Quick thought after a late night at my daughter’s first club show (yes, I feel old):

You’re using AI wrong.

Most people think: “How can AI remove the boring parts of my job?”

Better question: “How can AI help me do things I couldn’t do before?”

Why analyze 4 competitors when you can analyze 40? Same time investment, 10x the insight.

Why ask AI to “fix this job posting” when you can ask “Who is this actually speaking to?” (You might discover you’re accidentally attracting the wrong people.)

AI isn’t about cutting corners. It’s about achieving more.

Watch the full episode

Short. Direct. Probably the mindset shift you need.

— James

P.S. I’m booking keynotes and webinars for next year right now. If you’d like your organization or event to hear “Becoming Choosable: Talent Strategy for Every Company That Works” or “You Aren’t The Head of TA, You’re the Chief Growth Officer!” let me know. It’s clearly booking season (I booked two things this week!), so let’s get you in the calendar!

-J

Hey,

Just landed back from RecFest. Two days of stages, presentations, panels, hundreds of conversations.

Here’s what I kept hearing: “How do we get buy-in for that?”

Translation: “I don’t think I’m allowed to do this.”

You are.

You’re not a recruiter or a recruiting leader. You’re a Chief Growth Officer. If you hire better people, the company grows. Full stop.

That gives you permission to experiment, to try new tools (even cheap ones like ChatGPT), to test new ideas, and to innovate how you attract talent.

Stop waiting for someone else to give you permission. You already have it.

Watch the full episode for what else I learned at RecFest.

Watch now

And if you want to know how your employer brand is performing, get your free audit. It’s painless and easy.

- James

P.S. - Want an EB-AF sticker? Find me on LinkedIn and ask (Us only, sorry!). I’ve still got some left.

Hey,

Quick one today because I’m slammed with client work and RecFest prep.

But I couldn’t let the week go by without giving you one incredibly useful AI tool:

A b******t detector for your employer brand content.

Paste your career site copy, job posting, or EVP document into this ChatGPT prompt, and it will:

* Flag every vague, meaningless line

* Suggest concrete, specific replacements

* Tell you what proof points you’re missing (and where to find them)

Takes 15 seconds. Makes your content instantly stronger.

Watch the episode

Get the exact prompt! I’m going to start keeping a running doc of the prompts I’m using here.

This is the fastest way to take your blinders off and see where your content is weak.

Go use it.

Other useful notes just for you!

Brian Fink are doing the “Dueling Ted Talks” thing tomorrow. Be there!

Get your free guide to employer brand companies. Trust me, it’ll make it easy to build the best shortlist for you, and give you the confidence to move forward.

If you’re at RecFest in Nashville this week, come find me. I’ve got stickers!

— James

P.S. Super secret thing. The next/last book (Becoming Choosable) is clicking along. It’s… gonna be a game changer for companies trying to attract great people. If I made a workshop to teach you the material, would you pay $200 for that? It would include access to the early draft of the book, 1:1 time with me to answer your questions, and a whole bunch of new thinking on how to make your employer brand really work. This is an informal “testing the waters thing” but reply if that’d be interesting to you.

-j

When was the last time you tested your career site messaging with actual target candidates?

If you’re like most employer brand professionals, the answer is probably “never” or “not recently enough.”

Why? Because getting feedback from your ideal candidates (especially hard-to-reach ones like doctors, executives, or specialized engineers) is expensive, time-consuming, and honestly, a total pain.

Until now.

In this week’s episode of The Next Step, I’m introducing you to synthetic data panels: AI-generated personas that let you simulate real candidate reactions to your employer brand.

Here’s what makes this a must-watch:

1. It’s stupidly affordable For the price of ChatGPT ($20/month), you can test messaging with any candidate persona you want. No $10K research budget required.

2. It’s faster than you think I walked through the entire process—from creating personas to getting actionable career site feedback—in about 20 minutes. Real surveys take weeks or months.

3. It makes you look like a strategic genius Imagine walking into your next stakeholder meeting and saying, “I ran synthetic data panels with our target candidates, and here’s what they told us.” Conversation: stopped. Credibility: through the roof.

4. The data is better than you’d expect Traditional surveys have a 20-40% garbage rate (people get bored, rush through, want the gift card). Synthetic panels give you focused, consistent feedback based on real behavioral data.

5. I show you EXACTLY how to do it This isn’t theory. I walk through a live demonstration using a real company’s career site, showing you the prompts, the process, and the results.

Watch it here

And if you want the actual prompts I used (so you can replicate this yourself immediately), here they are.

This is the kind of tool that changes how you work. It transforms employer branding from “gut feeling and stakeholder opinions” to “data-informed strategy executed at speed.”

Give it a watch. Your future self (the one who just won that messaging debate with your CMO) will thank you.

-James [LinkedIn]

P.S. This kind of thinking ^^^see episode^^^ is how I am able to build and deliver more authentic, more valuable employer brands for a fraction of what those big agencies will charge you. But I know you’re skeptical. So let’s chat. Just email me at [email protected] and we can figure what a strong employer brand can help you accomplish (and how affordable it really is).

-j

Quick question: When was the last time you read a LinkedIn post from a recruiter and thought, “Wow, this person really gets our industry”?

Yeah, me neither.

Here’s the problem most of us face: We’re trying to attract specialized talent (engineers, developers, nurses, etc.) but we don’t have deep expertise in their fields. So we end up writing generic “join our amazing team” posts that make everyone’s eyes glaze over.

But what if there was a way to create expert-level content for ANY industry, even if you know absolutely nothing about it?

In this week’s episode of The Next Step, I walk through exactly how to do this using a simple AI tool (Perplexity) that costs $20/month.

Here’s the system:

* Find where your target talent actually hangs out (hint: it’s probably Reddit)

* Use AI to analyze what they’re discussing RIGHT NOW

* Connect those trending topics to your company’s unique value

* Generate weeks of specific, credible content ideas in 30 minutes

Real example: Instead of posting “We’re hiring civil engineers!” you could share insights about recent infrastructure project failures and how your company’s focus on long-term stability prevents those mistakes.

Which post do you think gets more engagement from experienced engineers?

The best part? Once you build this system, you can run it every Monday morning to generate fresh content ideas based on what your target talent is actually talking about that week.

[Watch the full breakdown here →]

This isn’t about replacing human creativity—it’s about using AI to research and understand communities you’d never have access to otherwise.

Worth 20 minutes of your time? I think so.

Talk soon,

James

Other useful links:

My Dueling Ted Talks series starts tomorrow with Rocki Howard on LinkedIn Live.

See 25 employer brand agencies side-by-side in their own words so you can pick the perfect partner.

What if I told you that switching a single $20/month subscription could completely transform how you find and engage top talent?

That's exactly what happened when I started playing with Perplexity AI - and the results are mind-blowing.

In the latest episode of The Next Step:

🎯 The "Persona Channel Finder" - An AI prompt that uncovers hidden communities where your ideal candidates actually hang out (spoiler: it's not just LinkedIn)

🚀 10 Recruiting Hacks with names so impressive they practically guarantee a promotion (seriously, try saying "Competitor Hiring Velocity Radar" in your next meeting)

💌 The Outreach Angle Generator - How to craft cold messages that actually resonate instead of getting ignored

Here's the kicker: I demo this using civil engineers as an example, uncovering everything from niche Discord communities to specialized newsletters that most recruiters have never heard of.

Why This Matters Now: While your competitors are waiting for IT to roll out expensive AI tools, you can master these skills TODAY using accessible platforms like Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Claude.

The future belongs to recruiters and employer brand professionals who understand that it's not about the tool - it's about the skill.

[Watch Episode 019 Now →]

Ready to become the recruiter who finds talent where others can't even look?

Cheers,

James

P.S. Employer Branding Makes Every Recruiter Your Best Recruiter

P.P.S. The Employer Brand Buyers Guide now has 25 companies listed and a whole new section on how to ensure your EB project is successful!

Most teams treat AI like a shiny tool and brainstorming like a meeting. Both are wrong. In this week’s The Next Step, we dig into AI as a leadership skill—how you think, ask, and decide—not a software purchase. And we pair it with a dead-simple 3-day brainstorm cadence that actually ships original ideas.

Steal these ideas:

* AI as a teammate: How to prompt like a leader (framing, constraints, counterfactuals).

* Persuasion > answers: Use AI to build cases stakeholders say “yes” to—pricing, tradeoffs, risk.

* Day 1–3 cadence: Why short sprints beat marathon “brainstorms” (and produce distinct concepts).

* Proof over puffery: Turn fuzzy claims into testable statements your CFO won’t roll their eyes at.

If you lead TA/EB and want fewer generic ideas and more decisions that stick, this one’s your playbook.

Three Ears Media: http://threeearsmedia.comThe Bound Back Factor: http://thebouncebackfactorbook.comThe YA Leader’s Guide to AI: http://choosable.work/ai

—James

(P.S. Share with a manager who still thinks buying a tool = having a skill.)

If your careers content and your outreach feel… fine—but not moving needles—this week’s The Next Step hands you a tiny workflow that does big things.

It’s one process you can run two different ways: first to pressure-test your careers messaging against real target profiles, then to flip it and spot tension inside a competitor’s public story. The output isn’t “opinions”—it’s a simple grid you can take into the room and finally retire the “I like blue” debate.

No pricey platforms. No vendor pitch. Just tools you already have and prompts you can copy-paste. Run it once this week and you’ll have a clearer careers page plan and outreach that actually gets replies.

Watch here → (link)

Because nobody has time to argue with HiPPOs!

Talk soon,

James

P.S.

If you want more practical recruiting ideas like this delivered to your inbox every weekday, check out my daily newsletter at ideaoftheday.substack.com. One idea, every day, designed to make your recruiting life easier.

P.P.S.

Do you think your employer brand is working? Or do you know? In 72 hours, you can get a full diagnostic report for free. FREE!!! Check it out.

-j

Here's a question for you: How much do your hiring managers really love those hour-long intake meetings you schedule?

If you're being honest, they probably don't. At all.

But what if I told you there's a way to cut your intake meetings down to 10 minutes while getting BETTER information and making yourself look like an absolute recruitment genius in the process?

It all comes down to asking the right questions the right way - and letting AI do the heavy lifting.

In this week's episode of The Next Step, I break down a simple 5-question framework that transforms how you gather information from hiring managers. Instead of sitting through awkward silences and generic corporate answers, you'll get authentic, detailed insights that actually help you understand what the role is really about.

The best part? You show up to your intake meeting with a draft job posting, LinkedIn content for both you and your hiring manager, and a complete social media strategy already prepared.

Your hiring manager's reaction? "What just happened? That was amazing. How did you do that?"

This isn't about fancy expensive tools - just smart use of the AI you're probably already paying $20/month for.

Ready to become your hiring managers' favorite recruiter?

[Watch the full episode here →]

Because nobody has time for boring intake meetings that don't actually move the needle.

Talk soon,

James

P.S.

If you want more practical recruiting ideas like this delivered to your inbox every weekday, check out my daily newsletter at ideaoftheday.substack.com. One idea, every day, designed to make your recruiting life easier.

P.P.S.

Do you think your employer brand is working? Or do you know? In 72 hours, you can get a full diagnostic report for free. Check it out.

-j

I built a fully working Chrome extension in under 10 minutes.No coding. No tools. Just ChatGPT and a good prompt.

In the latest episode of The Next Step, I walk through the exact process—from idea to execution—of building a browser tool that scrapes job posts and rates their quality.

If you’ve ever thought “I wish Chrome could just do ___,” this is the episode you need to see. It’ll get your wheels turning on what you could build next.

📺 Watch it here 📺

-James

p.s. Want to know what the world’s most disruptive companies are doing to recruit? And maybe how you can beat them? Check out my report on CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list. It’s based on 50 career sites, 44 culture pages, and more than 5,000 LI posts. and it might be the thing that get’s your CFO excited about your work!

p.p.s. I’d like your feedback. Would you take a short course where I taught you how to build a choosable employer brand? Go vote on this LI poll and let me know.

-j