Darrell Jewell


Career development 3d
My coworker is always borrowing money from people until payday. The amounts are small, but he does it all the time. Sometimes he even borrows money from one coworker to pay back another. I never kept track of exactly how much I lent him or how much he paid back, but I got sick of it and finally said no when he asked again.
Since then, he's been talking badly about me to other coworkers and... spreading rumors. I don't know how to end this situation. Is there a way to get him to leave me alone and stop bothering me?

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Career development

 1h

8 Steps To Turn Passive Candidates into New Team Members


8 Steps To Turn Passive Candidates into New Team Members

Passive candidates might be happily employed but open to a better job if you approach them thoughtfully.

Stacy Pursell

If there's one thing I can say with absolute certainty after working close to 30 years in the animal health industry and veterinary profession, it's this: If you're relying solely on job boards to fill open positions,... you're missing out on a huge portion of the talent pool. That's because top performers often aren't looking for a new job. Instead, they're content where they are but open to a compelling opportunity if someone approaches them the correct way.

These professionals are known as passive candidates, and they represent a massive, untapped resource, often far more experienced and engaged than active job seekers. In fact, industry research suggests that as much as 70% of the global workforce is made up of passive talent who aren't actively job hunting but could be receptive to the right opportunity.

For veterinary practices struggling to recruit in a tight labor market, learning to find, engage, and influence passive candidates is essential. Here's how practices can do so effectively in eight steps.

1. Know the Difference Between Active and Passive Recruitment

The first step toward reaching passive candidates is recognizing that traditional job board recruitment doesn't resonate with a highly skilled, experienced veterinary audience. Active recruiting relies on candidates coming to you and is how you capture professionals looking for a change.

In contrast, passive recruiting is proactive. You go to qualified candidates and build relationships with them before they even consider leaving their current employer. This tactic requires a shift in mindset and a willingness to spend time building relationships rather than just posting openings and waiting for responses.

2. Build a Strong Employer Brand

Passive candidates rarely respond to generic outreach. They're more likely to engage with organizations that stand out because of their culture, reputation, and values. Here's how to elevate your business's brand:

* Share your story publicly: Showcase your practice's mission, culture, patient stories, and impact. Candidates want to see something that touches them emotionally.

* Be visible where they live professionally: If your ideal passive candidates are on LinkedIn, Instagram, or industry forums, ensure your practice has a presence there and that you're sharing meaningful content.

* Highlight career development: Experienced professionals are often intrinsically motivated. Show them that joining your team could help them grow, lead, or refine their craft.

3. Source Candidates Where They Are

Passive candidates aren't sitting on job boards. Find them with these tips:

* Leverage professional networks: LinkedIn is a goldmine for sourcing passive talent. Use search filters to identify people with relevant backgrounds. Participate in industry groups and discussions to become recognizable and approachable. Beyond LinkedIn, utilize forums, professional associations and email lists, and specialist groups' social platforms. Being active in these circles helps you connect with professionals before you reach out.

* Revisit your talent pipeline: Don't overlook candidates who once applied for a job at your practice but weren't a proper fit then. Many of them have grown professionally since the last engagement and could be open to new opportunities. Keeping a database of strong past applicants and staying in occasional contact with them can pay off when an appropriate role opens.

4. Personalize Your Outreach

Avoid sending generic recruiting emails to passive candidates. Get their attention by recognizing their specific accomplishments or skills or offering insight into why a job opening aligns with their professional goals.

Your message might begin with a compliment about a recent project they led or a shared connection in the profession, followed by a compelling reason your practice's job opportunity matters. Personalized outreach shows respect and signals that you're offering something worth the candidate's time.

5. Build Relationships

Passive recruiting is relational, not transactional. It means:

* Engaging in dialogue before pitching a role

* Asking about career aspirations

* Providing value even if a candidate isn't immediately interested

Nurturing relationships builds trust and keeps your practice top of mind when an opportunity arises.

6. Highlight What Makes Your Practice Exceptional

When a passive candidate hesitates to leave a comfortable role, your value proposition must be meaningfully different. While higher pay might matter, the "why" can also include clear pathways for leadership or specialization, a supportive culture, a better work-life balance, and ongoing professional development.

To attract successful passive candidates, you must articulate what makes your organization stand out in ways that resonate with their professional identity and personal goals.

7. Streamline the Experience

Passive candidates don't want to jump through hoops to explore a new opportunity. Long, drawn-out hiring processes can be a deal-breaker. Streamline the experience by offering flexible interview options, clear communication about expectations and timing, and fewer unnecessary steps in the hiring process.

An easily explored opportunity shows respect for candidates' time and increases the likelihood that they'll stay engaged throughout the process.

8. Use an Experienced Recruiter

Passive recruiting is time-intensive, nuanced, and often outside the expertise of busy practice owners and managers. A seasoned, industry-specific recruiter has:

* Established relationships with high-performing passive candidates

* Deep knowledge of industry labor markets

* Insight into candidate motivations, compensation expectations,and career drivers

* The ability to approach passive professionals discreetly and credibly

Because passive candidates are not actively looking for a new job, who delivers the message matters just as much as what is said. Recruiters act as trusted intermediaries, opening doors that employers often cannot open on their own. In addition, experienced recruiters handle the most time-consuming aspects of the recruitment process, allowing employers to stay focused on their core tasks and operations while gaining access to top-tier talent they would never reach through job boards alone.

It Ain't Easy, but It's Worthwhile

Reaching passive candidates isn't a quick fix. It requires intentional effort, thoughtful communication, and strategic relationship-building. But the reward is access to deep reservoirs of talent -- professionals who bring experience, stability, and long-term value to your veterinary practice.

By going beyond job boards and investing in proactive, personalized outreach, practices can build stronger talent pipelines and accelerate hiring in ways that competitors who rely on job postings simply can't match.

Passive candidates aren't waiting for you to find them on a job board. It's time to go directly to them. more

Career development

 4h

candidate asks to reschedule final interview, hiring manager's response raises immediate red flags: 'we value dedication here'


Is it a job interview or the first stage of workplace indoctrination?

Job interviews are already stressful enough without turning into strange tests of loyalty. Most employed candidates have to balance interviews around existing responsibilities, which is why a little scheduling flexibility is generally considered normal. Recruiters and hiring managers deal with this every day. That is why people... tend to get suspicious when a simple request to move a meeting suddenly becomes a conversation about commitment, dedication, or proving how badly someone wants the job.

For many workers, one of the biggest advantages of the interview process is getting a glimpse into company culture before accepting an offer. The questions employers ask, the way they communicate, and how they handle reasonable requests can reveal a lot about what daily life might look like after getting hired. Sometimes the interview itself ends up being the strongest warning sign a candidate could possibly receive.

Stories like this resonate because many employees have encountered workplaces that expect personal sacrifices to be treated as signs of passion. Whether it is working late, answering messages after hours, or putting work ahead of existing commitments, some companies blur the line between dedication and unhealthy expectations. Job seekers are becoming increasingly aware of those dynamics and are more willing to walk away when something feels off.

The discussion also highlights a growing shift in workplace attitudes. More employees are questioning the idea that professionalism means being endlessly available or proving commitment through inconvenience. While employers want enthusiastic candidates, many workers believe mutual respect should start long before the first day on the job. After all, if a company struggles with reasonable boundaries during the hiring process, people naturally wonder what happens after they are on the payroll. more

Career development

 4h

AI may be deciding whether you get a job interview. Here's what to know.


Artificial intelligence is rapidly impacting the way companies hire employees, and how job hunters find work.

For candidates who have not searched for a new opportunity in years or even months, how companies hire may feel dramatically different. Resume reviews, screening interviews, and even parts of the interview process are increasingly being handled by AI-powered tools instead of people.

With... the goal of saving money and streamlining their internal processes, many employers are embracing AI. Some reports indicate that about 30% or more of employers are using AI in their hiring process.

When a role is posted on job boards, hiring professionals are often overwhelmed by the number of applications. Some candidates use the strategy of applying broadly hoping that one opportunity "sticks," creating a flood of responses for hiring teams to sort through.

AI tools are designed to narrow that pool, so a recruiter can engage with fewer, more qualified candidates.

Most AI platforms use algorithms -- step-by-step instructions with a specific goal, like a recipe -- to solve the challenge of identifying qualified employees more efficiently.

A fast-growing tool is the use of chatbots during early-stage screening. Chatbots filter and remove unqualified candidates. Instead of a human evaluating a resume, interactive chatbots are used to ask questions, analyze responses, and even suggest who should advance in the hiring process.

AI can also screen resumes, assess qualifications, and identify which resumes are the best match for a position. A recruiter can search using keywords or a specific skill.

Video interviews are evolving as well.

Some companies now use AI-assisted interview platforms that resemble virtual video calls, sometimes featuring a human-like avatar that interacts with a candidate. Fraud detection software is typically built into these systems to flag suspicious behaviors like unusual pauses or eye tracking. Employers want to eliminate candidates who are using online tools to help them answer questions.

More advanced hiring software has had mixed results with analyzing facial expressions and tone of voice.

Hiring professionals worry if the algorithms are identifying the most qualified candidate, or is it the candidate with the best resume? Additionally, employers report that AI does not effectively assess "soft skills," which are difficult to evaluate with many screening tools.

Some AI screening tools have also drawn legal scrutiny in Mass. because they resemble prohibited lie-detector tests. State law bars employers from requiring lie-detector tests as a condition of employment.

Bias is another area of growing concern.

Supporters argue that a consistent process can reduce biases. Some employers report that when AI is reviewing qualifications only, biases are less likely to impede the hiring process. Critics, however, contend that AI tools may disadvantage or even disqualify candidates who are non-native English speakers, candidates with disabilities, or applicants who are not tech savvy.

Job seekers are increasingly using AI themselves.

AI can assist candidates with writing resumes and cover letters, as well as generating relevant interview questions and answers. Employers may view this as deceptive, though candidates often argue that companies are relying on AI throughout the hiring process.

There are an increasing number of employers asking candidates to confirm that they have not used AI to build their resumes. If a company receives 20 resumes, all with the same format and with remarkably similar language, this may raise flags.

The use of AI in the hiring process will continue to grow and evolve, but experts encourage companies to use it as an enhancement to their selection process, not their only selection tool.

A common candidate complaint is being hired by a machine as opposed to being hired by a human. It can feel disingenuous when a company claims to be committed to the candidate experience while heavily relying on cold and impersonal AI tools to eliminate applicants.

Some job seekers worry whether employers will be scraping candidate data from their online presence. Will social media profiles, images, videos, be included as part of the hiring profile, along with a candidate's resume? Candidates have expressed fears regarding data security.

Regularly critiquing how AI is being used is essential. Analyzing algorithms, assessing the quality of candidates, monitoring biases and evaluating the candidate experience are important considerations.

Patricia Hunt Sinacole is the founder of First Beacon Group LLC, a Boston-based HR consulting firm. more

Career development

 6h

EXHALE Dance Company Announces 10 Inaugural Dancers, Launching a New Model for Sustainable Careers in Dance


Washington D.C. non-profit challenges industry norms & provides newly graduated dancers with salaries, health benefits, career development & artistic success.

WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES, June 2, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- EXHALE Dance Company today announced the selection of its 10 inaugural company dancers from around the US and Canada, marking the launch of a groundbreaking new model... designed to address one of the performing arts industry's most persistent challenges: how recently graduated dancers can build sustainable careers without sacrificing financial stability.

The professional dance industry has long required early-career artists to choose between their art and their livelihood while accepting unpaid apprenticeships, piecing together gig work, and navigating a field where professional experience is demanded but rarely offered. For many highly trained dancers, that impossible trade-off means leaving the profession entirely within just a few years of graduating. Families, universities, and artists themselves invest years and enormous resources into dance training, only to watch that talent walk away because the industry's economic model doesn't support staying.

Founded by a 2026 Howard University graduate with a BFA in Dance, Sydni D. Brown, EXHALE Dance Company was created to change that reality. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit professional dance company headquartered in Washington, D.C., EXHALE Dance Company is among the first organizations of its kind dedicated specifically to supporting dancers in the critical transition from college to career through a human-centered model that combines artistic excellence with financial and professional support.

"This is about more than creating a dance company, it's about creating a new standard for how we invest in artists," said Sydni D. Brown, Founder & Artistic Director, EXHALE Dance Company. "For far too long, dancers have been expected to choose between pursuing their passion and building a stable future. We believe they deserve both. Our inaugural dancers represent the future of this industry, and we're committed to ensuring they have the resources, support, and opportunities to thrive as artists and professionals."

Each EXHALE Dance Company dancer receives an annual salary, access to affordable health benefits, mentorship from industry leaders, and professional development through EXHALE ELEVATE, the company's career platform encompassing leadership development, original choreographic opportunities, wealth management education, personal brand building, and long-term career planning. EXHALE Dance Company doesn't just employ dancers. It launches careers. EXHALE Dance company welcomes the following dancers:

Sydni D. Brown -- Founder, Artistic Director & Company Dancer

Julia Dougherty -- Company Dancer

Evelyn Ealey -- Company Dancer

Kennedy Gordon -- Company Dancer

Shea Hancock -- Company Dancer

Laila May -- Company Dancer

AliceAnn Mosiniak -- Company Dancer

Naja Payoute -- Company Dancer

Ali-asha Polson -- Company Dancer

Kaitlyn Vivian -- Company Dancer

The selection of EXHALE Dance Company's first company dancers represents a significant milestone not only for the organization but for the broader dance ecosystem, demonstrating a new approach to talent development that prioritizes sustainability, wellness, and career longevity alongside artistic achievement. They will officially begin rehearsals this summer in Washington, D.C., ahead of the company's debut 2026/2027 performance season.

To learn more about EXHALE Dance Company, community members, arts supporters, and dance enthusiasts are encouraged to follow EXHALE Dance Company's journey by subscribing to the company mailing list, following the organization across social media platforms, attending performances, and making donations to support the next generation of professional dancers.

About EXHALE Dance Company

EXHALE Dance Company is a Washington, D.C.-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit professional dance company dedicated to empowering recently graduated dancers through salaried employment, artistic development, mentorship, and human-centered support. Founded by Sydni D. Brown, EXHALE Dance Company exists to help dancers breathe, move, and become while forging a new pathway for sustainable careers in professional dance.

Sabrena Pringle

Exhale Dance Company

+1 202-213-5129

email us here

Visit us on social media:

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Legal Disclaimer:

EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability

for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this

article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above. more

Career development

 6h

What to Do After Passing Your Real Estate Exam: Complete 2026 Guide


What's next after passing your real estate exam?

The good news is that you don't need to have everything figured out today. Building a successful real estate career happens one step at a time.

In this guide, we'll walk through the nine most important things to do after passing your real estate exam so you can start building a successful business.

Key takeaways

* Finish the Licensing Process:... Passing the exam is a major milestone, but you'll still need to complete any remaining state licensing requirements before you can start practicing.

* Choose Your Brokerage Carefully: The training, mentorship, technology, and support you receive can have a lasting impact on your success.

* Build Your Business Early: Create a plan, set activity goals, manage your time, and establish a budget before your first transaction.

* Grow Your Network Intentionally: Your sphere of influence, referral partners, and mentors can become some of your most valuable business assets.

* Invest in Continuous Learning: Continuing education, certifications, and professional development can help you stay competitive and grow throughout your career.

1. Complete your licensing requirements

Passing the exam doesn't mean you're immediately ready to start practicing real estate.

Most states require additional steps before your license becomes active. Depending on your state's requirements, you may need to:

* Submit a license application

* Complete a background check or fingerprinting

* Obtain required E & O insurance coverage

* Affiliate with a sponsoring broker

You'll need an active license before you can legally practice real estate and earn commissions.

2. Find the right brokerage

Interviewing brokerages as a new agent feels a bit different than a traditional job interview. You may ask as many (or more) questions than the managing broker.

Consider asking:

* What training do you offer new agents?

* Is there a mentorship program?

* What technology and marketing tools are included?

* What are your expectations for first-year agents?

* How accessible are brokers when agents need help?

The answers can help you determine whether a brokerage is a good fit for your goals.

Understand how you'll get paid

Real estate compensation can be confusing when you're first getting started. After all, most real estate agents work entirely on commission based on a percentage of the property's cost.

Most brokerages use commission splits, meaning a portion of the commission goes to the brokerage, and the remainder goes to the agent.

You may see structures such as:

* 60/40 split

* 70/30 split

* 80/20 split

It's also important to ask about:

* Monthly fees

* Transaction fees

* Technology fees

* Marketing costs

Remember, the brokerage that gives you the highest split isn't always the best choice. Strong training and support can be valuable early in your career.

3. Join your local REALTOR® association and get MLS access

Membership in your local REALTOR® association and the National Association of REALTORS® can provide valuable benefits, including networking opportunities, education, industry resources, and access to your local Multiple Listing Service (MLS).

(Despite the name, there isn't just one MLS. The term "MLS" refers to hundreds of local and regional databases used by real estate professionals across the country. The MLS that serves your market may be different from the MLS used in a neighboring city or region.)

These databases allow agents and brokers to share information about properties for sale and cooperate throughout the buying and selling process.

Access to your local MLS is important because it helps you:

* Search active, pending, and sold listings

* Research local market trends

* Prepare comparative market analyses (CMAs)

* Access property details and listing history

* Share accurate information with clients

* Market listings to other real estate professionals

In many markets, MLS access is obtained through your brokerage, local REALTOR® association, or both. Your broker can help you understand which MLS serves your area and what steps are required to gain access.

The sooner you become comfortable using your local MLS, the more confident you'll be when helping clients navigate the market.

4. Create a simple business plan

Successful agents treat real estate like a business from day one.

That doesn't mean you need a 30-page business plan. In fact, a simple plan is often more effective.

Start by answering a few questions:

* Who do I want to serve?

* How will I find clients?

* What are my income goals?

* What marketing activities will I focus on?

* What skills do I want to develop?

Having a plan gives you direction and helps you stay focused when things get busy.

Additional Resource: Creating a Successful Real Estate Business Plan (That Actually Matches Your Life)

5. Set goals and manage your time

Many new agents focus only on sales goals. While income goals are important, activity goals are often more helpful early in your career.

Focus on actions you can control, such as:

* Meeting five new people each week

* Attending two networking events per month

* Posting on social media three times per week

* Following up with leads daily

These activities create momentum and often lead to future business.

Real estate coach and author Jenifer Morin believes she can often tell how successful an agent will be by looking at their calendar. Agents who intentionally schedule lead generation, networking, learning, and client follow-up are often the ones who build lasting careers.

Watch her explain why your calendar may be one of the strongest predictors of your future success.

6. Create a budget for your business

Real estate offers incredible earning potential, but income can be unpredictable, especially during your first year.

Creating a budget early can help you manage expenses, plan for slower periods, and make smarter business decisions.

Common expenses include:

* REALTOR® association dues

* MLS fees

* Marketing materials

* Technology subscriptions

* Continuing education and license renewal fees

* Business cards and signage

As your business grows, your budget may also expand to include more advertising, client events, and additional tools.

7. Build your sphere of influence

One of the biggest mistakes new agents make is waiting until they're "ready" to tell people they're in real estate.

Don't wait.

The people who already know, like, and trust you are often your first source of referrals, introductions, and opportunities.

Start by making a list of people in your sphere of influence, including:

* Friends and family

* Former coworkers

* Neighbors

* Classmates and alumni connections

* Community groups

* Local business owners

You don't need to ask everyone to buy or sell a home. Simply let people know about your new business and stay in touch consistently.

Build referral relationships

Your sphere isn't limited to potential clients. Some of your most valuable relationships may come from professionals who regularly work with homeowners and buyers.

Consider building connections with:

* Mortgage lenders

* Home inspectors

* Insurance agents

* Contractors

* Attorneys

* Financial advisors

Strong referral partnerships can help you grow your business while providing additional value to your clients.

Watch a replay of our recent webinar, Activate the Hidden Goldmine in Your Partner Network, to learn more about building referral relationships.

Find a mentor

Every successful real estate agent was once where you are now.

A mentor can help you avoid common mistakes, navigate challenges, and build confidence during your first few years in the industry.

Look for someone who:

* Has experience in your market/niche

* Is willing to share knowledge

* Has built a business you admire

* Invests in developing other agents

The right mentor can shorten your learning curve and help you focus on the activities that matter most.

Step 8: Seek expert advice.

People are more likely to work with agents they know, trust, and remember.

That's why it's important to begin building your personal brand early.

Build your online presence

Start with a few foundational pieces:

* A professional headshot

* A complete LinkedIn profile

* Business social media accounts

* A professional website

* A Google Business Profile

You don't need to be everywhere. Focus on creating a professional and consistent presence where your audience spends time.

Create a simple marketing plan

Keep your marketing strategy straightforward.

Many successful new agents focus on:

* Social media content

* Email marketing

* Community involvement

* Referral relationships

* Networking events

The goal isn't perfection. It's consistency.

Small actions repeated over time often produce the best results.

9. Commit to ongoing education and professional development

Passing your exam is an achievement, but it's only the beginning of your learning journey.

The real estate industry changes constantly. Market conditions shift, technology evolves, and client expectations continue to grow.

Investing in your professional development can help you:

* Build confidence

* Better serve clients

* Develop specialized expertise

* Stay competitive in your market

* Utilize technology to improve customer service and save time

* Create long-term career growth

Whether you're learning negotiation skills, exploring luxury real estate, or discovering how AI can improve your business, continuing education can help you stand out from the competition.

Become a member of a community of top real estate talent

With a Colibri Real Estate CE Membership, you'll get more than just your state's required continuing education courses. You'll gain access to the tools, training, and resources that help you grow throughout your entire career.

Membership benefits include:

* Unlimited access to state-approved continuing education courses

* Practical tools, articles, templates, checklists, and white papers covering real-world real estate topics

* Career-focused professional certifications

* Discounts on advanced professional development programs

* AI training for Pro and Premier members

* Discounts on luxury real estate training through the Institute for Luxury Home Marketing

Whether you're preparing for your first license renewal or looking to build specialized expertise, membership provides ongoing support at every stage of your career.

Become a member of a community of top real estate talent and invest in your future success today. more

Career development

 7h

I spent months waiting for the perfect job after college. It's one of my biggest regrets.


Plus: how to stop "doomjobbing" while you're looking for work

Here's how MarketWatch's Aditi Shrikant wishes she spent her summer vacation after she graduated college.

Welcome back to Don't Short Yourself, where we offer tips for growing your wealth and spending your money wisely.

Subscribe to Don't Short Yourself for free to receive it weekly.

This week we're shining a spotlight on... service-industry jobs - opportunities that can help you earn money, build experience and develop marketable skills, especially if you haven't landed an internship or entry-level role.

When I first graduated, I moved back in with my parents and sulked around because I was unemployed and without an internship lined up. Looking back, I wish I'd spent that time working.

Retail and restaurant jobs wouldn't have magically launched my career. But they would have put money in my pocket, added experience to my résumé and helped me build skills employers value.

Here's why service-industry work deserves a second look from new graduates.

- Aditi Shrikant

Big money idea of the week: The smartest first job might not be your dream job

I didn't want to work a service job after graduating because it felt like moving backward. All of my friends who seemed proactive about their careers already had jobs or internships in their preferred fields. At that point in my life, working at a restaurant felt like admitting that I didn't have my life together.

Moving to New York City was not my plan (I had no plan), but it was the place where I got a paid internship - making $8.75 an hour. I lived in the basement of a distant aunt I'd never met, and the commute from Jamaica, Queens was over an hour. It was pretty miserable - but I wasn't about to complain about free housing. And while there were a cornucopia of factors that contributed to my unhappiness, money (or lack thereof) was definitely one of the biggest ones. Earning $1,500 a month and trying to save up to move out was challenging.

Looking back, moving to one of the most expensive cities in America may not have been the savviest financial decision. But it did force me to rethink something else: my attitude toward service work.

I met smart, ambitious, creative college grads who were waiting tables and taking on other jobs while pursuing internships, creative careers and graduate degrees. They weren't embarrassed by it. It made me painfully aware of just how snobbish and short-sighted my perspective was. I was judging myself more harshly than anyone else was, and it cost me income and experience, as well as skills that money alone can't buy.

My fear of being judged during that time didn't protect me - it held me back. Instead of earning a couple of thousand dollars to kickstart the next chapter of my life, I spent months worrying about what taking a service job might say about me.

New grads are entering a labor market right now that "isn't the worst, but also isn't the best," according to Ryan Nunn, the director of research for the Yale University Budget Lab. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates (ages 22 to 27) during the first three months of 2026 was 5.6%, according to data from the New York Federal Reserve, which was higher than the rate for all workers with college degrees (3.1%) and higher than the average rate for all workers (4.2%).

The longer you stay unemployed, the harder it is to find work. "The hiring rate for unemployed workers has declined somewhat," Nunn says. "It has weakened in recent years. That weakening is a problem for folks at the margins, including those who are trying to start their careers."

So if you're stuck, consider picking up shifts at a local bar, restaurant, hotel or retailer in the meantime to put money in your pocket and avoid gaps in your resume.

Why taking any job (and not waiting for the 'right one') can pay off

- Progress beats standing still. A job won't replace a career launch, but it can keep money flowing, build experience and prevent months from slipping by while you wait for the perfect opportunity. The retail industry employs about 15.5 million people, and restaurants about 12.4 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meaning that there are tons of job opportunities.

- People skills matter. "Service jobs can help build skills that translate to almost any career. When interviewing, don't just say you waited tables. Explain how managing customers, solving problems and working with a team make you an ideal job candidate," says Jeff Strohl, the director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

- AI resistance. Employers increasingly value human interpersonal skills because artificial intelligence can automate more technical and administrative tasks. Hiring managers are placing greater emphasis on communication, conflict resolution and adaptability. In a 2025 survey 60% of employers said having strong "soft" skills is more important today than it was five years ago.

One key point: Don't sell yourself short by underselling what you accomplished. For years, I thought service work would make me look less employable. In reality, many of the skills employers want are built on the job.

More job reads

- One way to get hired right now: Be willing to go to the office five days a week.

- These five AI-proof jobs are still hiring while tech is cutting back. Here's how much they pay and how to get them.

- Make yourself a master salary negotiator at your next job interview by role-playing with these AI prompts.

- Here are the fastest-growing jobs for new college graduates in this low-hire market - plus how to stand out among other applicants.

- The under-the-radar cities where new college grads can get good jobs - and even afford to buy a house.

Definition of the week: Doomjobbing

"Doomjobbing" is the cycle of endlessly applying for employment postings, refreshing LinkedIn and scrolling job boards without making meaningful progress toward meaningful employment.

The term plays off "doomscrolling," or consuming a steady stream of bad news online, and describes the frustration many recent graduates and job seekers feel in a labor market that has been particularly tough on young eligible workers.

The danger isn't just emotional. The longer someone stays unemployed, the harder it can be to re-enter the workforce. That's why career experts often recommend focusing on momentum over perfection. A temporary job, part-time work, freelance assignments or an internship can help you earn money and expand your network while you continue to scout for your forever career.

One key move to make now: If you've applied for dozens of jobs without success, then set a goal that isn't tied to landing an offer. Reach out to three people in your network, attend one industry event, update your résumé or apply for a part-time role that keeps you learning and earning.

Looking back, I probably spent my fair share of that summer doomjobbing before doomjobbing had a name.

Key money reads

- Now you need $20,000 in an emergency savings fund. Yes, really.

- Daily necessities are so expensive now that people are using BNPL for gas and groceries. Here's what you should know before you try it.

- Reducing your 401(k) contribution to save money, even for a short period, puts you on a slippery slope. Take these less risky steps instead.

- Here's what's on Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max and other streaming platforms in June, and which streamers are worth the subscription price this month.

Share your favorite money tip

Send us your favorite way to save money - or make your money work for you - and we'll share it with our readers. Send it to dontshortyourself@marketwatch.com.

-Aditi Shrikant

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

06-02-26 0948ET Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. more

Career development

 7h

The Soft Metrics Are About To Become Your Only Hard Moat


Bots are about to own everything we can measure. What PTTOW!, the NFL and Keke Palmer taught me about the only thing left that's worth winning.

We're living through the great narrowing.

Every meeting now opens with the same question. What's the ROI? What's the return. Did that dinner net a deal, did that conversation convert, what's this worth on the balance sheet. We've gotten very good at... measuring things. We've gotten worse at noticing which things are worth measuring. Everything reduced to 0s and 1s, like we're robots auditioning for the machines coming for our jobs.

I thought about that all week at PTTOW!, a network of leaders who shape culture, a space built for the one thing AI can't fake.

A woman in the bathroom said to no one in particular, "This is amazing, but I have no idea how I'll explain the ROI to my company when I get back."

I didn't have an answer for her. Not at first. Then it landed: the fact that you can't cleanly explain the ROI is exactly why it matters. She was trying to fit the most valuable thing in the building onto a spreadsheet, and it wouldn't go.

AI is about to make the narrowing worse. It will supercharge that instinct, optimizing our already-transactional culture into something so frictionless that every interaction feels soulless (e.g., we've already seen this backlash in luxury travel).

Because for a bot, a transaction is a transaction.

Here's the question PTTOW! cracked open for me this year, under the theme Sages and Seekers: if bots are going to own the transaction, what do humans own?

The answer isn't to out-compute the computers. We'll lose.

It's to get radically better at being human. That's our superpower. We are super-connectors, of people, of ideas, of concepts that would never have met otherwise. But none of it holds without trust, the connective tissue that makes the connection mean something. And the people who already know this aren't talking about it in the abstract. Nadja White, CEO of M&C Saatchi, said it plainly: You can't judge ROI without judging trust. And trust isn't built overnight in transactional environments. It's built when you set the table and invite people in: the dinners, the conversations where people show up as their full selves and share something that makes them a little vulnerable and a lot more human.

Nadja named the principle. Sam Rapoport built an entire pipeline on it.

"I Know a Person"

Ten years ago, Sam Rapoport stood on the sidelines at MetLife Stadium, looked left and right, and asked: where are all the women on the football side of the NFL?

There were almost none.

So she decided to be the one to change it.

Here's the part that stopped me. When Sam asked NFL general managers where they actually found their entry-level coaches and scouts, the answer wasn't résumés or applicant tracking systems. It was golf courses, cigar lounges, social interactions. They hired off the feeling of a valuable human moment: "I know a guy."

Sit with that. We're racing in the opposite direction. AI agents firing off applications by the hundred, résumés optimized for robots, algorithms screening algorithms. The whole hiring funnel is being automated into a transaction. And the people doing the actual hiring? They're still moving on I know a person.

So Sam didn't fight the system. She built better rooms. She gathered 40 of the best women in college coaching and scouting, most of them women of color, and put them face to face with the people who hire. Not to lecture. To let them impress. "I know a guy" became "I know a person."

The result: women coaching on all 32 NFL teams. A 190 percent increase in women in football roles over five years. More women coaching in the NFL than in any other men's pro sports league on earth, more than double second place.

And the reframe that made it work across the political spectrum? She never said hire women. She said it's anti-competitive to ignore half the population. Tell a head coach he's being anti-competitive and watch how fast he gets competitive. She turned a polarizing issue into a win-win, then bravely asked people to share. While everyone else automates the funnel, the jobs still move through the person.

You Can't Bot Your Way to Becoming

Keke Palmer said the line I haven't stopped thinking about: "What we are missing right now is not innovation. It's wisdom around innovation."

She'd know. She came up through the old machine, Disney and Nickelodeon, and got treated like a former version of herself, a child star archived before she'd finished growing up. Then the internet handed her the pen. Both systems made her. The old one gave her the discipline and the craft. The new one gave her the freedom and the reach. The problem, she argues, is that we kept the reach and threw out the craft.

We've built the largest unorganized creative economy in history. Hundreds of millions of people building audiences faster than they're building themselves. As Keke put it, people are not meant to carry influence without initiation. Every healthy culture used to have stewards, the Quincy Joneses, the Dick Clarks, the Apollo, the conservatories, institutions that didn't just discover talent, they developed people. That's the connective tissue that's been hollowed out.

And here's the trap. The instinct now is to let the bots fill that gap, to automate the mentorship, scale the coaching, let the model raise the next generation. But you can't bot your way to becoming. Development is a relationship, not a transaction. It's somebody seeing potential in you before the metrics do, and staying in the room while you grow into it. Tissue is grown, not generated.

So What To Do With This

I hosted three townhalls at PTTOW! on three wildly different topics: career uncertainty, the insane pressure executives quietly carry, the hate pulling at the country. Every room landed in the same place. Nobody wanted a better tool. They wanted each other. And the data says they're right to: A recent study I worked on with fellow PTTOW! member Samantha Matlin at St. Jude Children's Hospital found that even now, 68 percent of Americans feel hopeful about their future, and 91 percent say what drives that hope is by 'helping other people'.

So while everyone else freaks out about AI taking jobs, do the counterintuitive thing: invest more in your humans, not less.

* Build more rooms, not more funnels. Like Sam, engineer the social interactions where trust actually forms. The job still moves through the person.

* Reframe polarizing issues as win-wins. Anti-competitive beats moralizing. Find the version of the ask where everyone's interests already align, then bravely ask people to share.

* Steward, don't just distribute. Develop people, don't just discover them. You can't bot your way to becoming.

* Build two scorecards. Let the bots own efficiency and the transaction. Hold your people to a different northstar: trust, meaning, relationships, culture, co-creation. That's the work no competitor can copy-paste.

The woman in the bathroom was right that you can't put PTTOW! on a balance sheet. She was wrong that it's a problem.

That's not the bug. When everything measurable becomes commodity, the unmeasurable becomes the moat. more

Career development

 8h

I didn't set out to build a protocol. I was trying to keep my résumé honest.


I didn't set out to build a protocol. I was trying to keep my résumé honest.

A small project kept turning into a bigger question. I'm putting all of it in the open -- including the parts I can't finish, and the part I shouldn't own.

I built this for myself, first. A résumé is the most quietly dishonest document most of us own -- static, hand-tuned, stale the day you stop editing it. I wanted the... opposite: a profile I could keep honest. Something conversational and versioned that stays true without me tending it, and that an AI could read fairly -- because increasingly the first reader of your work isn't a person, it's a model.

So I made one. A small service that exposes my profile as something you can talk to: ask it a question, score a job against it, generate a tailored résumé -- and read the whole thing as plain data if you're a machine. Nothing in it hardcodes me; the engineering is the same for anyone. I figured if it was useful, someone else could take it.

What I didn't expect was for it to stop being a résumé.

I only noticed by reading back my own notes. In March it was just a thought -- what if hiring worked like email, an open thing any server and client could speak, instead of one platform that owns both ends. By April, shipping the public interface, I wrote a line to myself I keep returning to: this isn't my résumé, it's the reference version of something more general. By May it had a shape -- the résumé isn't the artifact anymore, the agent is; you're not a document you fire into the dark, you're a node, and your work is the way in. I hadn't planned a protocol. I'd planned a weekend project, and it kept handing me a bigger question every time I shipped a piece of it.

The question, roughly: what is AI actually for, in work?

Here's the part I keep turning over, and I'll say it plainly so you can decide what you think. If we mostly use AI as a black box to do existing work more cheaply, I don't think we create much that's new -- we reproduce what's already been made, faster, with fewer people paid, and route the savings to whoever owns the model. I've tried to argue myself out of it and haven't managed.

The honest objection is that we've heard this before. The printing press, the PC, the internet -- every wave was supposed to end work, and every time we ended up with more of it. I think that's true. But I think it held for a specific reason: those tools were open enough that the people displaced could pick them up and become makers again. What feels different now is that the ingredients -- compute, data, models, distribution -- are unusually concentrated. So I don't think the claim is "AI ends jobs." I think it's narrower and stranger: the thing that always saved us was open tools, and we're about to run the same experiment on closed ones. I might be wrong about that. I'd genuinely like to be.

What I can do, instead of arguing, is build the other version and leave it open -- AI used to carry value forward instead of extracting it. Make a person legible and sovereign on their own terms. Keep the capability distributed enough that people re-enter as builders instead of being filtered out by something they can't see.

And the reason it has to be open isn't a slogan. A truth you keep to yourself is only half a truth -- there's no one outside it to check it. Publishing it, and letting people and machines query it, is what makes it verifiable. So I tried to make the whole thing checkable: ask the agent "what's the evidence for this?" and it answers with commit counts, tests, live endpoints, signed proofs -- and the dated reasoning behind it is browsable, so you can see a premise was written down before the result existed. I'd rather you verify me than trust me.

Somewhere in there it became clear this is bigger than a résumé, and bigger than me. It's more like a rubik's cube -- a few faces, and different people care about different ones:

- the person who just wants to own their professional identity instead of renting visibility from a platform

- the hiring engineer who wishes they could ask a peer's agent a real question before a keyword filter gets involved

- the protocol and trust people, for whom the interesting part is how two sides verify each other without anyone owning the middle

- the folks who care whether a machine's claims about you can be checked at all

- the person who's been chewing on the same labor-and-AI question I have.

I don't want to tell you which of those is yours. I'd rather turn the cube and let you find the face you can't put down. What I've learned is that I can't turn all of it alone. A standard built by one person is just a project with opinions about itself. So I've put it in the open as three independent pieces, deliberately: the candidate side (built, running), an employer side (a role-agent that states verified things about a job instead of marketing copy), and a thin layer between them whose only job is to reconcile the two -- to hold both sides' arguments and settle what's fair without becoming an owner. The hardest, least-solved piece is that last one: how a reconciled agreement actually becomes a published, governed standard. I have the idea and almost none of the experience for it. I've said exactly that, in writing, in the repo. It's the part I most need other people for.

And to be honest about what "no one owns this" has to mean: it includes me. I built the candidate side, so I'm stepping back from the employer side -- mentor only, not owner. If one person runs both halves, the independence is theater. So that seat is genuinely open.

One last thing, because it's the whole argument in miniature. This was built with a lot of help from AI -- and I won't name a tool, because it wasn't one. It was the compounded work of a long line of iterations that came before mine. That's the version of AI I'm arguing for: something you build on top of and pass forward, not a black box that hands back a cheaper copy of what was already there.

I built this for myself. It stopped being only mine somewhere along the way. If a face of it is yours, it's open -- and you don't have to agree with me to pick it up.

- the resume agent can be forked and turned into a living proof of your work -- github.com/yuens1002/resume-agent

- the employer agent needs a voice and codebase so someone who hires or builds hiring tools can stand it up -- github.com/yuens1002/employer-agent -- github.com/yuens1002/employer-agent

- the Open Employment Protocol (OEP) the neutral layer that reconciles the resume and employer agents to uphold the transfer of knowledge into innovation -- github.com/yuens1002/open-employment-protocol more

Career development

 9h

'Milburn Report shines a light on the daily struggle of job hunting for young people' - CYP Now


Alice Warrington spent a year searching for a full time job after graduating from university

The publication of the interim Milburn Report revealed that one million young people in the UK are not in education, employment or training. This has come as a shock to many, but as a young person in today's job market, this is not a surprising statistic.

As a 23-year-old who has recently received a job... offer after more than 13 months of searching, this report shines a light on what is a daily struggle. The demanding jobs market is daunting for young people, as lengthy application processes, limited entry level positions and the rise of AI have created a highly competitive and demoralising environment.

Young people are entering a jobs market which leaves them feeling abandoned by the systems society has said will provide us with a living wage and enjoyable life. With the rising cost of living crisis, young people not in formal education, training or work are left behind and stuck in a self-fulfilling cycle of stagnation and isolation.

During my 13 months of searching for a salaried permanent role, I completed my master's degree and worked full time in a zero-hour bar job. This role came with its own challenges when seeking a position to kickstart a career. My colleagues find themselves in similar positions; we hold degrees and are actively seeking employment, yet due to the intensity of the hospitality industry and uncertainty of zero hours contracts it is hard to dedicate enough time to job applications. The time it takes to fill out an application for a role can range from eight hours to several days of work.

There have been times in my year of job hunting where I have spent over a week on a single job application, only to never hear back.

Humans are being removed from entry level recruitment, both in the hiring process and in the role assignments. Coupled with working full time hospitality shifts that end in the early morning, it is hard to find the motivation, or even the time, to find a more secure job. Even if that time and motivation is found, there is no guarantee you will even receive an email rejection, as many face the dreaded job application 'ghosting'.

Writing this, I understand there is a privilege in my experience of job-seeking. I have witnessed friends and fellow graduates be stuck in cycles where they are not in employment, financially limited and are unable to gain any financial security.

Something has got to give. Young people are facing a perfect storm of economic insecurity and technologies replacing human labour. We are more likely to be rejected for an entry level position than an applicant with years of experience in the field. Conversations with friends and colleagues have highlighted the 'experience paradox' - we need entry level jobs to gain real-world experience yet need years of experience to gain this entry level job.

Over time, this constant rejection manifests as decreased confidence and demotivation, which makes young people want to give up trying to find something better. We deserve compassion and genuine opportunities to showcase what we are capable of - or, as the Milburn Report warns, the UK is at risk of a "lost generation".

Due to support from Groundwork UK and my role as a Youth Advisory Board (YAB) member, I have had the unique opportunity to engage with policy makers and charity leads across the UK on the importance of amplifying youth voices. The experience and connections I have made as part of the YAB have directly led to me receiving the news I have been successful in gaining a new role in Manchester. I am overjoyed for this opportunity and I feel as though I finally have a foot in the door. I wish the same relief and success to every young person job-seeking right now and hope that more schemes like Groundwork's YAB are implemented to give young people the opportunity to make wider impact! more

Career development

 9h

Social Media Recruiting in 2026: Platforms & Best Practices


Social media recruiting has shifted from a nice-to-have employer brand activity to a core hiring channel. This guide breaks down what social media recruiting actually looks like in 2026: which platforms work for different hiring challenges, what content performs, common mistakes to avoid, and how to make social recruiting actually drive hires rather than just vanity metrics.

Keep reading to... learn:

* What social media recruitment is (beyond spamming jobs to LinkedIn)

* Why social recruiting matters more in 2026

* Which platforms work best for different types of hiring

* How to use different social media channels effectively

* 10 social media hiring best practices that actually work

* The biggest mistakes stopping organisations getting results

* Common concerns about social media recruitment

* A practical checklist to help you get started quickly

Let's go.

What is social media recruiting?

Social media recruiting (sometimes called social recruiting) means using social platforms to attract, engage, assess, and (hopefully) hire candidates.

"Yeah, we already post all our roles on LinkedIn and Facebook", you might be thinking. But if that's all your organisation is doing, you're barely scratching the surface.

Done well, social recruiting is less about shouting "job here!" into the void and more about building awareness, trust and relationships over time.

The reality is, most people aren't actively job searching. Nope, not even in this labour market. And even candidates open to moving often aren't trawling job boards every evening.

They're living their lives, scrolling Instagram, checking LinkedIn, watching TikTok, chatting in Facebook groups, and so on. And noticing (often without realising they're noticing) which employers feel credible, interesting and human.

(And also noticing, usually with noticing they're noticing because the reaction's eurgh, which ones feel cringe, bland, or outright fake.)

Social recruiting isn't a replacement for job boards or careers sites (or the recruitment software that underpins everything). Think of social media as part of a wider recruitment ecosystem: helping candidates discover, trust, and engage with your organisation before they ever hit apply.

What role does social media play in hiring?

Social recruiting can play several different roles in modern talent acquisition.

Active recruiting

This is the bit you probably thought of first: promoting live vacancies.

Recruiters commonly use social channels to advertise open roles, target specific audiences, and encourage applications. That's stuff like:

* Sharing jobs on LinkedIn

* Promoting roles through Facebook groups

* Using paid social ads to drive applications

* Encouraging employees to share opportunities

For urgent hiring needs or hard-to-fill vacancies, social can widen reach beyond the same people repeatedly visiting job boards. AKA, it can get you into lesser-fished ponds.

Passive talent attraction

Arguably the biggest value of social recruiting sits higher up the funnel. Many of the strongest candidates are passive - not actively applying, but potentially open to the right opportunity. Social media helps you build visibility with these people long before a vacancy appears.

A software engineer might follow your leadership team for technical insight, for example. A care worker might see stories about progression opportunities. A graduate might start recognising your employer brand months before applying.

You're planting seeds before hiring urgency hits. Good news for quality of hire.

Employer brand building

Social recruiting is one of the clearest windows candidates have into what working with you is actually like.

Glossy careers-site copy saying "We're a people-first organisation" means very little if your social channels feel lifeless, overly corporate or disconnected from reality.

The strongest employers use social to show real people, real progression, real flexibility, real values and the everyday moments that make culture tangible. Even better if you've got a thriving employee-generated channel strengthening that bit for you. (More on the how later).

Community building

Social recruiting helps organisations build ongoing relationships with talent. Pipelining or talent pooling or community building, you'll probably hear it called.

* Silver-medallist candidates.

* Former applicants.

* Alumni.

* Local talent pools.

* Future graduates.

Rather than starting from cold every time a role opens, smart recruiters keep people warm through content, updates, events and relevant opportunities.

Why social media recruiting matters in 2026

For years, social media recruiting sat in the nice-to-have bucket. Or, not really, but that was the general perception. Social media for hiring was often something recruiters experimented with when they had spare time (Ha!)

A few LinkedIn posts here. An employer brand campaign there. The occasional vacancy shared on Facebook with crossed fingers.

That's changed. Today, social recruiting is an increasingly core part of how organisations attract talent, as job boards become decreasingly effective.

For many teams, job boards are failing because:

* Costs have increased; candidate quality has decreased

* Automated applications drive irrelevant applications

* Deep databases of inexperienced or overseas candidates

* Outdated CVs don't reflect where candidates are today

* Increasing competition means the ponds are overfished

Job boards still have their place but relying on them alone simply doesn't work for the vast majority of teams.

Talent shortages are forcing recruiters to diversify sourcing

Most recruitment teams are hiring in a tougher market than they were even a few years ago.

* Hard-to-fill roles are staying open longer

* Specialist skills remain scarce

* Frontline sectors continue battling persistent shortages

Meanwhile, many organisations are trying to do more hiring with tighter budgets and leaner teams.

The upshot? Recruiters can't afford to rely solely on candidates actively searching job boards. If everyone recruiting for nurses, engineers, care workers, software developers, warehouse staff, or experienced managers is looking in the same set of places, competition becomes brutal. And expensive.

Social recruiting helps widen the net, allowing you to differentiate from competition and attempt to bring talent inbound.

For high-volume hiring especially, this diversification matters. Stronger sourcing strategies reduce overreliance on any one channel and create more resilience when traditional attraction routes underperform.

The bar for candidate emotional investment is higher

One consequence of AI in recruitment is that there's this weird tension happening, where candidates mass-apply on the one hand, but also have a super-high bar for true emotional investment.

Where traditionally applying for a role was a signal of clear intent - I want to learn more about this job - that's now happening (if at all) several steps later in the process.

Candidates might submit 300 applications at once without even reading the ad, in other words. But then when you get back to them and are ready to pursue next steps? Full investigator mode.

That's a) making the application process crap for everyone. But b) it means you have a lot to prove to candidates, if you want them to engage (back) with you after sending their application.

That research rarely stops at your careers site.

Candidates might:

* Check your LinkedIn presence

* Browse employee content

* Scan Glassdoor reviews

* Look at Instagram or TikTok for culture signals

* Search Reddit threads or online forums

* Explore leadership voices and employee advocacy content

Plus candidates are increasingly also using AI to compare employers, summarise reviews, and understand your reputation faster.

The fact is, your employer brand exists whether you actively shape it or not. Social channels are often the first impression candidates get of your organisation. And first impressions matter.

* A website talking about flexibility but showing none of it online?

* An organisation claiming to value inclusion but featuring identical voices?

* A supposedly exciting employer whose social channels are dead?

* An organisation claiming great work-life balance but Reddit says differently?

Candidates notice.

Passive candidates matter more than ever

The idea that "the best candidates aren't actively looking" isn't new - but what is changing is how important passive candidates have become.

Across most sectors, recruiters are battling a strange contradiction: application volumes are skyrocketing, but the right candidates are increasingly hard to find. Many TA teams are drowning in applicants but still struggling to hire.

Partly that's because applying for jobs has become dramatically easier. Candidates can now polish CVs, tailor applications and apply at scale with AI assistance in a fraction of the time. The result is often bigger funnels, but noisier ones too.

That shifts the value equation. Instead of competing purely for active jobseekers, more recruiters are investing energy earlier in the funnel: building awareness and relationships with people who may not be applying today but could become brilliant hires tomorrow.

That's where social recruiting becomes especially powerful.

Someone may not apply today, no. But they might follow your company, engage with recruiter content, watch employee videos, and generally absorb signals about what working with you looks like.

So, six months later, when the timing feels right? Redundancy, burnout, relocation, curiosity, career ambition, or a thousand other triggers? You're already familiar. And that familiarity matters, because trust compounds over time.

In 2026, recruiters who only engage talent once a requisition lands are increasingly arriving too late.

Employer brand increasingly influences hiring outcomes

Employer brand has always mattered. But in 2026, candidates are scrutinising employers more closely, and more sceptically, than before.

Economic uncertainty, changing expectations around flexibility, burnout, wellbeing, inclusion, and career progression mean candidates are asking harder questions before they apply.

And they're no longer relying on employer messaging to answer them.

Pay still matters, yes. Benefits matter. But candidates are also evaluating something harder to quantify: Do I see myself here?

(Yes, even in a challenging labour market. In fact, more so. Because desperate candidates are more likely to accept a role they don't love - but then you've got someone on-board who isn't a great fit with your vision and values. So, yes, maybe they'll stay for now. But as soon as something better comes along, they're a retention risk. And with it, all the costs of a bad hire.)

Social media gives you a chance to answer that question - through visible proof, not polished corporate slogans. Through real employees, progression stories, day-in-the-life content, manager visibility, values in action, and authentic insight into working life.

In crowded talent markets, employer brand is a major competitive advantage. And social recruiting is one of the fastest, most visible ways to build it.

Which social media platforms work best for recruitment?

The frustrating but predictable answer is, it depends. There's no universally "best" social media platform for recruitment. Only the best platform for your audience, your roles, and your hiring challenges.

* LinkedIn isn't TikTok.

* TikTok isn't Facebook.

* Facebook isn't Reddit.

* Etc.

And trying to run identical recruitment strategies across all of them usually results in bland content, wasted effort and underwhelming outcomes.

Different platforms attract different audiences, behaviours and expectations. Someone scrolling LinkedIn is in a very different mindset to someone doomscrolling TikTok and avoiding getting out of bed.

Let's break down some of the differences, so you can decide where to invest time (first).

LinkedIn

If recruitment social media has a default setting, LinkedIn's it. For many organisations, LinkedIn remains the backbone of social recruiting.

It tends to work best for:

* Leadership hiring

* Corporate functions

* Professional services

* Technology and engineering

* Sales and marketing

* Finance, HR, legal, and operational roles

* B2B and knowledge-based industries

LinkedIn is fundamentally built around professional identity, so people expect career-related content there. They expect recruiters to approach them. They expect industry conversations. That creates much lower friction than trying to recruit in spaces people view as purely social.

But as we've said, the organisations getting strongest results using LinkedIn for recruiting aren't just posting vacancies. Or even headhunting. They're building visibility and strengthening brand. That might mean:

* Thought leadership

Leaders sharing expertise, business updates or perspectives on industry change.

This matters more than many companies realise. Particularly in competitive specialist markets.

A software engineer repeatedly seeing credible technical insight from your CTO? Helpful. A senior HR professional following your people leader because they consistently share interesting perspectives? Helpful.

* Recruiter visibility

Increasingly recruiters themselves are becoming channels. Candidates respond far better to humans than faceless employer accounts.

A recruiter sharing hiring insight, behind-the-scenes context, interview tips, or team updates often generates stronger engagement than polished brand content. People trust people.

* Employee advocacy

Some of the strongest LinkedIn recruitment content doesn't come from marketing teams but from your employees.

A consultant explaining how they progressed internally, for example. A manager sharing what makes their team work. Someone celebrating a work anniversary and reflecting honestly on growth.

These moments feel human and believable in ways corporate messaging rarely can.

LinkedIn is noisier than it used to be

That said, LinkedIn isn't the silver bullet it once felt like. Organic reach is tougher; competition is fiercer. Feeds are saturated.

Recruiters chucking bland "We're hiring!" posts into the Grand LinkedIn Canyon shouldn't expect miracles.

Facebook

It's fashionable to dismiss Facebook as outdated. But for many frontline, shift-based, and geographically-local roles, it often outperforms platforms recruiters assume should work better.

Especially for:

* Health and social care

* Retail

* Hospitality

* Logistics and warehousing

* Local government

* Field-based operational work

* Seasonal hiring

Facebook still dominates community behaviour. People use it locally, to join neighbourhood groups, parenting groups, community forums. Local recommendation pages. Job groups tied to specific towns and regions.

And geography is often crucial. Someone willing to work in hospitality in Birmingham may not travel 90 minutes for a shift. A care worker may only want opportunities within a certain radius.

Facebook's local targeting becomes incredibly useful here.

With Facebook, recruiters can:

* Promote vacancies to specific postcodes

* Target demographics and interests

* Share opportunities into local groups

* Run low-cost campaigns in difficult hiring areas

* Build employer familiarity within communities

We've seen particularly strong use cases in care recruitment and retail recruitment for example.

Community beats corporate

What works on Facebook is different to LinkedIn. Simple, local, human content tends to perform than highly polished employer-brand videos. The sorts of stuff that often works is:

* Team photos

* Manager introductions

* Employee stories

* Local opportunities

* Hiring event invites

* Day in the life snapshots

* Real, genuine language

Instagram

Recruiters often treat Instagram like a jobs board with prettier graphics. But candidates are there to browse, not specifically to hunt for jobs (at least, not usually).

Insta tends to work particularly well for:

* Retail

* Hospitality

* Consumer brands

* Travel and leisure

* Healthcare

* Graduate and early careers hiring

* Customer-facing roles

Instagram is an especially great channel for reaching younger employees. For instance, one 2025 SHRM study found that 76% of Gen Z have used Instagram for career-related content and networking - compared to only 34% turning to LinkedIn.

Where visual social platforms like Instagram were originally about consuming entertainment, many younger people rely on the platform to explore careers and employers.

That's important because Instagram reaches candidates before intent forms.

That is, candidates often aren't opening Instagram actively looking for a new job. But repeated exposure builds familiarity.

The strongest recruitment content on Instagram tends to feel documentary-style rather than polished corporate marketing. Candidates are increasingly sceptical of performative culture content. If your posts scream "Look how fun we are!" while feeling staged, scripted or disconnected from reality, trust evaporates.

Instead, think:

* Real people: Not stock photography or staged "diverse team" shots

* Day-in-the-life content: "What a shift looks like as a pharmacy technician."

* Progression stories: "How I moved from care assistant to manager."

* Behind-the-scenes: Events, training days, difficult-but-real moments.

* Manager visibility: Show candidates who they'll actually work for.

If your content feels like marketing created it about employees rather than employees being involved in telling it, that's a good bet it'll probably underperform.

But if you use Insta as a genuine trust-building and culture-showcasing channel, it can become a major driver of careers site traffic, engagement and improved applicant quality over time.

TikTok

TikTok recruitment can be incredibly effective... but it can also be deeply cringe. There's very little middle ground.

TikTok works especially well for:

* Early careers hiring

* Apprenticeships

* Retail and hospitality

* Frontline roles

* Care and healthcare support roles

* Graduate recruitment

* Gen Z audiences

But TikTok is not LinkedIn with music. Like with Insta, Gen Z increasingly uses TikTok not just for entertainment but for career research, workplace insight and job discovery.

That same SHRM study found that 46% of Gen Z has secured a job or internship through TikTok, for example, showing how using social media for hiring changes generationally.

Candidates using visual platforms like TikTok are behaving more like consumers than traditional jobseekers. The fundamental recruitment equation has changed.

They don't necessarily "search for jobs." They discover opportunities through content. And that means employers need to think more like creators than advertisers.

The sorts of content that tends to perform well is fast, informal, human content. Like Instagram, hyper-polished marketing content is usually a lesser priority (which is either good or bad depending on your perspective and confidence).

Think...

* Day in the life: "What does this role actually involve vs. what people think"

* Myth-busting: "Three things people get wrong about warehouse work"

* Manager Q&As: Candidates want transparency.

* Career progression stories: showcase internal mobility.

* Humour (if it reflects your actual workplace culture)

TikTok calls for authenticity and immediacy, not obvious corporate behaviour. Over-produced, scripted, painfully brand-safe recruitment videos often land badly because audiences immediately recognise they're being marketed to.

Candidates don't expect perfection, but they do expect honesty. Warts and all.

Reddit, niche communities and specialist forums

Sometimes the strongest candidates are hiding in smaller, more specialist communities. Which is excellent because the more niche the community, the fewer other recruiters you'll come head-to-head with.

Think:

* Engineering

* Cybersecurity

* Healthcare specialisms

* Academia

* Software development

* Scientific roles

* Highly technical hiring

These communities increasingly exist across:

* Reddit

* Discord

* Slack groups

* GitHub

* Specialist forums

* Industry associations

* Professional communities

The important thing is that these spaces don't behave like social media - they

behave like communities. You won't earn attention here by spamming jobs. One of the most important principles of peer communities is trust.

Research into jobseeker discussions around fairness found that Reddit communities contain significantly more candid discussion about employer reputation, hiring fairness, candidate experience, and workplace reality than traditional social channels, for example.

That makes these spaces incredibly valuable listening posts, even if they don't become a major sourcing channel. The insights you glean can feed into your strategic recruitment activity in a way you'll rarely find on Insta.

The strongest recruiters in niche communities think less like advertisers and more like participants. That might mean:

* Sharing expertise

* Answering questions

* Participating in events

* Building relationships with moderators

* Contributing genuinely useful insight

Hard-selling jobs often gets ignored. Or, worse, actively damages credibility. But becoming an active participant in your own right? That can earn trust and respect you'll struggle to build anywhere else. A good example might be getting your Head of Engineering to spend time on coder forums.

10 best practices to use social media for hiring

Post some jobs. Add a few employee photos. Maybe get someone in marketing to make a shiny video. Done, right?

Not quite.

The organisations seeing real results from social recruiting approach it less like ad hoc posting and more as a deliberate attraction strategy. One that combines employer brand, sourcing, recruiter visibility, candidate experience, and community-building.

Here are 10 best practices.

Most recruitment content fails because it reads exactly like every other job advert copied and pasted into LinkedIn. Candidates scroll quickly - if your content feels boring, salesy or interchangeable with every other employer, they'll keep scrolling.

Instead, focus on what candidates actually care about. Things like:

* What success looks like

* Why someone would enjoy the role

* Flexibility and progression

* Team dynamics

* Meaningful work

* What makes this opportunity different

For example, instead of:

"We're hiring support workers"

Try:

"Want flexible shifts, funded qualifications, and a pathway into nursing? Meet Sarah, who joined us as a care assistant and now manages her own team."

Candidates trust employees more than employer messaging. By a country mile.

Corporate copy has its place but employee-generated content tends to outperform because it feels more believable.

That doesn't mean forcing staff into awkward "talking head" videos against their will. (Ha, good luck). It means making space for authentic voices. Stuff like:

* Progression stories

* Team achievements

* Reflections on learning and development

* Workplace moments

It's especially valuable to develop content that shows different perspectives. A new starter; a hiring manager; a frontline worker; a long-serving employee; a returning parent, and so on. Candidates want proof that people like them thrive in your organisation.

Candidates have become highly skilled at spotting performative culture content (perhaps because there's so much of it, huh). If your social channels only show rooftop drinks, perfectly filtered offices and staged smiling photos, it'll kick off many candidates BS-O-Meter.

That doesn't mean highlighting problems for the sake of it, but it does mean showing reality.

* What does a shift actually look like?

* What challenges do people genuinely tackle?

* How does collaboration work?

* What support exists?

* What does progression realistically look like?

Honest expectations improve hiring outcomes. Attracting someone into the wrong reality helps no one. Especially you.

It's a huge mistake to only show up when there's a vacancy to talk about. We get it - you've got a million-and-one things on your to-do, and things that don't immediately move the hiring needle aren't a priority.

But you'll struggle to realise full value from using social media for hiring unless you invest the time to build.

The strongest TA teams increasingly think long-term, especially for repeat hiring.

If you regularly recruit similar roles, waiting until requisition stage means starting afresh every time - when you could be building your social media to develop a clear presence for the roles you need most.

Smart teams use social channels to keep talent warm between hiring cycles.

That might mean:

* Occasional updates

* Employee stories

* Hiring-event invites

* Role alerts

* Relevant content for specific audiences

The goal isn't constant selling - it's staying on people's radar.

Short-form video increasingly dominates attention across Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Facebook because it feels fast, human and digestible.

Simple formats often work best:

* "A day in the life"

* Employee introductions

* Manager Q&As

* Myth-busting job misconceptions

* Workplace tours

* Progression stories

You don't need expensive production budgets. Filmed on phones is fine; imperfect is fine. Useful beats polished.

Video helps answer candidates' questions about culture and fit much faster and better than paragraphs of employer-brand copy ever will.

Many recruiters still publish national, generic recruitment messaging for deeply local hiring challenges. But a care worker in Nottingham isn't necessarily interested in generic content about your organisation nationally.

They care about:

* Commute time

* Local managers

* Nearby opportunities

* Shift flexibility

* What this site or team feels like

Strong social recruiting gets specific. Local content feels more relevant, and relevance drives engagement.

People engage with people, not faceless employer logos. Increasingly, recruiters themselves are becoming attraction channels.

Candidates respond better to recruiters who:

* Share hiring insight

* Explain processes clearly

* Showcase teams

* Post behind-the-scenes content

* Offer practical career advice

Recruitment can feel opaque - especially today when most people would say hiring is pretty broken for everyone. But visibility reduces uncertainty and helps build trust.

And increases your own internal capital as a recruiter, by building your brand. Become your own attraction channel - that's an incredibly powerful place to be in your career.

Organic social is getting harder. Crowded algorithms; fierce competition; fading attention spans. Some judicious use of paid social can help your organic efforts gain traction and build momentum.

Yes, budgets are tight (for everyone) but paid social might be worth considering for:

* Hard-to-fill roles

* Geographic targeting

* Urgent campaigns

* Seasonal hiring

* Underrepresented talent pools

Facebook and Instagram can be especially effective for localised recruitment because targeting can become highly specific.

But don't fall into the trap of boosting generic vacancy posts and hoping for magic.

Paid works best when combined with compelling content and strong audience targeting - the same principles as organic.

As we've talked through, not every platform suits every hiring challenge. LinkedIn may work brilliantly for professional hiring and terribly for frontline retail. TikTok might transform apprentice recruitment while adding zero value for executive search.

Ask where your candidates already spend time - then adapt accordingly.

The strongest social recruiting strategies meet candidates where they already are, rather than forcing every audience onto the same platform. (Or wearing rose-tinted glasses and hoping if you build it, they'll come).

There's little point investing in social recruiting if candidates hit a clunky application process and disappear.

You've done the hard bit: you've captured attention. Created interest; built intent. Woo! Then the candidate clicks apply and faces:

* A desktop-only form

* Mandatory account creation

* 17,000 repetitive questions

* Endless fields

* A broken mobile experience

* An interface from 1975

And they abandon.

Social recruiting only works when the experience after the click works too. Fast, mobile-friendly, intuitive application journeys matter, because attraction and candidate experience aren't separate things. They're part of the same journey.

Take an honest look at your end-to-end recruitment journey. Yes candidate sourcing has become harder. Yes, it's legitimately difficult to find the right people, and yes, everyone's competing for them.

But very often, teams aren't doing the right things to help themselves. Often they do have interest, but they're not converting it, because their application process is crap and they ghost good people and it takes 18 hours and an act of God to find an interview slot, and all that stuff.

It doesn't matter how great you become using social media for sourcing. If you don't improve your broader candidate experience, you'll struggle to become good at using social media for hiring.

4 concerns about social media recruitment

If social recruiting is so valuable, why do so many organisations still struggle here? Because in practice, using social media for hiring is harder than it looks.Here are some common barriers:

You're a rare recruitment team if you're not stretched. When recruiters are juggling vacancies, hiring managers, candidate comms, reporting, interviews, and general chasing your tail firefighting, social recruiting often slips into the "nice idea when things calm down" category.

Spoiler: things rarely calm down. So your social media activity becomes reactive and inconsistent - bursts of posting during hiring spikes followed by months of silence. But inconsistent activity means inconsistent results.

Fix it:

The strongest teams operationalise social recruiting instead of relying on enthusiasm. That means:

* Assigning clear ownership so social actually happens

* Create repeatable processes, toolkits, formats, and templates

* Start smaller than you think - but commit to consistency

Treat social recruiting like a repeatable process rather than an optional extra squeezed into spare time.

Getting senior leaders to buy into social media recruiting - especially where you need to get budget released - can be an uphill struggle.

Senior leaders might not know how much the state of social hiring has changed, especially if recruitment's not their day job. And getting funds released when everything's tight, tight, tight is hard. "Brand building" often falls by the wayside.

Fix it:

Education. Show your senior leaders that social media hiring isn't just about building brand. Talk to them about why the social landscape has changed, and why your organisation can't afford not to invest here.

Then start small. Pilot one role family, one geography, or one audience segment before scaling, so you can gather results to show to the board and build momentum.

Many organisations freeze because they assume social recruiting requires constant creativity. Fancy campaigns. Professional video. Marketing polish. Etc. But in truth, candidates are usually asking much simpler questions:

* What's the job actually like?

* Would I fit here?

* Can I grow here?

* Do people like working here?

Fix it:

Build content around common candidate questions, priorities and objections. Then remove the burden of reinvention with templates, approved assets, and recurring formats.

Again, start small and test, test, test. What's working? What's not? Whatever your size, aim for agility over huge, planned campaigns until you know what's effective.

The bigger the organisation, the stronger the fear tends to be here. Brand concerns; legal issues; reputational worries; stakeholder anxieties. And the result becomes approval chains so long that content is either painfully corporate or never appears at all.

But ironically, this creates another risk: silence. Dormant social channels tell candidates - we're not investing in hiring. Or nobody works here long enough to talk about it. Or our culture isn't worth shouting about.

Remember, you've got an employer brand whether you want one or not. Silence probably doesn't give the impression you want.

Fix it:

Shift from control to guardrails. Instead of approving every individual post, agree principles upfront:

* What employees can share

* Confidentiality boundaries

* Tone of voice

* Escalation rules

* Examples of strong content

* Social media response plan

Then trust people. Because social recruiting works best when it feels human, and humanity rarely survives 12 rounds of stakeholder review.

Many organisations assume candidates aren't on social (although often by that assumption mean candidates aren't on LinkedIn). And no, they might not be. But they probably are. And not looking for them isn't a solution.

Fix it:

Audit your best hires. Where did they discover you? What channels do they already use? What communities influence them?

Use those insights to develop a pilot project that makes sense for your organisation - so at least if social doesn't work for you, you'll have actually tested that. Not just conveniently assumed.

Ready to get started? Here's your social recruiting checklist

You don't need to suddenly become a TikTok creator, employer branding wizard and social strategist overnight. Start here.

1. Audit where your candidates are

Before you post anything, discover where your best people actually hang out. Look at your strongest recent hires, source-of-hire data, age demographics, role type, and so on.

2. Pick ONE platform

Trying to do five platforms badly is a shortcut to burnout. Choose one channel that aligns with your biggest hiring challenges. Then get good at that first.

3. Plan content

Aim for a rough rule of 20% jobs and 80% useful, human, trust-building content.

Stuff like:

4. Create three repeatable content formats

Pick two to three simple formats you can repeat monthly.

Like:

* Monday: Meet the team

* Wednesday: Day in the life

* Friday: Hiring spotlight

5. Develop basic guidelines

If you don't have them, create a simple one-pager to give everyone confidence. What are your absolute must-nots? What would you love to see? It doesn't need to be long.

6. Put real people front and centre

People > polished corporate messaging.

* Which employees would enjoy participating?

* Which managers tell stories well?

* Who's progressed internally?

* Who represents different experiences?

Get your people involved.

7. Pressure-test your application process

Go apply for one of your own jobs. Is it easy? Is it fast? Would you complete it? Is it asking too much too soon?

Social hiring doesn't fail only at attraction - it fails at conversion. If you're not getting the journey right, that's a major priority. (And one our TA software can help with).

8. Start small; measure; improve

Don't try to transform recruitment overnight. Develop your bitesize pilot then track results, looking at metrics like application quality, source of hire, engagement, career site traffic and time-to-fill. Then scale what works (and nix what doesn't).

The best social recruiting strategies weren't built in a quarter. They were built through experimentation, consistency, and learning what actually resonates with candidates. Good old trial and error.

Social media for hiring works, IF you stop treating it as an afterthought.

In 2026, people discover employers differently; research jobs differently; build trust differently. And most candidates aren't waiting around on job boards hoping the perfect opportunity appears.

They're watching; judging. Asking: Could I see myself there?

Successful social recruiting isn't about posting more jobs or jumping blindly onto every platform. It's about understanding where your candidates spend time, showing up consistently, telling (true) stories that resonate, and building familiarity.

But social recruiting also doesn't exist in isolation. You can build the best content strategy in the world, but if candidates hit a painful application process, get ghosted, or experience a hiring journey that feels disconnected from the promises you made socially, momentum disappears.

The strongest hiring teams think end-to-end, to consider the entire multi-dimensional candidate journey. Social media isn't just a strategy for hiring; it's one piece of the puzzle. It's only when all the pieces come together that you turn attention into new pack members.

Tribepad is the trusted tech ally to smart(er) recruiters everywhere. Combining ATS, CRM, assessment, video screening, compliance, onboarding, analytics and a fully-integrated AI assistant, our talent acquisition software is a springboard for fairer, faster, better recruitment for everyone.

B-Corp certified and multiple-award-winning (like Best ATS for Enterprises and Tech Company of the Year), Tribepad is trusted by organisations like Hotel Chocolat, cardfactory, Greggs, Tesco, Subway, DFS, Met Office, and Home Bargains. more

Career development

 10h

9 Standout Companies Getting Workplace Culture Right


Workplace culture is easy to talk about, but harder to walk the walk. Among the companies honored on this year's Best Workplaces List, the common thread is is a focus on consistent practices the day-to-day experience at work. Whether that means holding regular all-hands meetings to share company metrics, investing in career development training, or setting clear policies around pay and benefits,... each has built structures that reinforce how their culture shows up in practice.

Here are the nine companies that made this year's Editors' List:

Accelerate Infrastructure Opportunities

Accelerate Infrastructure Opportunities, a real estate firm based in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, holds quarterly town halls and monthly leadership updates to maintain transparency across the workplace. The company hosts a week-long annual Summit focused on employee development and supports ongoing training and leadership programs. It also runs quarterly volunteer events and uses cross-functional panels in hiring and promotion decisions to align skills with company values.

Cornerstone Research

Cornerstone Research, a New York City-based financial consulting firm, offers 401(k) matching, annual profit-sharing, a $1,000 annual wellness stipend, and up to 60 percent transit and parking subsidies. The firm also provides free concierge services such as grocery shopping assistance and vacation planning, Headspace and Wellbeats subscriptions, and fertility and adoption support. It operates on a hybrid work model and offers international work options, office transfers and offsite retreats, along with paid volunteer time, donation matching, and BikeShare subsidies. more

Career development

 10h

HR expert says you should 'always lie' when asked 1 thing in job interview


A HR expert has shared her advice on exactly how people should respond when being asked one question during a job interview

A writer who specialises in successful job interview techniques has revealed exactly what to say when faced with a very specific question - but not everyone is persuaded. It's vital to remember when attending a job interview that, while the prospective employer is trying to... establish whether you're the right fit for the role, you are equally sizing them up.

One area that frequently takes candidates by surprise is when the discussion turns to whether you've applied to any other companies.

It might seem that the best tactic is to tell them they're your only option - even if this isn't entirely true - but an interview expert has disclosed that this isn't actually the shrewdest approach.

Anna Papalia, an author and public speaker, regularly posts advice on TikTok about how to best present yourself during the job application process.

She told her one million followers: "When you're asked in an interview, 'Are you actively interviewing?' or, 'Are you interviewing anywhere else?', there is only one thing to say."

She went on: "There is only one good answer to this question. This is the most important concept when it comes to job interviews so if you forget everything else I've ever taught you I want you to remember this one thing. The less you want it the more they want you.

"If in a job interview, you act as though you're desperate and you need this job and you want this position, it's going to pull them back a little bit. I can't explain it, it's humans, right? We want what we can't have.

"So the next time someone asks you 'are you actively interviewing, are you interviewing anywhere else?' You say 'yes, I am actively interviewing'. And when they ask where, you say 'I would prefer to keep that confidential'"

She went on to explain in the comments: "If you're in final rounds with another company or multiple companies, you should let that be known in the interview process. Because the principle of scarcity applies.

"The less your skill set is available the higher the salary you can demand. Pro tip, have a skill set that is unique and desirable if you want to get the best offer and whatever you do keep all your options open until you sign that offer letter."

Viewers were quick to express their own opinions, with numerous people saying they took issue with Anna's advice.

One individual wrote: "My fav is: 'No, I'm happy with my current position. I love what I do and my team. When I saw this opening, I thought my skills matched and it was worth exploring if it's a good fit both.'"

Another viewer remarked: "Have hired dozens of people over the years. If a candidate appears lukewarm about a position, that's a red flag." Meanwhile, another respondent commented: "As a recruiter, the more a person seems to want the job, the more we give them the attention if they have the skillset and attitude." more

Career development

 11h

He sent out 3,200 résumés and got zero job offers in the 2008 crash. Now Outdoor Boys' Luke Nichols is telling grads how he survived


Luke Nichols, better known as the Outdoor Boys YouTuber who captured the hearts of millions of viewers for his outdoor survival videos from the middle-of-nowhere Alaska, knows what it feels like to graduate in a wrecked economy. After all, he graduated from law school during the 2008 market crash.

Standing before George Mason University's law school graduates in May, the 47-year-old attorney... opened with the line he's built a career on: "Survival is not something we just do in the woods."

He said survival is something we each have to do "every single day, whether you're building a fire, or gutting a moose, or drafting a motion."

Nichols was in his third and final year of law school in 2008 when the U.S. housing market imploded and roughly 16 million homes were foreclosed. He recalled that one in three law students in his cohort never landed a legal job.

Three months before graduation, the 35-attorney firm where he was clerking laid him off -- and by the time he sat for the bar exam (which officially authorizes attorneys to practice in their respective state), he says he was in "panic mode." He fired off 3,200 résumés to firms and lawyers across the country.

He landed 15 interviews, but walked away with zero offers. That's pretty reminiscent of how recent graduates are feeling today. Recent research from Goldman Sachs economists shows AI is erasing roughly 16,000 net jobs per month over the past year, and entry-level workers are being hit the hardest.

The national unemployment rate, which had sat around 5% when the recession began in late 2007, peaked at 10.2% in October 2009, the highest level since 1983. Today's overall unemployment rate is about 4%, but time will continue to tell how much impact AI will have on the unemployment rate. Still, Gen Z (like Nichols in 2008) continues to report extreme difficulties finding job openings and little luck landing interviews. Some have even decided to circumvent corporate life altogether, opting instead for part-time or gig work.

Nichols can relate. He recalled a time when he was interviewing for an entry-level associate slot in Boynton Beach, Fla., when a partner pointed to a well-dressed woman in her 50s who was being trained to make copies. That woman was a licensed attorney with 20 years of experience, hired as the firm's receptionist after 300 people applied.

Asked why he deserved the associate job instead, Nichols looked the partner dead in the eye and said: "Because I am very, very good looking." He didn't get the job. "I couldn't back it up," he joked. more

Career development

 11h

How to Unlock Creativity in the Hybrid Workplace


The surprising power of 'weak ties.'

Despite some high-profile pushback against hybrid work, with many companies eager to fully return their workforces to the office, hybrid work remains the preferred working style of a majority of knowledge workers worldwide. It is the work style for the majority of U.S. knowledge workers.

Although there are many benefits to a hybrid work environment, one... drawback is that it can reduce social ties and connections between employees. Companies and employees at all levels recognize the importance of maintaining strong relationships with their teammates. However, we also need to support "weak ties," those casual connections we feel with colleagues who are not part of our teams or immediate social circle.

Weak ties bring benefits to the workplace that are often underappreciated. To maximize those benefits, it's vital to understand why weak ties matter, some risks that hybrid work presents, and what team leaders and organizations can do to overcome those risks.

Why Weak Ties Matter

In 1973, a paper by sociologist Mark Granovetter found that strong ties, although essential for trust and emotional support, are less effective in obtaining new information. Weak ties are what provide us with new ideas and new opportunities.

While weak ties are more likely to lead to a new job, it is how they drive creativity and innovation, through exposure to those new ideas, that matters most to companies.

Duke University sociologist Martin Ruef found that groups with networks made up of both strong and weak ties innovated at three times the rate of networks with only strong ties. The diverse perspectives we gain from interacting with colleagues from different functions, teams, or levels of seniority through weak ties expose us to new ideas, approaches, and knowledge.

Everyone benefits from this, as knowledge and information are shared across organizational boundaries and silos get broken. The organization can develop a culture of transparency, inclusivity, and new opportunities. Knock-on effects can include career development, friendships, and increased workplace satisfaction.

By encouraging employees to cultivate weak ties, organizations can create an environment that fosters creativity and unlocks untapped innovative potential.

How Hybrid Work Can Diminish Weak Ties

During the COVID-19 pandemic and the height of the work-from-home era, many employees reported a greater sense of connection to their workplace and colleagues. Employee engagement levels and feelings of belonging improved during the pandemic, as companies and team leaders made a more intentional effort to reach out to their teams and let them know they were not alone.

Strong ties improved during the pandemic. However, as 2021 research by MIT on 61,000 Microsoft employees found, this greater connection to our strong ties came at the expense of our weak ties. The MIT study concluded that lower levels of innovation and longer project completion times resulted from focusing more on strong ties, with a 25% decrease in time spent collaborating with weak ties. Our weak ties suffered, and with that, so did levels of innovation. We worked more strongly with our usual teammates, which led to fewer interactions with our weak ties.

With hybrid work, we should have more opportunities to meet with our weak ties and encounter them more frequently for those watercooler conversations and chance meetings that might lead to increased innovation in the workplace. But does this happen?

To "justify" the in-office part of hybrid work, many teams rightly choose to prioritize that in-office time around the kind of work that is well-suited to being physically together, such as team-building, socializing, brainstorming, or ideating.

Structuring back-to-work days around the team is the right approach, but this overemphasis on strong ties can reduce the diversity of views and creativity that comes from weak ties.

How To Nurture Weak Ties

For hybrid work to effectively leverage the benefits of weak ties and boost innovation, we must be more intentional about structuring in-office days to focus on building and maintaining these connections. Here are five steps that individuals, team leaders, and organizations can take.

1. Make Time to Socialize with Weak Ties

Look at your go-to crowd for lunch, coffee break, or after-work get-togethers. Do they represent weak or strong ties? If weak ties are underrepresented, spend more time with them, rather than your usual lunch and coffee friends. Reach out to weak ties in your division or department, or from another group, especially if they represent different functions. If you work in sales, engage more with those weak ties in HR, for example. The more diverse, the greater the possibility of learning and innovation.

And don't just limit this to people in the same company. Most of us can only maintain strong connections with between 150 and 300 people, so your LinkedIn network, which is likely a larger number than this, is mainly comprised of weak ties. Use LinkedIn to reach out and socialize with those weak ties.

2. Encourage and Enable Employees to Connect with Weak Ties

If you are a team leader, leave time in people's schedules to meet with others outside your team on those days when everyone is in the office. Or, go one better and build "weak tie connection time" into the calendar. Make this a dedicated time when everyone arranges a catch-up or 30-minute call with someone outside the team. Have the team report back on what they learned so everyone can benefit from those weak tie meetups.

This eliminates the randomness of chance meetings or impromptu water cooler conversations, which are often used to justify returning to the office. Intentionally build time and opportunities for such encounters rather than leave them to chance.

3. Involve Weak Tie Connections In Brainstorming

When doing in-person brainstorming or ideation, invite people from outside the team who represent weak ties, especially those from a different department or who may otherwise bring new perspectives. They could represent the view of the customer or end-user, but they don't need to be experts, as their fresh point of view triggers new ideas that matter. They can be briefed on the basics of the problem you are trying to solve.

Bringing in the perspective of weak ties, who may have different ideas that are not immediately apparent to team members working on the problem every day, can help surface assumptions that are not apparent to the team. It can prevent the team's discussions from falling prey to groupthink.

4. Implement Mentorship and Buddy Programs for New Hires

One group of workers who often struggle with remote or hybrid work is new employees who need to integrate into the company culture and form connections. Look to mentorship and buddy programs to connect new hires with experienced colleagues outside their team or department. Matching new hires with such weak ties can not only help better integrate them into the organization but also expose them to new ideas and form new networks of weak ties that can evolve into valuable professional relationships. If you practice reverse mentoring, experienced senior employees can also benefit from the insights gained from new hires, with whom they would not typically interact.

5. Create More Cross-Functional Teams to Work on Projects

Cross-functional teams -- those comprised of members from different departments and job functions -- are inherently more creative and innovative due to the diverse perspectives they bring to problem-solving. They are also, by their nature, collections of individuals with weak ties to one another. I experienced this regularly in the project teams I led for over a decade at a multinational firm. The project teams, composed of global HR colleagues -- my function -- were quite creative, but those comprising colleagues from HR and other functions, such as sales, marketing, communications, and ESG, were far and away the most innovative and came up with the freshest ideas.

When building project teams, don't just rely on the usual suspects. Reach out to other functions to recruit members and build project teams made up of weak ties. Such a team's output will represent a more holistic view of the company, enhance problem-solving capabilities, and lead to new working relationships and connections that last beyond the project's life.

With hybrid working style becoming the default for many of us, organizations must encourage employees to leverage the power of weak ties. By doing so, companies can better leverage the innovative potential of their workforce and position themselves for success in the era of hybrid work.

This article originally appeared in Fast Company. more

Career development

 12h

HR expert urges people to always lie about 1 thing in job interviews


Anna Papalia has shared the one question you should always lie about when interviewing for a job

An author who specialises in successful job interview techniques has revealed precisely what to say when posed with a very particular question - but people remain unconvinced.

It's crucial to bear in mind when attending a job interview that, while the employer is attempting to determine if you're... suitable for the position, you are also assessing them.

One aspect that frequently catches people off guard is when the conversation shifts to whether you've applied to any other firms. It may appear that the correct strategy is to tell them they're your only choice - even if this isn't accurate - but an interviewing expert has revealed that this isn't the wisest approach.

Anna Papalia, an author and public speaker, routinely shares guidance on TikTok about how best to present yourself when applying for jobs. She told her one million followers: "When you're asked in an interview, 'Are you actively interviewing?' or, 'Are you interviewing anywhere else?', there is only one thing to say."

She continued: "There is only one good answer to this question. This is the most important concept when it comes to job interviews so if you forget everything else I've ever taught you I want you to remember this one thing. The less you want it the more they want you.

"If in a job interview, you act as though you're desperate and you need this job and you want this position, it's going to pull them back a little bit. I can't explain it, it's humans, right? We want what we can't have. So the next time someone asks you 'are you actively interviewing, are you interviewing anywhere else?' You say 'yes, I am actively interviewing'. And when they ask where, you say 'I would prefer to keep that confidential'"

She added in the comments: "If you're in final rounds with another company or multiple companies, you should let that be known in the interview process. Because the principle of scarcity applies. The less your skill set is available the higher the salary you can demand. Pro tip, have a skill set that is unique and desirable if you want to get the best offer and whatever you do keep all your options open until you sign that offer letter."

Commenters were swift to share their own views, with many stating they disagreed with Anna's guidance.

One person posted: "My fav is: 'No, I'm happy with my current position. I love what I do and my team. When I saw this opening, I thought my skills matched and it was worth exploring if it's a good fit both.'"

Another user commented: "Have hired dozens of people over the years. If a candidate appears lukewarm about a position, that's a red flag."

While a further respondent added: "As a recruiter, the more a person seems to want the job, the more we give them the attention if they have the skillset and attitude." more

Career development

 12h

Your next job interview could be with an AI bot


AP Photo/Luca Bruno Visitors arrive to the Europe largest artificial intelligence event, AI Week 2026, in Rho, near Milan, Italy, Tuesday, May 19.

Have you applied for a new job? If you've been shortlisted, get ready to be interviewed by artificial intelligence.

Deluged by a flood of AI-generated job applications from easy-apply job boards, recruiters are turning to AI to cope. Companies are... using chatbots to interview candidates, typically at the screening stage, through phone calls, text messaging or video chats with on-screen avatars.

Recruiters have been using AI-powered hiring tools for years to assess job applicants, and their use has been expanding in step with technology advances.

Many people find AI job interviews unsettling, though the trend seems here to stay. According to recent research by hiring platform Greenhouse, more jobseekers are reporting they've faced AI job interviews. But many applicants have walked away from the hiring process because of it, which could be a sign that they're either creeped out, or they could be fraudulent or were not serious candidates, depending on who you ask.

Here's what to expect from an AI job interview and how to do your best:

Do your homework

Whatever the interview format, the fundamentals still apply, said Amanda Augustine, a career coach at Careerminds, which helps companies support laid-off workers with resume writing and job search services.

Ahead of the interview, review the job description, research the organization, and understand what it's looking for.

"The more prepared you are, the easier it will be to tailor your responses, even when you're interacting with AI instead of a person," she advised.

Get used to the format

If you've never done an AI job interview before, the first time could be unnerving or unsettling.

I did a demo AI interview set up by Netherlands-based TestGorilla, one of numerous platforms providing recruitment tools for companies. First came two sets of questions, one that tested problem-solving skills and another gauging work experience. Then I faced an AI-generated female face.

"My goal is to learn more about you and the experiences, skills and competencies that you might bring to this role," it said, adding that I should plan to spend about two minutes to answer each of three questions.

Unlike a human interview, there was no warm-up chit-chat, no chance to build a rapport. There was no point in smiling or trying to break the ice.

Experts say the best way to get over that is preparation.

"You need to practice out loud," said Priya Rathod, workplace trends editor at online job board Indeed. "And when I say practice out loud, I mean, say the actual answers out loud," because the chatbot needs to record what you're saying, she said.

Also keep in mind you're providing information about yourself to a machine, not having a conversation.

"You have to be particularly descriptive and a very clear communicator in your language so that they can pick up on things that a regular interviewer might pick up through your facial expressions and tone," Rathod said.

An AI interviewer "cares less about my tone and more about what it is that I'm saying," she added.

Use an online interview simulator to prep -- there are many available. They can record your answers and provide instant feedback on your content, delivery or pacing. They'll also help you get used to speaking into a camera, manage time limits and give your answers in a structured way without the natural back-and-forth of a live conversation, Augustine said.

Get ready for

behavioral questions

For my demo interview, the AI grilled me for a communications professional role.

One question it asked was how I use AI in my "workflow," including examples of both success and failure. When I replied that I saved lots of time with an AI transcription tool for interviews and other recordings, it summarized my answer and then asked me if I wanted to add anything else. I wasn't sure whether I had answered satisfactorily.

I scored "below average" on this question, according to TestGorilla's assessment, which said I provided "no concrete metric" such as minutes saved. "The improvement claim is therefore vague," it said.

AI interviewers are asking these "behavioral questions" because they want candidates to provide examples of how they handled specific work situations, complete with numbers and metrics, Rathod said.

"Those are the kinds of questions that AI relies heavily on. And the trap that we see a lot of people falling into is giving really vague answers," she said.

Candidates should still rely on tried and tested tactics like the STAR method -- short for situation, task, action, result.

So be prepared to talk about a specific work situation and the task assigned to you, the action that you took, and the result, Rathod said.

"You want to use numbers as much as possible. Even if you're not in a revenue driving role, there are ways in which you can say (how) you influenced something or impacted something within a group," she said.

Setup still matters

Don't neglect the physical setup of your desk and computer -- it's still important even if the video-based interview is with AI, and not a person.

Test your audio and video in advance. Make sure the lighting is bright enough and is on your face. Raise your laptop to eye level so that you're not looking down at the camera.

"Small adjustments, such as using a stack of books or a ring light, can make a noticeable difference in how polished and professional you present," Augustine said.

Don't be tempted to use AI shortcuts

Jobseekers might be tempted to use AI to help come up with answers. After all, they're so easy to use and if you're not talking to a human, no one will be able to tell, right?

"That's a big no-no because it's pretty obvious" to both the AI interviewing tool and anyone who might review the recording, said Rathod. Using AI for your answers "can sometimes immediately disqualify you."

If you're having difficulty answering, you can always ask it to clarify or repeat the question.

The question might even be designed to figure out if you're using AI to cheat. TestGorilla's head of marketing, Mehak Chowdhary, said it sometimes poses simple questions worded in a very convoluted way.

"We do that intentionally to understand whether you are running an AI alongside, because the AI will then try and optimize for the length of the question," she said. "But if you know your skill set, you will understand what's being asked.

"And we strongly recommend candidates put the AI devices aside. This is a test of your capability." more

Career development

 13h

Cultural Fit vs. Skills: What's More Important in Hiring? - BaobabAfrica Online


Hiring managers stare at two competing forces: a résumé that screams "expert" and an interview vibe that whispers "belongs". The clash is real, and it stops sleep. One night, a senior recruiter in a top club said, "If the player can't sync with the locker room, the talent is dead weight." Look: you can't ignore skill entirely, but the cultural pulse often decides the season's outcome.

Skills: The... Hard Edge

Technical chops are non‑negotiable. A striker who can't finish is a liability; a data analyst who can't crunch numbers is a joke. You need the hard metrics -- KPIs, certifications, proven track records. By the way, the moment you hire someone who can't hit the numbers, the whole payroll starts to wobble. Skill gaps can be patched with training, but that costs time and cash.

Cultural Fit: The Soft Glue

Culture isn't a buzzword; it's the magnetic field that holds the squad together. A defender who respects the coach's philosophy, a HR officer who lives the club's community values -- these are the unspoken assets. Here's why: when the culture aligns, engagement spikes, turnover drops, and the brand shines brighter than any trophy cabinet.

Where the Two Collide

Imagine a midfielder with world‑class passing who refuses to attend team‑building events. The clash ripples, causing friction in training, and the coach spends more time mediating than strategizing. Conversely, a loyal, culturally‑aligned player who can't keep up with the pace stalls the squad's momentum. The sweet spot is a hybrid -- skill meets spirit.

Decision‑Making Framework

Step one: map the role's core competencies. Step two: define the cultural pillars -- values, communication style, work‑ethic cadence. Then, weight them. For most front‑office roles, a 60/40 split (skill/culture) works; for coaching staff, flip it to 40/60. And here is why: you'll see immediate performance lift without sacrificing long‑term cohesion.

Hiring Tools That Cut the Noise

Behavioral interviews, situational judgment tests, and realistic job previews expose both dimensions. Use a panel that includes a senior colleague and a culture champion -- two eyes catch what one misses. Also, run a "culture sprint" where candidates spend a half‑day with the team; the chemistry is measurable.

Real‑World Impact

A Premier League club swapped a "skill‑first" policy for a balanced model and reduced turnover by 30% in one season. Their secret? They stopped hiring on gut feeling alone and started scoring cultural metrics like a striker counts goals. The result? A locker room that feels like a family, yet plays with professional precision.

Quick Takeaway

Don't gamble on skill alone -- culture is the safety net that catches the slip. Align your interview rubric, set clear cultural KPIs, and you'll build a team that wins on and off the pitch. Action: redesign your next hiring checklist to include one cultural‑fit question per interview, and watch the difference unfold. more

Catherine Dyaunka
Career development 24m

I'm about to interview for a Data Digitization role with a bank in a few hours. What are some likely questions to expect and what should I avoid? This is urgent, could anyone working in HR and recruiting please advise. Thank you

Career development

 14h

He sent out 3,200 résumés and got zero job offers in the 2008 crash. Now Outdoor Boys' Luke Nichols is telling grads how he survived | Fortune


Luke Nichols, better known as the Outdoor Boys YouTuber who captured the hearts of millions of viewers for his outdoor survival videos from the middle-of-nowhere Alaska, knows what it feels like to graduate in a wrecked economy. After all, he graduated from law school during the 2008 market crash.

Standing before George Mason University's law school graduates in May, the 47-year-old attorney... opened with the line he's built a career on: "Survival is not something we just do in the woods."

He said survival is something we each have to do "every single day, whether you're building a fire, or gutting a moose, or drafting a motion."

Nichols was in his third and final year of law school in 2008 when the U.S. housing market imploded and roughly 16 million homes were foreclosed. He recalled that one in three law students in his cohort never landed a legal job.

Three months before graduation, the 35-attorney firm where he was clerking laid him off -- and by the time he sat for the bar exam (which officially authorizes attorneys to practice in their respective state), he says he was in "panic mode." He fired off 3,200 résumés to firms and lawyers across the country.

He landed 15 interviews, but walked away with zero offers. That's pretty reminiscent of how recent graduates are feeling today. Recent research from Goldman Sachs economists shows AI is erasing roughly 16,000 net jobs per month over the past year, and entry-level workers are being hit the hardest.

The national unemployment rate, which had sat around 5% when the recession began in late 2007, peaked at 10.2% in October 2009, the highest level since 1983. Today's overall unemployment rate is about 4%, but time will continue to tell how much impact AI will have on the unemployment rate. Still, Gen Z (like Nichols in 2008) continues to report extreme difficulties finding job openings and little luck landing interviews. Some have even decided to circumvent corporate life altogether, opting instead for part-time or gig work.

Nichols can relate. He recalled a time when he was interviewing for an entry-level associate slot in Boynton Beach, Fla., when a partner pointed to a well-dressed woman in her 50s who was being trained to make copies. That woman was a licensed attorney with 20 years of experience, hired as the firm's receptionist after 300 people applied.

Asked why he deserved the associate job instead, Nichols looked the partner dead in the eye and said: "Because I am very, very good looking." He didn't get the job. "I couldn't back it up," he joked.

Building his own empire

After having no luck finding a job, Nichols got his license in October 2009 and opened his own practice the next day. He worked for free for 13 months and burned through $15,000 on failed advertising.

But in month 14, a final campaign exploded into a flood of clients. Nichols was only able to do this, though, because he had aggressively saved for years -- a practice he continues to preach today.

He drove this point home by recalling a time when he was able to hire what he called a more credentialed classmate of his, who also hadn't had luck finding a job.

"The very first employee I had was a guy from my graduating class, and he had [a good] GPA, he'd been on the journal and internships... everything I wasn't," Nichols said. "I graduated second-from-the-bottom of my class, and I was the weird dude who was always fishing instead of studying. I was a hot mess as a student."

The difference between Nichols and his classmate, he argued, wasn't talent: It was a cushion.

"I had money in the bank, and he had debts," he said.

Nichols' main advice to graduates was to save aggressively, because "money is freedom, money is power, money is flexibility." When change comes, he said, the people who can afford to adapt prosper, and those who can't get crushed.

Nichols practiced law in Virginia for a decade before YouTube outgrew his firm, but in May 2025 he waved goodbye to the platform that had made him. He cited the workload and the pressure on his family as the main drivers behind his decision to quit YouTube.

Counting reposts of his content elsewhere, he said his family had been viewed some 4 billion times on top of the channel's own 2.5 billion. The volume of fans approaching him in public, he said, "can be a bit overwhelming at times." He and his wife were worried about whether the family could keep living normal lives if he kept growing at that pace. Many have tried to estimate his net worth, or at least how much he would've made from YouTube, but the estimates vary too widely to accurately determine it. It's likely safe to say, based on a wealth of estimates, that Nichols is at the very least a millionaire by now.

Nichols told the George Mason graduates: "If you are fortunate enough to get a paycheck, don't you screw it up either." more