The job posting that caught us
We applied to a posting that was really a lead funnel, then ran the same play for Common Ground.
My team and I applied to a LinkedIn job posting that looked ordinary, from a company called Capital To Keys. It was really a lead-generation funnel. The poster converted our application into a pitch call, then asked us to send him referrals. Sophisticated operators fell for the posting, and we were among them.
I did not dismiss it as a nuisance. I chose to run the identical play for Common Ground, using job postings as an inbound engine that recruits commission-only referral partners for CG, Kanopi, LÏEF and HighTide.
Falling for it served as proof of concept and not as an embarrassment. A tactic that works on people who study this professionally would work as a genuine acquisition channel, and could be run honestly, with true commission disclosure and no bait and switch.
We took the posting apart to see how it was built: a title framed as a channel, a body that leads with the business, honest commission disclosure, and an application that works as a relationship map. From that we built four postings in parallel, one each for CG, Kanopi and LÏEF plus a gated HighTide lane, all backed by tracking and a referral agreement.
When someone outmaneuvers you cleanly, study the move and skip the resentment. Being played is exactly why we took on the tactic under our own terms, without treating the whole channel as beneath us.
Story details
| Project | Kanopi |
|---|---|
| Type | Pivot |
| Year | 2026-07 |
| Firm telling | on the Common Ground wiki |