Meg’s Treatise of 2026
(or: how the sausage gets made, veggie version optional)
Happy New Year.
The quiet stretch over the holidays often gives people space to reflect. What’s working, what isn’t, and what they might want more of in the year ahead. For many, that reflection turns into a quiet (or not so quiet) question about work:
“I want something different.”
In this market, that question can come with hesitation. Job security feels fragile*. The chaos is real. And depending on where you live, the stakes can be very different. Many people in the UK and Europe have more structural protections than folks in the US, where in many states your job and your health insurance can disappear overnight. That context matters.
This is also a time of year when I tend to see new people arrive on my LinkedIn feed, following me or Good Maven and some of them end up here, taking the time to absorb the long-form. So if you’re new, welcome. If you’ve been around a while, thank you for sticking with me. And if you’ve been quietly reading without ever engaging, you’re very much included too.
I thought the start of 2026 might be a good moment to share a little about how I think about LinkedIn, why I post the way I do, and what you can expect from me and from Good Maven.
I’m allergic to arbitrary rules
Knowing that LinkedIn has an algorithm that wants me to behave in a certain way genuinely makes me post less, not more. Call me a non-conformist.
I understand how the game works. I just don’t believe that attention for attention’s sake equals impact. Our mission at Good Maven is to help designers, coaches, and our own employees navigate their lives and careers for the betterment of themselves and society. That means I’m far more interested in depth, clarity, and usefulness than in chasing reach.
Sometimes that costs me growth. I’m okay with that.
I’m deeply uncomfortable with fear-based narratives, especially around AI
My feed is full of ads promising to teach people how to survive AI, outrun it, or avoid being replaced by it. I really dislike this framing.
That doesn’t mean I’m naive. Change is real. Jobs will evolve**. Some roles will disappear. But my focus has always been on helping people understand their strengths, sharpen their craft, and put their skills to work in ways that create value, for themselves, our community, the world.
We are far more effective when we raise communities up than when we scare people into compliance. That belief sits squarely inside our values of People Focus and Social Impact. I’m interested in what people can build, not in tearing down their sense of agency.
I’m old-fashioned about connection, and I’m fine with that
This often surprises people, but I try to only connect with people on LinkedIn who I have actually worked with, met through community, or spoken with via recruitment or coaching.
I prefer to call this community-based rather than old-fashioned.
Durable relationships are built by showing up, making honest connections, and taking time to know people***. The upside is that when I reach out with an opportunity, it is almost always genuinely relevant and well-received. And when I reach out to help someone else, for example supporting a UK refugee client looking for work, I know people will reply. The trust is already there.
Occasionally I notice how quickly visibility and networks can grow in recruiting, especially with platforms like LinkedIn, and it makes me reflect on what kind of impact I want to create. For me, the work that feels most meaningful is relationship-based, long-term, and built on trust, care, and real follow-through, not just reach or volume. At the same time, I recognise that scale can be incredibly valuable when it’s rooted in generosity and open knowledge-sharing. There are many ways to contribute.
I prioritise facts over marketing, even when it holds me back
There is a lot of loud opinion-sharing in recruitment. Advice about “the market”, what people should do, and how they should feel. In many agencies, recruiters are literally required to post something, anything, to drive engagement.
In an unpredictable and chaotic market, people understandably look for certainty. The problem is that none of us actually have it.
We can observe trends and patterns, but those observations are always shaped by where we sit. At Good Maven, we are usually hired for hard-to-fill design roles. Seniority, niche skill sets, complex products, high craft bars, specific locations. We hire across the US, the UK, and EMEA. That means the salaries we see are often higher than average.
To present that as a universal market truth would be dishonest and unhelpful.
This is something I learned at Facebook and Meta. Impact comes from measuring reality, not projecting feelings as facts. I get frustrated by content that plays on fear without helping people make progress.
That said, one of the most common questions I’m asked (in both coaching and recruitment calls) is what I’m seeing in the market. So in 2026, I’m going to share more observations, clearly caveated, backed by data where relevant and helpful, and always framed through the lens of my own experience.
Data is useful, and it can also be a trap
Purely data-driven decision-making can reinforce systems that are already extractive. Many of the systems we operate in across the West are rooted in inequality, racism, and exclusion.
Before recruitment, I spent years working in non-profits with a double bottom line. Measuring social impact alongside financial outcomes shaped how I think about business.
One of our goals for 2026 is to apply for B-Corp certification. It’s imperfect, but it’s one of the clearest accountability frameworks I’ve found that reflects our values of Integrity, Courage, and Social Impact.
I’m also very aware that many recruitment companies take the environmental route with B-Corp. For our industry, that often feels like a vanity exercise. Recruitment doesn’t consume many natural resources (although with AI that is changing). Social impact is where our responsibility actually lies. Fair pay, equity, inclusion, ethical hiring practices, and how power is distributed. That’s the route we intend to take.
Yes, I post jobs, and I’m intentional about how
I still haven’t found the perfect balance between posting from my own account and posting from Good Maven. I have more reach because I’ve been doing this for over 20 years. At the same time, my goal is to build Good Maven into something much bigger than me.
We have an exceptional team. Tyra Alexander, Kelly Norris, our freelance recruitment partners. Their impact goes far beyond my own.
I started posting detailed job posts years ago because most job descriptions tell people almost nothing about what they’ll actually be doing. We aim to share real context. The problems to solve, the product, the team, the location, and compensation when we’re allowed to. Where possible, we name the client.
We do this through exclusive, retained agreements with our company clients, so we can elevate our their brands without undermining candidates or our own work. Transparency in hiring matters to us. It’s part of our commitment to Excellence and Integrity.
Radical transparency is something we’re actively experimenting with
Last year, we did something I’ve never seen another recruitment company do. We published real recruitment conversations.
So much of hiring happens behind closed doors. How to advocate for yourself. How to talk about compensation. How to show your work. What questions actually land.
This is delicate work. People’s careers are personal. We only do this with individuals who are in the right moment of their lives and genuinely want to share. This is just the beginning, and we’ll continue carefully, thoughtfully.
Testimonials matter because people deserve to know what it’s really like
Recruitment is often transactional. Spray and pray outreach. Ghosting. Little follow-through. Many recruiters are paid low base salaries and pushed to close at all costs.
We’ve chosen a different model. We pay higher base salaries than industry average. We account for the time and skill required to do hard things well. We invest in relationships, not just outcomes.
The same is true for coaching. Our work is bespoke. No cookie-cutter programmes. No assigning you to a random coach. We’re not “pure coaching” in the abstract sense either. We combine coaching with mentoring, sharing thousands of hours of experience building teams, practices, and careers from scratch.
Designers are often brilliant at shaping other people’s narratives and struggle to step back and articulate their own. We help with that. Carefully. Respectfully. And with depth.
We’re not the cheapest, but people rarely need many sessions to make meaningful progress. That’s something I’m deeply proud of. But don’t take my word for it, read what others say about us.
We’re exploring employee ownership as a long-term path
Another non-conformist choice. Employee Ownership Trusts are sometimes used purely as tax-efficient exit strategies. They can also be a genuine way to distribute power and build long-term sustainability, as companies like Riverford and John Lewis have shown.
Recruitment has a high burnout rate. Unrealistic targets, constant pressure, and misaligned incentives take their toll. From the beginning, I wanted Good Maven to be different. Living wage, benefits, support, excellent tools, and a culture that takes care of its people.
In the short term, that may look like EMI shares. In the long term, EoT is a serious option. I’m excited to be exploring this with our fractional CFO, Tam and with Zoë, who’s supporting us on operations, marketing, and our B-Corp journey.
So, that’s a bit of how the veggie sausage gets made
If you’ve made it this far, thank you.
I’m curious what would actually be useful to you this year. Topics you’d like me to write about. Things you’d like more transparency on. Questions about hiring, coaching, leadership, or career transitions that feel hard to ask publicly.
This may be my work, but it’s also a community, and I’m committed to leading with care.
References
*In many US states, employment is ‘at-will,’ meaning people can lose their job without notice or cause, often alongside their health insurance. In contrast, most UK and EU countries mandate notice periods, redundancy consultation, and statutory protections. Career risk is not evenly distributed, and pretending otherwise distorts advice.
**Large-scale labour research consistently shows that while automation reshapes roles, skills redeployment and job transformation outpace job destruction when organisations invest in people. Fear-based messaging sells urgency; skills-based investment builds durable careers.
***Research on social capital shows that access to opportunity depends less on the number of connections and more on trust, relevance, and reciprocity. Large networks are not inherently more impactful networks.
