+273 net new followers in June, a 15.2% gain. The curve jumped hardest around June 8 to 17, tracking the two viral hiring posts and the Skills Matrix and TIME announcements.
Two posts (Shifts in hiring, Symptoms of hiring slow) drove about 87% of total monthly reach. Everything else clustered under 4K.
Each list ranks by a different signal: impressions for raw reach, saves for "I want to come back to this" intent, and engagement rate for resonance on smaller-reach posts. This month reach was extremely top-heavy: two contrarian hiring posts carried the account, while the podcast clips punched above their weight on engagement rate but stayed small on reach.
Who got seen the most.
B2B's strongest signal. Readers bookmarking to revisit.
Smaller-reach posts that overperformed for their audience.
Image led volume (6 of 14) and carried both viral hits. Text and video split the rest evenly.
Image's average is inflated by the two viral posts. Strip those out and image sits near text. Video trailed all month.
We read each of the 14 posts and classified them by the job the post was doing. Four recurring patterns emerged. The breakdown shows volume and performance per pattern so we can see which deserve more calendar share next month and which to rethink.
Educational tops the chart on the back of one viral post. Among the repeatable patterns, hot takes have by far the highest ceiling.
Saves are the strongest intent signal. Educational and hot takes own this metric; the podcast clips generated none.
Four content patterns observed across 14 published posts.
| Pattern | Posts | Total imp. | Avg imp./post | Total saves | Top performer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Educational / thought leadership | 2 | 89,983 | 44,992 | 23 | Shifts in hiring today (86.8K imp) |
| Hot takes / contrarian | 5 | 28,810 | 5,762 | 9 | Companies say they hire slowly (25.9K imp) |
| Product & company updates | 3 | 7,455 | 2,485 | 4 | Hiring Chief of Staff (3.6K imp) |
| Podcast (Recruiters On The Rise) | 4 | 2,914 | 729 | 0 | ROTR: Bruce Nichols (1.1K imp) |
The Educational bucket shows a 45.0K average, but that is two posts averaged: one 86.8K viral (Shifts in hiring) and one 3.2K (AI resumes). Treat the 86.8K as an outlier, not a baseline. The lesson is not "educational always wins," it is "a sharp market-shift thesis with a clean hook can break out." Both viral posts of the month opened on a concrete industry shift (Salesforce hiring freeze, 20 interviews per hire).
Five contrarian posts drove 28.8K impressions and 9 of the month's 36 saves. Every one opened by naming a belief and pushing against it ("I don't believe in hire slow, fire fast," "companies love to say they hire slowly, it's the clearest sign the process is broken"). This is the pattern Colleen can reliably repeat week over week, and the June 4 hot take (25.9K, 234 likes) shows the ceiling when the hook lands.
Three product/company posts averaged 2.5K impressions. The TIME WorkTech list hit the month's highest engagement rate (4.9%) and the Chief of Staff hire pulled 89 likes, so the existing audience loves these. They just do not expand to new feeds. Keep them, but do not expect them to drive follower growth on their own.
Four Recruiters On The Rise video posts averaged 729 impressions and drove 0 saves. They hold a respectable engagement rate (2.9 to 3.4%) from a small warm audience, but video underperformed all month and the clips do not get bookmarked. They occupied 29% of the calendar and returned 2% of the reach.
The first sentence does almost all of the work on LinkedIn. The algorithm decides reach within the first 90 minutes based on early dwell and engagement, so the hook is where the post is won or lost. We analyzed the opening lines of Colleen's top 6 posts (top 5 by impressions and top 5 by saves, overlap counted once). Five ingredients recur.
Observed across the top performers this month.
"Salesforce went from adding 30,000 people in 3 years to a near-total freeze," "20 interviews per hire," "92% of recruiting leaders." The two breakout posts both dropped a hard number before sentence three. Numbers create instant credibility and stop the scroll.
Salesforce, Textio, Lighthouse Research, Kruger and Dunning. The winning hooks cite real names as evidence. Generic phrases like "companies today" or "the market" show up in the weaker posts.
"Companies love to say they hire slowly. It's the clearest sign their process is broken." "Using AI to match your resume sounds cool. But it can actually reduce your chances." Naming a common belief and then breaking it is the single most consistent trait of Colleen's high-reach posts.
"Here's why," "Here's what that changes about how you hire." The strongest hooks tell the reader an explainer is coming, which buys the dwell time the algorithm rewards.
"I don't believe in," "After running hundreds of hiring conversations myself." Personal voice, fast opening line, no corporate warmup. The product and podcast posts that opened with "Excited to announce" or "The latest episode is live" never broke out of the warm audience.
Setting aside the two viral posts, the floor of the calendar was the podcast clips and one duplicate. Hypotheses below.
This image post carries the exact same "AI in hiring for the sake of it vs outcomes" copy as the text post published two hours later the same day (1.3K impressions). LinkedIn suppresses near-identical reposts, and the second, better-performing version split the audience. Pick one format per idea and post it once.
Opens with "30 years in recruiting and John Curran is still the most curious person in the room." A warm line, but it names a person the audience does not know yet and leads with video, which underperformed every week this month. Podcast clips need a thesis hook ("the one thing 30-year recruiters do that everyone else skips") rather than a guest introduction.
"The latest episode of Recruiters On The Rise is officially live." That is a broadcast announcement, not a reason to stop scrolling. The strongest idea in the post (a recruiter who has not posted a job in two and a half years) was buried in paragraph four. Lead with the counterintuitive claim, put the episode link second.
1. Posting the same idea twice in two formats on the same day (the AI-in-hiring duplicate cost the image version its reach).
2. Podcast clips that open with a guest introduction instead of a standalone thesis.
3. Leaning on video, which trailed every other format all month.
4. Reading too much into the 86.8K viral post. It is a ceiling, not a baseline. Judge July against the ~5K hot-take median.
Five concrete moves, each grounded in something we observed this month.
Hot takes are the pattern Colleen can repeat reliably. Aim for 2 per week, each opening by naming a hiring belief and pushing against it (recruiter-facing myths, AI-in-hiring shortcuts, "culture fit," the 20-interview loop). Space them at least 3 days apart so they do not compete with each other.
Both breakout posts opened on a concrete, current industry shift (Salesforce freeze, 20 interviews per hire). Ship one data-anchored "here is what changed in hiring and what it means for you" post per week, each built on a fresh stat or named company move. This is the closest thing to a repeatable path back to the 25K-plus band.
The 4 ROTR clips averaged 729 impressions and 0 saves, all opening with a guest intro or "new episode live." Reframe each around the single most counterintuitive thing the guest said, put that in the first line, and move the episode link into the comments. Test text-with-thumbnail instead of native video, since video trailed all month.
The AI-in-hiring idea went out twice on June 22 (image at 38 impressions, text at 1.3K). Duplicates get suppressed and split the audience. Choose the format that fits the idea (text for arguments, image for frameworks) and ship it once.
Product and company posts pulled warm engagement (TIME list at 4.9%, Chief of Staff at 89 likes) but only 4 saves combined and no reach expansion. Within 72 hours of each announcement, ship a how-to or framework the same buyer would bookmark (for Skills Matrix: "the 4 things a hiring debrief should document"). Turn the attention into intent.