, drawn-out hiring process requires a lot of recruiter time. So, nothing makes a recruiter happier then closing one of their requisitions in a single day. Recruiters usually also prefer hiring committees because they are more objective and straightforward. Incidentally, recruiting must develop continuous improvement metrics to assess the effectiveness of the same-day process. You hire fast for one primary reason, to get quality hires. Extended delays will cause you to lose top quality candidates to other firms, and that will reduce your overall quality of hire. F inal Thoughts Historically, most managers have thought that slow hiring is best. However, during periods of extremely low unemployment, the opposite is even less true. The intense competition for talent simply means that the best won’t wait around for you to make a slow hiring decision. To put it simply, when the competition for top candidates increases, your time to interview and time to fill must become shorter and move in the opposite direction. You don’t need to use an expedited process for every job. But for those jobs where top candidates are gone within a week, you really have no choice. Author’s Note: If this article stimulated your thinking and provided you with actionable tips, please take a minute to follow and/or connect with Dr. Sullivan on LinkedIn .