The Relevance Rule
Relevance is everything in recruiting — be relevant to the exact opportunity or be invisible.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 85%
Posner states his hiring filter as black and white as possible: be relevant to the opportunity you are applying for. His job is to find the best possible person for a role from a skills perspective first — he agrees with 'character over skill,' but only after the minimum skills for that position are checked off the box. He can scan a resume in five to six seconds because he knows the relevant companies, the buzzwords and the career threads that earn a second look. Relevance also governs outreach: recruiters are niche specialists, so contacting a marketing recruiter about a finance role burns finite time. Only once relevance is established do the softer differentiators — fire, tenacity, natural inquisitiveness — decide the outcome.
Origin
Posner runs NHP Talent Group recruiting exclusively in marketing, media and advertising. He built the rule from being on the receiving end of daily inbound from unrelated industries and from scanning resumes at speed for clients who, post-pandemic, have no bandwidth to train anyone.
Core principles
- 01Character over skill only applies AFTER the minimum skills for the role are checked off.
- 02A recruiter scans a resume in five to six seconds looking for relevance signals.
- 03Recruiters are niche; reaching the wrong-industry recruiter wastes finite time on both sides.
- 04In a pandemic-shaped market, nobody has bandwidth to train — they want someone who can jump in.
How to run it
- 1
Qualify yourself for the role first
Be honest about whether you clear the minimum skills the position requires. This is the gate before anything else counts.
Watch out Character, culture fit and enthusiasm are tiebreakers, not substitutes for the skills box.
- 2
Make relevance visible in five seconds
Assume six seconds of attention. Clear title, recognizable companies, and bullets that map to this role's requirements.
Pro tip A visible thread through your career can earn a pause and a deeper read.
- 3
Target the right recruiter
Check that the recruiter specializes in your industry before reaching out. The best recruiters are hyper-niche.
Watch out Off-industry outreach wastes a recruiter's finite time and marks you as someone who didn't do the homework.
- 4
Show you can jump in
Signal that you can start producing without hand-holding, because hiring managers working remotely lack bandwidth to train.
In the wild
Posner says he can scan a resume in five to six seconds because he knows what he's looking for — the relevant companies, a buzzword or keyword, a thread in the career that gives him pause to go back and look deeper. Everything else is filtered out at that speed.
→ Resumes that regurgitate a job description or list irrelevant history never survive the scan; relevant ones earn the deeper read.
Posner reports that many people a day reach out to him from industries entirely unrelated to marketing and advertising. He recruits only in marketing, media and advertising — those are his clients, his candidates, his universe.
→ That outreach goes nowhere; Posner frames it as job-seeker responsibility to pick the right recruiter rather than spray the field.
Common mistakes
Regurgitating the job description
Posner says a lot of people fail on this. Echoing the posting back proves nothing about what you personally did or achieved.
Treating 'character over skill' as permission to skip qualifications
Posner agrees with the maxim but only after the minimum skills are checked. In a competitive market, clients want someone who can jump into the role immediately.
Is it for you?
Best for
Job seekers in competitive markets applying through recruiters or ATS screens.
Not ideal for
Genuine career-changers with no adjacent skills — Posner concedes the current market rarely rewards untrained jumps.
From the transcript
“This is black and white as possible — be relevant. Be relevant to the opportunity that you're applying for.”
“Character over skill after the minimum skills needed for that position are checked off the box.”
“I could scan a resume in five to six seconds as a recruiter because I know what I'm looking for.”
From the episode
Adam Posner: Land The Job
Adam Posner