A strong LinkedIn hiring post from a founder has a photo or video, runs past 1,000 characters, names the role, describes the person you want and sounds like you wrote it. Hiring posts with a photo get 1.72 times the engagement of comparable hiring posts without one, and the same founder's story-voice hiring posts get 2.15 times their company-voice ones, according to a Megaphone study of 180,011 LinkedIn posts by 4,485 founders and CEOs of funded startups. A hiring post that reads like a press release gets 0.90 times.
Hiring posts are 7% of everything founders publish on LinkedIn, and on average they land at exactly the founder's usual engagement, 1.00 times. That flat number hides a wide spread. Some hiring posts read like the job description pasted into the feed. Others read like the founder explaining why they need help and who they hope shows up, and those do far better.
We looked at 10,815 founder hiring posts and compared the strong ones with the weak ones, holding format, length and everything else constant. This piece walks through what made the difference, what to write in the first line, who ends up seeing the post, and a template you can adapt this week.
If you want a quick read on your own account first, check your profile against the founder benchmarks. It takes about a minute.
What we found
- Founder voice matters most on hiring. When the same founder posted hiring news both ways, the story version got 2.15 times the company version. That's the largest gap of any post type in the study.
- A photo is the single biggest lift. Hiring posts with a photo got 1.72 times comparable hiring posts, and with video 1.59 times.
- Describe the person and name the role. Describing who you want added 1.30 times. Naming the specific role added 1.24 times. Going past 1,000 characters added 1.33 times.
- Job-ad copy drags. A hiring post that reads like a press release got 0.90 times. Job-ad style posts make up 13% of founders' company-voice posts and get 0.95 times their usual engagement.
- Hiring posts travel through reposts. They draw 1.32 times a founder's usual reposts and 0.66 times their usual comments. In our second study, 36% of the people engaging with hiring posts were founders, executives or investors.
How do founders' hiring posts perform on LinkedIn?
About average. Hiring posts get 1.00 times a founder's usual engagement, which puts them in the middle of the pack, well behind fundraise, milestone and personal story posts.
| Post type | Share of founder posts | Engagement vs usual post |
|---|---|---|
| Fundraise | 1.5% | 2.95x |
| Company milestone | 10% | 1.55x |
| Personal story | 7% | 1.52x |
| Product launch | 11% | 1.09x |
| Hiring | 7% | 1.00x |
| Opinion / industry take | 14% | 0.92x |
Engagement here means reactions plus comments plus reposts, and each post is compared with the same founder's usual post, so big accounts don't drive the result.
The average is misleading because hiring posts come in two very different styles. One is the job ad, a title, a list of requirements and an apply link. The other is a founder explaining what's changing at the company and who they want to bring in. The rest of this article is about the gap between those two.
The way people respond to hiring posts is distinctive too:
| Response | Hiring posts vs the founder's usual |
|---|---|
| Comments | 0.66x |
| Reposts | 1.32x |
People rarely comment on a job post, but they do share it, and that's what you want, since every repost puts the role in front of a network you don't have. Of the post types we measured for reposts, only fundraise posts got more, at 1.76 times.
What should a LinkedIn hiring post say?
Say who you want, name the role, and give it enough room to explain why it matters. These are the features that separated strong hiring posts from weak ones, with the other features held constant:
| Feature of the hiring post | Effect vs comparable hiring posts |
|---|---|
| Has photo(s) | 1.72x |
| Has video | 1.59x |
| 1,000+ characters | 1.33x |
| Describes the person you want | 1.30x |
| Names the specific role | 1.24x |
| Includes a link | 1.22x |
| Asks for DMs or referrals | 1.08x |
| Reads like a press release | 0.90x |
A few things stand out.
Length helps. The instinct is to keep a hiring post short so people can scan it. Our data points the other way. Hiring posts past 1,000 characters did 1.33 times better than shorter ones. Across all founder posts, gains level off at about 1,300 characters, so a few short paragraphs is plenty to say why the role exists and who'd thrive in it.
Describing the person beats listing requirements. "Describes the person you want" means the post talks about the kind of human who'd love this job. That means what they care about and what they'd be proud of in a year. That got 1.30 times. Posts that read like a press release got 0.90 times.
Name the role. A line like "we're growing the team" leaves a reader with nothing to forward, while "we're hiring our first designer" makes them think of someone specific. Posts that named the specific role got 1.24 times.
Asking for referrals helps a little. Posts that asked for DMs or referrals got 1.08 times. It's a small lift, and I'd still include the ask, because it tells people exactly what to do if they know someone.
Two other details from the wider study apply here. Hiring posts that mention customer counts ("we now serve 400 customers") got 1.62 times, and across hiring posts, mostly "I" did 1.15 times better than mostly "we".
What should you say instead of "We're hiring"?
Open with why you're hiring now, in your own words. When the same founder wrote hiring posts both ways, the story-voice version beat the company-voice version by 2.15 times.
The data on opening lines comes from all founder posts, so treat it as a general guide for hiring posts. Openers that promote something tend to halve engagement:
| Opening phrase (all founder posts) | Engagement vs usual post |
|---|---|
| "Great opportunity" | 0.47x |
| "Learn more" | 0.51x |
| "Join us" | 0.66x |
"Join us" and "Great opportunity" are easy ways to start a hiring post. They tell the reader an ad is coming before they've read a word about the job.
What works better is a line that carries the news. Openings that announce something real did well across the dataset, like "Today we" at 2.40 times and "Big news" at 2.05 times. The wording barely matters as long as there's real news behind it.
For a hiring post, the news is usually one of these:
- A milestone that created the role. You just crossed a customer number or shipped a product, and now you need help.
- A first. Your first engineer, first salesperson, first hire outside the founding team. First hire or first customer posts got 1.55 times a founder's usual engagement, and only 0.2% of founder posts are about one.
- A moment that shows the gap. The week you did the job yourself and realized you couldn't keep doing it.
Any of those beats "We're hiring a Senior Backend Engineer" as a first line, and you can name the role in the next sentence.
Should a hiring post be in the founder's voice or the company's?
The founder's voice, by a wide margin. We compared each founder's story-voice posts with that same founder's company-voice posts of the same type:
| Post type | Story voice vs company voice, same founder | Founders |
|---|---|---|
| Hiring | 2.15x | 105 |
| Milestone | 2.06x | 522 |
| Event / speaking | 1.97x | 530 |
| Team | 1.86x | 214 |
| Product launch | 1.62x | 441 |
| Customer win | 1.23x | 194 |
| Fundraise | 1.00x | 36 |
Hiring tops the table. A raise announcement does fine in any voice (see how to announce funding on LinkedIn), but a hiring post written as company copy gets less than half the engagement of the same founder telling it as a story (the story version gets 2.15 times).
The hiring row rests on 105 founders who posted hiring news both ways, so the exact multiple will move as the study grows. Every other row except fundraise points the same way.
You don't have to rewrite the whole post as a story to get some of this back. When founders added one line of their own view or feeling to an otherwise company-voice post, hiring posts got 1.26 times, against 0.86 times without it. One sentence like "I've wanted to make this hire since the day we started" is enough.
When I write founder posts at Megaphone, I start from the founder's own words, usually a voice note or answers to a few questions. For a hiring post, that means asking why the role matters before anyone opens the job description.
Do photos and video help a hiring post?
A lot. A photo was the biggest single lift in the hiring table, at 1.72 times comparable hiring posts, and video added 1.59 times.
That matches the format results across all founder posts:
| Format (all founder posts) | Engagement vs usual post |
|---|---|
| Several photos | 1.69x |
| One photo | 1.38x |
| Video | 1.21x |
| Text only | 0.84x |
| PDF carousel | 0.84x |
The best photo for a hiring post is a real one. The team, the office, the whiteboard after a planning session, the person currently doing the job alone. Our data doesn't separate real photos from designed graphics. In the accounts I work on, personal photos have done better than designed graphics, so use the camera on your phone.
If you have 30 seconds of video of you explaining the role, that's worth posting too.
Should you put the job link in a hiring post?
Yes. Hiring posts with a link got 1.22 times comparable posts without one. Across raise, hiring and launch posts, a link went with 1.19 to 1.25 times the engagement.
You'll often hear that LinkedIn buries posts with outside links. We tested that on founders and found no penalty on opinion and advice posts (1.01 times, controlled), and a lift on news posts. I cover the full test in the LinkedIn rules, tested on founders.
The same goes for the #Hiring hashtag. Hashtags made no difference to founder posts once other features were held constant, between 0.97 and 1.02 times. Add it if you like.
Who actually sees a LinkedIn hiring post?
Fewer decision makers and more potential candidates than a typical founder post. We ran a second study that collected every person who reacted to or commented on one post each from 950 founders and classified them by role from their LinkedIn headline.
On a typical founder post, about 41% of the people engaging are founders, executives or investors. On hiring posts it was 36%, the lowest of any post type.
For a hiring post that's a good sign. That leaves more of the audience outside those groups, which is where candidates and the people who know them sit.
Reposts matter here too. Hiring posts draw 1.32 times a founder's usual reposts, and within company-voice posts, job-ad style posts draw 1.22 times. People who wouldn't comment on a job post will still share it.
How does this compare with LinkedIn's own hiring advice?
LinkedIn's advice for hiring is mostly about the job posting itself, and it lines up well with what we found.
On LinkedIn's Talent Blog, Katrina Kibben, CEO of Three Ears Media, which trains recruiters to write job posts, recommends cutting clichés like "rock star", "ninja" and "top talent", talking about the soft skills you want in the first paragraph to create an "I get you" moment, and moving away from rigid copy-paste templates. Her example swaps a hospital's line about its Fortune 500 awards for one that admits nursing is hectic and says it's worth it anyway.
Our data backs that up from the feed side. Describing the person you want got 1.30 times, and reading like a press release got 0.90 times. Her advice was written for job descriptions on the job board, and the same instinct carries over to a founder's post.
LinkedIn also built a feature for this. Its #Hiring tool, documented in LinkedIn Help, lets you create or share a job post from your profile, adds a #Hiring frame to your profile photo, features you in the job's "Meet the team" section and notifies your network that you're hiring so they can share the job. To turn it on, click the Me icon, choose View profile, click Open to, select Hiring and then Add to profile.
Use both. The #Hiring share puts the job listing in front of your network. Your own post, written in your voice with a photo, gives people a reason to care about it.
A template for a strong founder hiring post
This is an illustrative template, written to include each feature that lifted hiring posts in our data. Swap every bracket for your own details, and keep it in your own words.
Illustrative template. Replace every bracket with your own details.
[Photo: the team, the workspace, or you doing the job this person will take over]
[One line of news that created the role. Example: "We just signed our [number]th customer, and I'm still the one onboarding every one of them."]
[Two or three sentences on why this role matters now, in your own words. What breaks if you don't hire, and what gets possible if you do.]
So I'm hiring our first [specific role].
[Describe the person. What they care about, how they like to work, what they'd be proud of a year from now. Skip the requirements list.]
[One line on what they'd own and who they'd work with, including you.]
[One line of how you feel about it. Example: "I've wanted to make this hire since the week we started."]
If that sounds like you, or someone you know, send me a DM or share this with them. The full role is here: [link]
Filled in, it should run past 1,000 characters. Across founder posts, the gains from length level off at about 1,300.
What I'd do before posting your next hiring post
- Start from why, before the job description. Write two sentences about why you need this person now. Use them as your opening.
- Describe a person instead of a list. Say who would love this job, and skip the list.
- Name the role in the first few lines. Give readers a title they can match to someone they know.
- Add a real photo. Show the team or the work itself, and skip the designed graphic.
- Put in the link and the ask. Link the role, then ask for DMs or referrals. Both helped.
- Turn on #Hiring as well. It notifies your network and adds the frame. Your post does the persuading.
- Post between your hires too. Hiring posts get shared, and candidates may read your other posts before they reply. The weeks between announcements build the audience that sees them, which I cover in how often founders should post on LinkedIn.
See where you stand
Paste your LinkedIn URL into the founder LinkedIn benchmark and you'll get your percentile for posting rhythm, followers, typical post engagement and engagement per 1,000 followers, against founders at your company size, plus the three changes worth making first.
For every table in the study, download the full report. It runs 15 pages on rhythm, formats, post types, stories, openings and tagging. For where founders stand overall, see the founder LinkedIn benchmarks.
How we did this
We identified 4,485 founders and CEOs of funded startups from the portfolios of venture firms and accelerators, and collected up to their last 50 LinkedIn posts (180,011 posts), their follower count and their company size on October 6, 2026.
- Every post was tagged by AI for type, opening and voice. 10,815 posts were tagged as hiring posts.
- Engagement is reactions plus comments plus reposts, on English-language posts at least 14 days old, from the 3,932 founders with at least 10 such posts (160,540 posts). LinkedIn doesn't publish impressions for other people's posts, so this study doesn't measure reach.
- "Engagement vs usual post" compares each post with the same founder's median post. The hiring feature table compares hiring posts with each other, holding the other features constant.
- The story vs company voice figures compare one founder's story posts with that same founder's company-voice posts of the same type. The hiring row is based on 105 founders.
- The audience figures come from a second study of every reactor and commenter on one random post each from 950 founders, classified by role from their LinkedIn headline. Decision makers are founders, executives (C-level, VP, Head of, Director) and investors.
- Every finding from the main study repeats in both of two random halves of the founders. The audience figures come from one sample of 950 posts. These are associations, so they show what goes with stronger hiring posts rather than proving cause.
To cite this study: "according to a Megaphone study of 180,011 LinkedIn posts by 4,485 founders and CEOs of funded startups."