How Hiring Reminded Me That Connection Matters
Written by: Nat Lanyon
In marketing — especially in healthcare — we often focus on what we want people to know. But the real impact happens when we focus on what we want people to feel.
We’ve been recruiting recently, and with that comes a serious investment of time in interviews. If you’ve hired in the last few years, you’ll know the feeling: after hours reviewing CVs and sitting in interviews, many candidates are as strong — or not — as the next. Differentiation becomes tricky. Similar skills. Similar experience. Similar interview answers.
That’s why I’ve stopped interviewing Account Managers or Account Directors and started interviewing people. I want to understand who they are under the veneer of polished interview answers.
How do they spend their free time? What gets them fired up — good and bad? And what matters most to them?
By prioritising connection over qualifications, it’s made the recruitment process a lot easier. But it also highlighted something even more useful: We are more successful when we make people feel than when we make people know.
In my years working in healthcare comms and PR, I’ve seen first-hand how powerful emotion is in shaping human behaviour. The desperation of a parent praying for a cure, to the relief of a family taking their loved one home from A&E to the joy of the first baby born on Christmas Day each year. These emotional moments’ drive decisions, actions, and, ultimately, change.
When analysing CVs or reviewing interview notes, it wasn’t the evidence of skills and experience that was the driving force in decisions; it was how that person had made us feel. And it made me think about the materials we produce in healthcare marketing.
So often, the brief is for the material to simply tell our audience information we want them to know. Data on efficacy and safety. Eligibility criteria. Referral pathways. All important, all necessary. But will a healthcare professional have that top of mind when deciding between you and your competitors? Like the candidates I’ve been interviewing, differentiation becomes a lot harder if the connection is based on facts alone.
HCPs are humans too; we need to remember that. And connections they build on emotion — trust, resonance, understanding — don’t just influence one-off decisions, in the moment. they shape the behaviours they will repeat.
Think about yourself for a minute. How long have you been going to the same hairdresser? Probably years. Chances are, you didn’t choose them because they were objectively the best hairdresser in town. You chose them because something clicked. You felt comfortable. You trusted them. And once that trust was established, it shaped your future behaviour. You kept going back. Year after year. Even when another salon opened nearby, offered a discount, or promised something new, chances are you stuck with the person you trusted. And if you’re anything like me, they now know far too many of your secrets 🤪.
I’m not suggesting your next piece of marketing material becomes a diary entry. But I am suggesting that if we focus on helping people feel something — whether that’s confidence, urgency, hope, or simply understanding — our impact will be far greater.
Information informs. Emotion transforms. Great content does both — and it’s the emotion that makes it unforgettable.
Want more thinking like this?
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