Marcus Telle

Marcus Telle has spent years on both sides of the hiring table — as a candidate navigating career pivots and as an operator who had to build teams under pressure, with limited time and even less margin for error. He writes about the friction between how hiring is supposed to work and how it actually plays out, with a particular interest in the candidate experience that companies rarely see. His work focuses on what gets lost in the process: good people passed over for the wrong reasons, roles that never get filled because the brief was never quite right, and the small decisions that quietly shape whether someone joins — or walks. Marcus writes to make those patterns visible, for both sides of the conversation.

Articles by Marcus Telle

• Return to Office Mandates and the Hiring Impact: The Chain From One Memo to an Open Seat — ONS data shows UK hybrid working sits overwhelmingly with managers and graduates, which is exactly who a blanket mandate asks to give it up. Here is the chain from the memo to a vacancy that will not close.
• What Can a Previous Employer Say in a Reference? A UK Request, Graded — Acas leaves the detail to the referee, the Equality Act fences off health, and the ICO wants the whole process declared up front. We grade a typical UK reference request and rebuild it.
• Pay Transparency in Job Adverts: A Plain-English Primer for Founders — The EU Pay Transparency Directive moves the salary conversation into the advert, and most member states missed the June 2026 deadline. Here is how to build a defensible pay band before a candidate asks.
• Hybrid Working and Retention: What a Randomised Trial Found About Quit Rates — A randomised trial of 1,612 employees found hybrid working improved job satisfaction and cut quit rates by a third, with no measurable effect on performance grades or promotions. Here is what that means for hiring.
• Should You Accept a Counteroffer? Four Claims, Weighed Against the Survey Data — One UK survey found 74 per cent of people who accepted a counteroffer had left within a year. Here are four familiar claims about counteroffers, each given a verdict and a source.
• Why the Best Talent Strategies Take Years, Not Quarters — The long game in talent strategy means building candidate relationships, developing people, and creating honest feedback cultures long before you feel the pressure to hire.
• Time to Hire: What the Benchmarks Say and Where Your Days Really Go — A benchmark built on more than 54 million applications puts the median first hire at 75 days for technical roles and 60 for business ones. Here is where that calendar disappears, and the four intervals to track instead.
• Ghost Jobs: Why Employers Advertise Work They Are Not Hiring For — A survey of 649 hiring managers found close to 40% admitted their employer had run ghost adverts. Here is why it happens, how to test a listing in one message, and what honest employers owe applicants.
• Why Your Best Employee Just Quit Without Warning — When your best employee quits without warning, the resignation itself is rarely the real moment of departure - here's how to trace the causal chain backwards and break it.
• Dear Recruiter: My Candidate Ghosted Me After Signing the Offer — Post-offer ghosting breaks the recruitment chain at its most expensive point - here is how to spot the signals earlier and keep candidates genuinely committed through to their first day.
• What Hiring Managers Don't See When a Recruiter Goes Quiet — When a recruiter goes quiet on your open role, here's what's actually happening - and how hiring managers can close the gap without chasing.
• Why Cyber Startups Lose Candidates in the Offer Stage, Not the Interview — Cyber startup hiring often fails not in the interview room but in the quiet days after the offer goes out - here's how to stay present and stop losing candidates at the finish line.
• Tech Roles Decoded: A Recruiter's Plain-English Guide — A practical guide to help talent acquisition recruiters explain tech roles clearly, ask better questions, and screen more confidently without needing to understand the code.
• The nuances of hiring at each stage — what changes between the 5th employee and the 22nd to 25th — The nuances of hiring at each stage reveal a genuine shift in mechanics, stakes, and failure modes as you move from your fifth employee to your twenty-fifth.