Case Study · The Talent Magnet
One five-word post (“Get rid of unlimited PTO”) became a 669,000-impression recruiting filter.
The challenge
For this edtech co-founder and CEO (~$60M raised) the constraint wasn’t revenue or fundraising. It was talent. Every edtech startup competes for the same engineers, product managers, and designers, and they all post the same interchangeable “we’re hiring, great culture!” content that gets ignored. He needed to show what it actually feels like to work for him (what he believes and what he’s building) because that’s what candidates are really researching.
What we did
Instead of posting more job listings, he took strong, unapologetic stances on how companies should treat people, most memorably a deliberately polarizing post arguing to get rid of unlimited PTO. The strategy leaned into values-forward, opinionated content engineered to work as a filter: attracting people who think the way he does and repelling those who never would have fit. He sustained roughly five posts a week for two years (500+ posts) rather than chasing one viral moment.
The results
The “unlimited PTO” post reached about 669,000 impressions with roughly 1,800 likes and 400+ comments, functioning as a recruiting filter that pulled aligned candidates faster than any funnel. Across the program, comments per post rose 133% and quarterly engagement nearly doubled. The compound effect paid off when it mattered: his $60M funding announcement earned 10x the reach of comparable announcements from founders without a built audience, because distribution preceded the news. Today, when a candidate Googles him, they find a leader with a clear point of view, not a generic careers page, and his best hires come from people who found him on LinkedIn.
The people who disagreed were never going to work there anyway. The post was a filter.