In this live presentation, host Joe Polish introduces recruitment consultant Jade Green, who argues that hiring is one of the highest‑ROI decisions a business can make and should be treated as a strategic, marketing‑driven function rather than a routine HR task. Green critiques the common practice of designing elaborate customer journeys while neglecting the candidate journey, and she illustrates her points with a 2018 SodaStream employer‑branding campaign that linked purpose, cultural relevance, and behavioral cues to attract A‑players. She breaks down the campaign’s tactics—leading with purpose over perks, framing the company as a battle worth joining, using identity‑based language, and demonstrating values through everyday actions—showing how these create a polarizing, high‑impact recruitment message. Green then urges leaders to spend an hour with their marketing teams to map a candidate journey like a customer funnel, turning recruitment into an "attraction machine" that draws top talent instead of relying on passive job postings. The talk concludes with a call to replace lazy recruiting with intentional, purpose‑driven, and behavior‑focused strategies to secure A‑players who deliver far greater ROI than any single customer.
Chapters
How many of you are planning to hire anyone this year, either part-time, full-time, virtually, maybe even a nanny or a personal assistant? Show of hands. Okay. Well, that's a lot. That's probably like, I don't know, 35, 40% of the room. If you feel stuck in your business growth, it's not because you don't know how to grow. You're stuck because people problems start compounding faster than profit. Jade Green has spent over 2 decades inside the exact problem, not from the HR seat, but from the founder and advisor side of the to the table, helping owners solve this problem. She spent 13 years as a recruiter and headhunter, personally trained over 160 recruiters, and for the last decade has worked as a business consultant helping companies across the globe attract A-players, retain their superstars, and maximize the productivity and profitability of all of their people. This is what enables growth, fixing people problems so scaling feels like momentum, not mayhem. Warning, Jay's clients say she wields a fluffy baseball bat of tough love. She's Australian and she's the female equivalent of me. We'll see when it comes to swearing and inappropriate commentary. Jade's title is Win the War for Talent: How to Recruit Better Than Any Recruiter. Please help me welcome Jade Green.
Thank you, darling. Thanks, Joe. Okay, you have one job for today's talk, and that is to change the way you think about recruitment. Because hiring is not a HR problem. Hiring is one of the highest ROI decisions that you can make as a business leader. Yet most businesses that I've come across spend way more time designing their candidate— their customer journey and their customer funnels than they do designing how they're going to attract the most valuable asset they have in the business, their talent. This is absolutely fucking crazy to me. I don't understand why we would do it like this, because an A-player, just one single A-player, is going to out-earn, out-produce, and out-impact any single customer you have, right? And we all know the cost of a bad hire. Especially in a leadership position, right Joe Polish? So the real question isn't where did all the good talent go? The real question is what the hell are you doing to ensure that you can be found by A-players, but more importantly convince them to come and join your mission? So here's where I find most business leaders get it absolutely ass-backwards. The moment they advertise a position, you are not the buyer, you are the seller. Think in that for a moment, okay? Because the people that you want on your team, they're already valued, they already have opportunities, and they know their worth. And you're asking them to pay you with the most valuable asset they have in their entire life, their time. So let me ask you something really seriously. Everyone ready to be serious? Why the fuck should the best of the best come and work for you? Really think about that. Why should they come and work for you? If you believe in who, not how, then how can recruitment be just an HR function? It has to sit squarely on the shoulders of the business leaders. So today I'm not here to give you tactics, I'm here to show you how to change the way to think about this. I'm about to show you a video that was filmed in 2018 for the number one sparkling water company in the world, SodaStream. It was filmed at their actual head offices in Israel. The guy you're gonna see, it was the real CEO at that particular time and the real team members. And then you're gonna see a giant massive mountain guy. He was the mountain in Game of Thrones. Anyone Game of Thrones fans? It was kind of big back then, just so you know. And SodaStream did something really, really intentional with this. They linked their employer brand to cultural relevance and to their customer campaigns so that the employees that were coming on board realize they are just as important. Okay, so I'm going to read you something that the CEO said about this campaign at the time. He said, attracting extraordinary talent requires extraordinary methods. The world is changing, and just like we need to be creative in attracting our customers, we need to be super creative in attracting our talent. So as you watch this video and I play it for you, I don't want you to think of it as a feel-good brand video. I want you to watch it like you're an expert marketer. Okay, are we ready? One question as you go through: what makes this so effective at attracting the right type of people?
At Sodastream, we not only make great sparkling water, but we also help save the planet from plastic waste with one With one reusable bottle, we can save a family up to 3,000 disposable bottles every year. Now that's a revolution. We're Rainmakers. She's a Rainmaker.
I'm an accountant.
He's a Rainmaker. I'm a lawyer. We've just been sued by Coke. Again. We're growing so fast, we're looking for new talent. People who can move mountains. The first thing a Soda Streamer needs is a creative mind. You wanna see creativity? Look at Milos. Milos figured out a creative way to carry all these SodaStream machines. The second thing you need when you work at SodaStream is a sense of urgency. When you work here, you need to be able to move fast and always stay alert. The most important thing we're looking for is business courage. Here at SodaStream, we love taking risks, and yeah, sometimes we'll fail.
Do not fail.
We embrace failure. Ah! Billette. We're a family of 3,000 people from all religions and nationalities working side by side in peace and coexistence. So if you're creative, if you're fast, brave, and optimistic, you belong with us It's here at SodaStream, the number one sparkling water brand in the world. So come join the revolution and let's make the world a better place. Milos, nice job today. Daniel, I think I deserve a raise. Mr. Mountain, he wants a raise.
Doesn't that make you want to join the revolution, right? This was no generic hiring— we're hiring campaign designed to get thousands and thousands of resumes. Remember Daniel said, no more piles of resumes for us. This was a highly intentional, real advertisement designed to screen out who they don't want and to absolutely fucking wow those who want to come move mountains with them. So let's talk about why it works and how you can use it in your print advertising, in your regular ads. Let's look at it.
So hey, I hope you're enjoying this video, and I want to let you know that I have a new book that that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description, or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.
Number 1, purpose before perks. Notice what they didn't talk about. They didn't talk about salary, benefits, flexible working hours. Right? They led with purpose. Why they exist. The problem you're here to solve. The mission you will be joining. Because high performers, they don't commit to jobs, they commit to missions. Number 2, Don, a battle worth joining. There's one line in the video that does an amazing amount of heavy lifting. We've just been sued by Coke again. It tells you everything, right? They— this is a company that punches way above their weight. They're not here to be small. They're not here to be safe. They're here to play meaningful games, because high performers, they don't want comfort. They want significance. So if your recruitment message is Quietly filtering out people because you're playing it safe. So number 3, identities over job titles. They don't say we're hiring marketers, accountants, and lawyers. They talk about the human first and the qualities: creative, fast, brave, optimistic. This isn't branding, this is behavioral filtering. So if your recruitment message isn't polarizing and offending at least a few people, it's far too fucking generic. Number 4: values you can feel, not words on a wall. Most companies say they have values. Very few of them are actually able to demonstrate it. In the video you saw, creativity demonstrated. You saw urgency visible, you saw courage modeled, and most importantly, you saw failure normalized. Right? Values don't live on posters, or what I like to call them, bullshit words on a wall. They live in the behavior that is in every person every day. It's in the jokes that get made. It's in what gets tolerated by you. It's in the actions. So here's the reframe that I want to leave you with today. An A-player, a single A-player, has an ROI far, far higher than any individual customer that you'll ever acquire. So if you're willing to invest serious time, money, and strategy into acquiring customers, Why the hell wouldn't you do this for the people that actually build your business? So the call to action from today's talk, everyone ready for it? I want you to spend 1 hour, 1 hour, not with HR but with your marketing team, mapping your candidate journey just like you would a customer journey so that you can actually wow the pants off the A-players you want to be building your teams so that you can have more elf and less half. Because average hiring isn't from a talent shortage, it comes from lazy recruiting and piss-poor preparation. So I want you to take one moment to imagine this. It's 3 months from now. You've stopped posting your job list of demands snooze fest on active job boards. Waiting for God's gift of an employee to walk through your front door, and you've created an A-player attraction machine that actually has the best of the best banging down your door to come and work for you.
Okay, I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. They're over here. Do it now.
