Recruiting has spent decades trying to move people through a funnel.
Awareness.
Interest.
Consideration.
Application.
Interview.
Offer.
Hire.
It looks wonderfully orderly on a PowerPoint slide.
People are not orderly.
They don't move neatly from awareness to application.
They discover companies when they're not looking.
They hear about jobs from friends.
They follow employees.
They watch creators.
They see something in their feed.
They forget about it.
Six months later, they remember it.
They have a life event.
Their priorities change.
And suddenly, they're interested.
The funnel assumes intent comes first.
In reality, intent is often the result of discovery.
That's why recruiting needs a new model.
Think about the companies you know well.
You may not work there.
You may never have applied.
You may not even be interested in working there right now.
But you know them.
You've seen their people.
You've heard stories.
You know what they make.
You have some idea of what it's like to work there.
You have an opinion.
Maybe positive.
Maybe negative.
Maybe somewhere in between.
You're in their orbit.
And that matters.
Because when your circumstances change, the companies already in your orbit have a massive advantage over the ones you've never encountered.
You don't have to discover them.
You already know them.
Traditional recruiting waits for a signal.
Someone searches for a job.
Someone visits the careers site.
Someone clicks a posting.
Someone submits an application.
Then the company starts working on the relationship.
But by that point, the competition is enormous.
Everyone is trying to reach the same people at exactly the same moment.
And increasingly, some of the people you want aren't sending that signal at all.
They may be employed.
They may be freelancing.
They may have stepped away from work.
They may be burned out.
They may simply be happy where they are.
They aren't candidates.
Not yet.
But that doesn't mean they're irrelevant.
They're future candidates.
Future customers.
Future advocates.
Future employees.
And the companies they encounter today may be the companies they consider tomorrow.
This is where the new recruiting model gets interesting.
People don't need to see your company once.
They need to encounter you enough times, and in enough credible ways, that you become familiar.
Maybe they see an employee post.
Then a creator.
Then a story about an interesting project.
Then a friend mentions working there.
Then they see a job six months later.
Each interaction adds another layer.
Discovery creates familiarity.
Familiarity creates trust.
Trust creates consideration.
And consideration eventually creates action.
The application is not the beginning of the relationship.
It's the consequence of one.
The orbit isn't built by the corporate careers page alone.
It's built by people.
Employees.
Creators.
Recruiters.
Candidates.
Former employees.
Industry voices.
Communities.
Friends.
Each person brings their own network.
Their own credibility.
Their own perspective.
Their own audience.
And their own orbit.
That's why the emergence of employee influencer programs at companies like Ford and Visa is such a meaningful signal.
These companies are recognizing that their people can help expand the company's orbit.
Not simply by repeating corporate messaging.
But by creating authentic paths for other people to discover the company.
People create connections that corporate channels can't.
There is another force shaping this model:
Algorithms.
You can have the best employer brand in the world.
But if nobody discovers it, it doesn't matter.
Algorithms determine which employee story appears in someone's feed.
Which creator gets recommended.
Which video gets watched.
Which search result gets clicked.
Which conversation gets amplified.
Increasingly, algorithms are becoming the invisible layer between companies and audiences.
That means recruiting isn't just competing for candidates.
It's competing for discovery.
And people are exceptionally powerful engines of discovery.
They bring content into networks that a company could never reach on its own.
The funnel asks:
"How do we convert this candidate?"
The orbit asks:
"How do we stay relevant to this person?"
That's a fundamentally different strategy.
It changes what you measure.
Instead of only looking at applications, you start looking at:
Reach.
Discovery.
Engagement.
Trust.
Repeated exposure.
Network growth.
Content sharing.
Audience overlap.
And eventually, conversion.
The application still matters.
The hire still matters.
But they're no longer the entire story.
Because the relationship may have been developing for months—or years—before someone ever clicked "Apply."
Imagine two companies competing for the same person.
Company A meets them for the first time when the recruiter sends an InMail.
Company B has been appearing in their world for the last year.
They've seen employees talk about working there.
They've watched creators discuss the company's work.
They've heard positive stories from people they trust.
They recognize the company.
They have a mental picture of what working there might be like.
When the right opportunity appears, which company has the advantage?
The one with gravitational pull.
That's the power of the orbit.
The funnel isn't dead.
It's just no longer enough.
There will always be applications.
There will always be sourcing.
There will always be recruiters.
There will always be job postings.
But those things are increasingly the activation layer of recruiting—not the entire strategy.
The bigger opportunity is everything that happens before someone becomes a candidate.
The stories.
The people.
The creators.
The conversations.
The discoveries.
The repeated encounters.
The trust.
The relationships.
The orbit.
The future of recruiting isn't about waiting for people to enter your funnel.
It's about building enough gravitational pull that they keep coming back into your world.
Because when people are ready to move, you don't want to be a company they have to discover.
You want to be a company they already know.