One quick thing before we start:
A job ad isn’t a job description.

A job description documents a role.
A job ad invites someone into it.

When job ads sound like internal paperwork, people switch off. Here are five common job ad mistakes and the fixes that make them more effective.

🤖 1. Using impersonal language

Many job ads still open with lines like:
“The ideal candidate will…” or
“The role requires the successful applicant to…”
Accurate? Yes. Engaging? Not really.

Fix it

Use direct, personal language:

• “In this role, you’ll…”

• “You’ll thrive here if you…”

• “You’ll work closely with…”

Same information. Far more inviting.

😃 2. Sharing only the good parts

It’s tempting to focus on perks and positives. But people want to understand what the role actually feels like, including the pressure points.

Fix it

Balance the picture. Mention pace, expectations or challenges alongside growth and support. Clear context builds trust and attracts better-fit applicants.

😶 3. Being vague about what happens after they apply

Phrases like “Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted” leave people guessing, and hesitation kills momentum.

Fix it

Add a short “What happens next” section. Outline the stages, timelines and who they’ll meet. Clarity encourages action.

🤔 4. Leaving out the deadline

No deadline means no urgency. People assume they’ll come back later, and often don’t.

Fix it

Include a clear closing date. It gives the right people a reason to apply now.

😵‍💫 5. Saying too much

Long lists of responsibilities overwhelm readers and blur what actually matters.

Fix it

Prioritise what shapes the day-to-day experience. Shorter lists. Clear subheads. Less noise.

🥡 The takeaway

A job ad shouldn’t read like a to-do list for the already-hired.

A strong job ad invites you in and shows you around.

Over to you

We’re reshaping The Magic Edit to focus on one clear, useful insight each issue that you can read quickly then put to work. We’d love your input.

Your vote helps shape future editions.

Happy holidays!

Insight

Snap up talent with paid influencer marketing

Missed our recent TikTok for Talent webinar? Not to worry. Here’s a quick recap. 👇

What is it?  Paid influencer marketing in EB means recruiting creators to promote your company to their audiences. They can be employees who are already active advocates or other relevant people in your industry, such as grads.

Why do it? If you want to attract Gen Z and Millennials, paid influencer marketing on platforms like TikTok and Instagram is an opportunity you can’t miss. It lets you meet talent where they are, with voices they trust.

Biggest misconception? Everyone – consciously or subconsciously – assumes the best outcome of influencer marketing is to go “viral.” But influencer content, like a good EVP, is not about appealing to everyone. Just people who are the right fit. So don’t worry about vanity metrics like “likes” as much as crafting the right message.

Example #1

When it comes to choosing influencers… Tone and values that match your company’s > follower count.

Biggest challenge? Campaigns are often viewed as separate to broader business strategy, so stakeholders don’t understand the real value.

How to get buy-in?

• Show the long term impact of influencer campaigns and the opportunities you’re missing by not running them.

• Tie everything back to talent pipeline and business growth objectives.

• Involve key stakeholders in the process from the start.

How much involvement should you have in the content? Totally up to you. Provide guidelines on video length, subtitling, music – or let your influencers roam free. But trust them to know their audience and you’ll get content that feels less corporate and more watchable.

Example #2

@aliciacotsoradis#Ad If you have veterinary school debt, this opportunity could change everything! 🩺✨ Check out the VCA Bright Futures program—mentorship, career growth, and student loan relief all in one. Here’s to the next step in my journey! 🤍 #VCACareers #VetMed #BrightFutures #FutureVet #VeterinaryMedicine #DebtRelief #VetLife

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If you want a deeper look into paid influencer marketing plus another case study, catch the webinar recording, here.

→ WATCH THE REPLAY

Inspiration

6 times EB borrowed from TV (… and it was cool)

The Royal Navy – Trainspotting
That iconic opening monologue.

Dropbox – The Muppets
All the nostalgia.

Insomniac Games – Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny
One for the Jack Black fans. 🤘

Vimeo – The Office
Hilariously awkward. (Scroll to #18)

IKEA – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Okay they’re not golden tickets, but still.

Heineken – Impractical Jokers
When the interviewer holds his hand. 😭

Webinar

How to transform your culture with employer branding

When we partnered with Mimecast, it was going through more changes than your average preteen.

New management. New strategic direction. Multiple acquisitions and a 60% remote workforce post-Covid. No wonder its culture was suffering.

But then we ran a creative campaign that employees wanted in on. One that created a buzz. And got people driving change, rather than just experiencing it.

“But how?!” you cry.

Find out in next month’s webinar.

DATE: 6th November

TIME: 5pm GMT

→ SAVE YOUR SPOT

[Bonus] Lesson from World Employer Branding Day

Design experiences with people, not at them.

“We had a lot of talk during WEBD about “understanding your target audience.” Fair. But if we stop at understanding, we miss the point.

In human-centred design, you involve the people you’re designing for, co-creating solutions to real problems. We do this for products and services; we should absolutely do it for the employee experience.

At Mimecast, we didn’t launch values. We briefed employees with “secret missions,” so people could practice the behaviours the business needed next.

From values to behaviours to business change.

If you want different results, you need different behaviours. If you want different behaviours, design different experiences – with people, not at them.”

– Dave Hazlehurst, CXO Human Magic

Mark’s top trick

🍂 Fall* Employer Brand Checkup

Before the holiday rush, take one hour to audit your candidate journey like a job seeker.

✅ Google your company.

✅ Visit your career site.

✅ Click through a few job posts and interview prep materials.

Ask: Does the tone reflect who we are now? Is the language inclusive and clear? Are visuals current?

January is one of the busiest months for job searches – refreshing content now ensures your first impression is sharp when traffic spikes.

🛠 Bonus: Ask a new hire to flag any friction points you may overlook.

(*Mark is from Ohio. He thinks autumn is a type of mushroom.)

→ CHAT TO OUR EXPERTS

✅ To-do list

📚 READ: Young people are facing a “job-pocalypse”
A quarter of leaders think AI can do all or most of what juniors do.

🎥 WATCH: The Swedish Army’s creative approach to recruitment?
Lock people in a box and film it.

🗣️ OPINION: Your “skills training” promise isn’t the safe bet you think
It could be doing more harm than good.

🔢 STAT: Over 1 million UK employees quit in the past year over lack of flexibility

Pssst. Got thoughts? Questions? The perfect chocolate hobnob recipe?

Drop us a comment. (Mmm, we’re hungry now.)

Leave a comment

Insight

Is your employer brand ready for The Great Flattening?

The structure of the workforce is changing. Here’s what employer brand leaders need to know.

→ READ MORE

Inspiration

🧪 Arkema’s formula for a winning campaign

Much like Mr Krabs with his coveted patties, Arkema has found a winning formula.

With a workforce of over 20,000, and a constant need to hire fresh talent, the global manufacturer needed a belter of a message to attract ambitious people.

And in 2024, they cracked it. With “Changing the world requires the right formula”.

This campaign draws attention to soft skills like “passion for results” and “pragmatism” and even personality traits like “karaoke rockstar” and “board game champion".

So whether you’re a professional yodeller, amateur photographer, or a big ol’ nerd Dungeons & Dragons enthusiast, Arkema invites you to be a part of their formula, and 100% Arkema.

N’aww.

How did it go?

With AI dominating the conversation, this human-focused campaign went down a storm. And the customisable format prompted over 1,000 Arkema employee to spontaneously get involved, attaching their own photos and skills to the poster and sharing the result on LinkedIn.

With their involvement, the campaign earned more than 3 million views. And bumped them up from 5th to 3rd in Capital magazine’s list of France’s top 500 employers. Not too shabby.

Turns out if you ask people #whatareyoumadeof? it stirs quite the response. Since you asked, I’m about 23% dad jokes and the rest milk chocolate digestives.

→WATCH THE CAMPAIGN VID

Webinar

TikTok for Talent: How to Attract Great Talent with Paid Influencer Marketing

Splendiferous news! There’s still time to sign up for our free webinar…

⏰ When – 24th September, 17:00 GMT

You’ll learn:

• The benefits of using paid influencers in recruitment marketing

• How to find the right influencers for your audience

• How to keep paid advocacy authentic and credible

• Key takeaways from successful campaigns

→ SAVE YOUR SPOT

Erin’s top trick

Try AI-powered creativity

Using TikTok for your employer brand? Have limited budget, resources, or time to gather content?

Try tools like Symphony Creative Studios and Market Scope to scale content while tailoring to specific audience journeys.

• Market Scope: Shows what’s trending on TikTok so you can plan content job seekers will love.

• Symphony Creative Studios: Uses AI to instantly create TikTok videos and ideas for your campaigns.

These tools offer quick ways to generate and localise ideas without compromising impact.

Interested in learning more about TikTok employer brand possibilities?

→ COME TO OUR FREE WEBINAR

✅ To-do list

📚 READ: Is it possible to be too honest in employer branding?
How to tread the delicate line between authenticity and oversharing.

🎥 WATCH: SEO for LLM’s – what talent acquisition need to know
Hung Lee unpacks his tips for keeping up with AI search.

💬 LAUGH: If interview rejection letters were honest
Maybe they dodged a bullet after all.

🔢 STAT: 70% of workers and managers are more likely to join and stay with a company if its EVP helps them thrive in an AI world. (Deloitte)

Pssst. Got thoughts? Questions? Juicy goss?

Drop us a comment. (It makes us feel popular.)

Leave a comment

Insight

A Strategist’s Guide to ROI in Employer Branding

The easy way to measure and explain the impact of your work.

→ READ MORE

Inspiration

Paid Influencer Marketing

6.4 million impressions from one campaign – VCA’s advocacy results.

VCA Animal Hospitals needed to catch the eye of the next generation of vets. 

The solution? Paid influencers.

In collaboration with Whalar, we reached out to vet students already sharing their journeys on social media and tapped into their audiences. From day in the life vids to mental health advice, they shared everything a grad might want to know about life at VCA.

As real students (rather than employees) these influencers’ stories hit different.

Here’s how it played out.

The numbers:

• 7 student ambassadors

• 21 posts (including TikToks and Instagram reels)

• 6.4 million impressions

• 2 million reach

• 125k engagements

• +1228% above benchmark comment rate

• + 807% above benchmark share rate

• + 86% above benchmark save rate

Check out some of the example videos 👇

And if you want the in-depth nitty gritty of how to get results with paid influencer marketing, sign up for our free webinar. 👇

Webinar

TikTok for Talent: How to Attract Great Talent with Paid Influencer Marketing

⏰ When – 24th September, 17:00 GMT

You’ll learn:

• The benefits of using paid influencers in recruitment marketing

• How to find the right influencers for your audience

• How to keep paid advocacy authentic and credible

• Key takeaways from successful campaigns

→ SAVE YOUR SPACE

Julie’s top trick

The EVP test

Use this 10-minute test to get a quick sense of how well your EVP is working, and what you might need to change.

Human Magics Evp Assessment Tool

831KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Want more nifty tools like this one?

→ TALK TO ONE OF OUR HUMANS

✅ To-do list

📚 READ: A 5-step action plan for employer brand leaders in 2025
Translating global talent trends into EB takeaways.

✅ TRY: 10 ways to combat the employee happiness crisis
And what to do if your culture is “too nice”.

🎥 WATCH: The recruitment campaign that won Heineken a Cannes Lion award
What happens when your job interview is an elaborate prank?

💬 QUOTE: "I think that the pendulum is swinging toward much less work-life balance and much more constant chronic stress." – Dr. Tasha Eurich, organizational psychologist and New York Times bestselling author.

🔢 STAT: Only 6% of Gen Z say their top career goal is to get a leadership position
They’re prioritising life outside of work.

Pssst. Got thoughts? Questions? Spicy memes?

Drop us a comment. (It makes us feel popular.)

Leave a comment

Insight

A psychologist’s guide to what top talent wants

We caught up with Dr Eric Frazer to unravel the secrets of hiring high-performers.

→ READ MORE

Inspiration

DON’T look at this EB campaign

If you’re still reading this sentence, we may have proved that a bit of good-old-fashioned reverse psychology still does the trick.

At least, that’s what US defence technology startup Anduril was banking on with its latest recruitment campaign, “Don’t Work at Anduril.”

With an edgy graffiti style and pithy headlines – “Don’t work here. The snacks suck” and “Don’t work here. You will get free body armour” – this kooky campaign rolled out in Boston, and has since taken off on X and LinkedIn.

(Though at first, its audience just assumed it had been hacked.)

And while reverse psychology is nothing new in marketing – Remember Patagonia’s “Don’t buy this jacket” campaign or Visit OSLO’s “Is it even a city?” – the technique takes on new heights when used for recruitment by a company that makes AI-powered defence systems.

With wry humour, Anduril takes a swipe at cushy Silicon Valley tech companies with their nap pods and 4 hour work days. The message? This is not a place for people who want to coast.

As the careers website says:

It’s hard work, on hard problems, in hard mode. If that isn’t for you, then Anduril isn’t the place for you.

Of course, funky fonts and poking fun at Google can’t camouflage the fact Anduril is making military-grade weapons. What they can do is throw down the gauntlet for ambitious talent who don’t mind a bit of ethical ambiguity.

Wherever you sit on the company’s morals, this campaign had passers-by doing exactly what Anduril wanted – double takes.

→ READ MORE

Event

RecFest takeaways

This year’s event in Knebworth was a hoot – but we came home with more than just merch and a tan line.

Here two of our top takeaways from RecFest 2025.

1. Employer Brand Leaders are asking bigger questions

Conversations on our stand kept circling back to this: How do we shift perceptions of our brand, not just drive hires?

From reputation challenges to regional hiring needs, more leaders are treating employer brand as a strategic lever – not just a campaign. The brief is growing, and the opportunity is bigger than ever.

2. Creative content matters again (and that’s a good thing)

Yes, media still matters. But more brands are realising that media spend without creative storytelling is a waste of budget.

We spoke to in-house teams who are actively looking for fresh ideas, not just ad placements. It’s about combining creative and campaign thinking to reach the right people and say the right thing.

For more zesty RecFesty insights, check out 👉 this post.

Julie’s top trick

Rational and emotional

Candidates make decisions on your company with their head, hands and heart.

Head – Do they trust in the company’s vision, stability, leadership and values?

Hands – Are there opportunities to do meaningful work, advance their career and make an impact?

Heart – Will they feel supported, valued, connected and cared for?

Your job:

Use your employer brand to speak to all three desires so candidates can make the most informed decision.

Want more nifty tools like this one?

→ TALK TO ONE OF OUR HUMANS

✅ To-do list

📚 READ: They thought AI tools were helping them code faster…
They made them slower across the board.

🤔 LEARN: More than half of fresh grads are struggling to get a job
Gen Z are finding it tougher than Millennials to get on the ladder.

😁 SMILE: Walmart’s social media pics are hilarious
We’ll take Charlene’s milk moustache over bland corporate stuff any day of the week.

🔢 STAT: The wrong hire could cost you up to $850,000, HR agencies estimate

Pssst. Got thoughts? Questions? Links to cat videos?

Drop us a comment. (It makes us feel popular.)

Leave a comment

Insight

Drowning in low quality applications? Here’s how to fix it

→ READ MORE

Inspiration

Spotlight on PostHog’s career site

We mentioned the most unique careers site we’ve seen in a while in last month’s issue, but honestly, it’s so good it deserves a deeper dive.

PostHog’s kooky job page gets top marks for original ideas and having oodles of personality.

Here’s what we like about it:

• It's got a clear USP. The concept of working for a "start up within a startup."

• It's uses humour. From the playful design, hedgehog illustrations and vibrant colours to the actual words – particularly a pineapple pizza debate that is borderline OTT – PostHog shows its culture rather than telling. They don’t need to write, “We have a fun culture.” We can actually see it playing out.

  

• It tells it like it is. PostHog know the type of person that will excel with them, and the type of person that won’t. And they’re not afraid to talk about it.

  

• Cofounder “tweets”. Okay, so it’s a bit “I’m not a regular boss, I’m a cool boss,” but the tweet-style messages from the cofounder add a personal touch. And set realistic expectations for candidates.

  

• The use of an IEP. At first we thought oh brother, not another acronym. But on balance, the ideal employee profile is really a cool idea, and well-executed here. For example, have you ever encountered a company unapologetically looking for “weirdos”?

  

• It feels uniquely human. No jargon or formalities. Just a conversational tone and real employee quotes, career journeys and photos.

  

• It’s transparent af. Anyone exploring the site gets access to the company handbook, a latest monthly financial report, and the exact hiring process they can expect to go through.

  

→ CHECK OUT POSTHOG’S CAREER SITE

News

We’ve acquired TapIn!

Looks like we’re in our growth era.

First we went down under 🦘and brought Eloquent on board. Now, Human Magic has acquired TapIn – UK’s leading media and marketing agency specialising in Gen Z talent, who’ll help us eat, and leave not a singular crumb, for our clients. (Is that..? Did we use that right?)

Some lovely humans, a ton of potential.

If you’re a stickler for detail, give the press release a read.

→ READ MORE

Event

Human Magic is comin’ to RecFest

Hold on to your branded totes! It’s the event we look forward to every year.

The one with giant tents, Ferris wheels, and 5,000 ish TA pros pottering around, trying to figure out whether to chomp a free ice cream before or after they ride the mechanical bull. (Hint: always after.)

The Human Magic team will be there with bells on. With a magician doing cool tricks and live shows at our stand between 10 AM - 4 PM.

And the legendary Dave Hazlehurst will be doing a talk on the Innovate stage, on Human Magic at Work: Bridging the gap for a unified experience.

Where: Knebworth Park

When: 10 July, 2025.

Our stand number: I-9 (near the Ferris wheel.)

Haven’t got your tickets yet? No judgement. You can use our code DAVE25 for 25% off.

→ GET YOUR TICKETS

Andy’s top trick

Switch on your BS detector

BS. It's all to easy to produce. That's why there's so much of it out there. To avoid employer brand content that makes them groan, ask yourself two questions.

First, would I believe this? And second, why am I doing this? Be really specific about it. If you want Maureen from Stevenage to work as a sales advisor at M&S, what you produce needs to have Maureen from Stevenage nodding along, not rolling her eyes.

Want help with honest, believable and eye-catching messaging?

→ TALK TO ONE OF OUR HUMANS

✅ To-do list

📚 READ: Hiring in the age of the algorithm
What the Workday lawsuit is really telling us.

🎥 WATCH: Find your “recurring moments”
To keep talent loyal and engaged.

✅ SMILE: 7 heartwarming employee stories you won’t believe
Tales to warm your cockles.

🔢 STAT: 69% recognise the importance of changing their EVPs to reflect human-machine collaboration in the age of AI – but only 6% are making good progress with it.

Pssst. Got thoughts? Questions? Links to cat videos?

Drop us a comment. (It makes us feel popular.)

Leave a comment

Insight

Build your EB around the disengaged too

Albert Einstein’s teachers considered him “slow.”

They said he would “never amount to anything” and “was hopeless at physics”.* Einstein. Hopeless. At physics.

In their eyes, Einstein probably wouldn’t have qualified as “engaged” – much like almost 80 percent of the workforce right now.*

And yet these days, his name is a metonym for “genius.”

Because disengaged doesn’t mean useless or unskilled. A disengaged person is someone who isn’t in the right conditions to thrive. That’s all.

How many extraordinary people might be in your team right now, quietly languishing? Because of poor management, overworking, or other factors outside of their control.

Since these folks aren’t especially vocal at work, you probably won’t hear about it in traditional EB surveys and focus groups.

(And that’s if they’re even asked – in 2024, only a third of workers were asked for their feedback more than once a year, Qualtrics data shows.)

Which means most companies end up building employer brands around the engaged minority.

The problem with this? An employer brand that doesn’t ring true with 79% of its employees doesn’t help anyone.

Because you’re selling a fantasy.

And while disengaged workers keep quiet at work, they’re getting loose-lipped online. Our recent Brandwatch research shows burnout and dehumanisation are the hottest topics of work-related discussions.

They’re talking about it all through the week…

At all times of the day…

These people want to be heard. They’re just choosing other channels to vent their frustrations.

Remember, employer branding isn’t always about drawing in new talent.

It’s also about engaging and reinvigorating the talent you already have. Making the most of the Einsteins right under your nose – which you can only do if you acknowledge their value and listen.

Benefits of including the disengaged

1. You’ll create an employer brand people believe in. Real stuff resonates.

2. You’ll spot quiet brilliance. Not everyone’s potential is immediately obvious. (Heck, Einstein couldn’t speak fluently until he was nine.) Some of your best ideas are stuck in the heads of people who feel invisible.

3. You’ll give people a reason to care again. People don’t usually disengage overnight. They’re waiting for a reason to reconnect. Show them one.

*Einstein in the classroom

*Gallup Report

→ Get employee engagement advice you won’t find on Google

Inspiration

Hilti: From vans to Ray Bans

Sometimes the simplest changes yield extraordinary results.

With this one tweak to their recruitment process, we helped Hilti to save 7.4 million dollars on their recruitment costs annually. No, really.

And all it took was replacing van ridealongs with Meta specs 🤓.

Watch the magic:

→ Curious about our other work?

Julie’s top trick

The 2-minute sea of sameness test

1. Put your creative and recruitment work beside your competitors.

2. Remove any logos or reference to brand names.

Now, can you and your colleagues tell which is your brand? Who stands out and why?

Lastly, observe what none of you are doing and find your whitespace.

Here’s an example using our work with VCA.

The process:

The result:

→ See the full VCA project

✅ To-do list

📚 READ: How people are using ChatGPT in 2025 versus 2024.
TherAIpy is on the rise.

🎥 WATCH: This quirky The Office remake is DHL’s new hiring tactic.
Working in the Esports logistics division never looked so good.

✅ TRY: The most unique careers site you’ll see this month
TL;DRs, tweets, fun facts and pizza polls.

🔢 STAT: Employees who mention burnout in reviews are 59% more likely to start job applications, even at top-rated companies.
Burnout isn’t just a feeling, it’s a flight-risk.

🥹 AW: Everyone deserves a ‘lunch note’ from Bill .

Pssst. Got thoughts? Questions? Memes?

Drop us a comment. (It makes us feel popular.)

Leave a comment

Insight

8 lessons people leaders wish they’d known earlier in their careers

We asked top TA and EB professionals what they wished someone had told them years ago. Here’s what they said…

→ READ

Inspiration

Patrick and Paul’s story

A little while ago, we shared a true employee story that became the spark for an entire EB campaign for Virgin. And we may as well have chopped a giant onion in front of you…

But in case the algorithm fairies didn’t send the story your way, we’ll share it again here. We have to. It’s a wonderful manifestation of Human Magic that deserves to be told over and over. Stories like this are what we live and breathe.

It will help you find your tear ducts.

And it starts with Patrick.

→ READ THE FULL STORY

If you like the story, let us know with a comment.

And if you love that, you’ll love this video version.

Webinar

Want to learn how smart organisations are attracting and retaining talented humans?

Sign up to our free webinar.

Because something big is broken in the world of work. Everyone can feel it.

Candidates are ghosting.
Employees are disengaged.
Retention is harder than ever.

Employer brand legends Dave and Jules will teach you what every organisation should know:

• What’s going wrong (and what can be fixed)
• Why it’s happening now
• How to bring back human magic

→ I’LL BE THERE

Dave’s top trick

Do you know your talent’s pain?

Perks are great, but when it comes to inspiring talent to click apply, they're only half of the puzzle.

If you've ever bought an expensive suit or dress for a wedding, ask yourself: did you buy it because you loved the feeling of spending money and looking great? Or were you motivated by a secret worry that you’d look crap and embarrass yourself?

Your talent audience, like any human, avoids pain as much as they seek pleasure. Get to know their secret worries. Then provide the info, content and experiences that solve them.

BTW… HUMAN MAGIC IS EXPANDING

If you’re interested in the work we’re doing at Human Magic, you might like to know the magic is spreading to Australia 🐨. That’s right, Human Magic is going down under! Don’t mind if we didgeridoo (sorry.)

You can read more in this press release.

✅ To-do list

READ: This study reveals the “most rejected generation” ever

How can alter your candidate experience to win back their trust?

WATCH: Not applying to this internship is a betrayal

NASA nailed it with this creative recruitment ad.

TEAR-UP: They borrowed his truck, he became part of the family

Proper bit of human magic here.

TRY: How to tell stories for short attention spans

And increase your engagement.