What Working in Government Taught Me About Writing for People Who Don’t Want to Be There

The most honest audience you’ll ever write for

When I took over the website for a devolved legislature, its recruitment section was making HR do work the content should have handled.

Each vacancy brought calls and emails asking basic questions. How do I apply? What happens after I submit? What is it actually like to work here? The answers existed somewhere, but not where applicants needed them.

That matters when someone is considering a job. They may be between roles. They may be unsure whether they belong in public service. They may have ten minutes between shifts to decide whether an application is worth starting.

They are not there because they love your organisation. They are there because they need an answer.

Public-sector services make that fact impossible to ignore. Someone applying for benefits, paying tax or looking for healthcare guidance does not owe you attention. They do not care how carefully you have developed your brand voice. They want to know what applies to them and what they need to do next.

That is the most honest audience I have written for.

No brand affinity, no patience, no room to be clever

The recruitment site had been shaped by its CMS instead of its applicants.

The system was locked down. Staff could not change page layouts, add visuals or restructure content without involving a developer. So the easiest option was to add more text to the pages that already existed.

Job listings became dense blocks of information. The application process sat on one long, impenetrable page. There was no useful content about the organisation, its people or what working there might involve.

An applicant had to assemble their own picture from scattered fragments.

That approach excluded people before they had even decided to apply. Someone already familiar with the civil service could often fill in the gaps. Someone coming from outside it had less context and more reasons to leave.

Clear content is not a cosmetic improvement. It decides who gets through the door.

A story from the inside: rebuilding a recruitment site around applicants

I started with research. I wanted to understand who was applying, who was not, and where people got stuck.

Then I mapped the journey from seeing a job advertised on social media through to submitting an application. That exposed the problem with treating the recruitment section as a collection of pages. An applicant does not experience it that way. They move from a post, to a role, to questions about eligibility, to the application form.

The old site made them jump between those steps without support.

We rebuilt the content around the journey instead. Each role had a clearer job page. Listings used headings and short sections rather than long paragraphs. Process guidance explained what would happen, in plain English, before an applicant reached the form.

We also added the content people needed to make a decision: what the organisation did, what its values meant in practice and what working there could look like. Social content became part of the route into the site, not an afterthought once the pages were published.

The CMS did not change. The content design did.

Before the rebuild, HR received multiple calls and emails for each vacancy about basic process questions. Afterwards, those queries dropped sharply. Applicants could find answers at the point they needed them.

The content was doing the work the phone used to do.

The quality of applications improved too. Candidates arrived better informed. They had a clearer sense of whether the role suited them before they committed time to an application.

That is not about making the site sound friendlier. It is about removing uncertainty before it becomes a reason to give up.

Why “clear” beat “on-brand” every time

Government work taught me to be suspicious when brand language gets in the way of a simple answer.

I am not arguing that your business should sound generic. Your voice matters. It helps the right people recognise themselves in what you say. But voice cannot carry information your reader cannot find.

If someone lands on a job page, they should not need to decode a slogan before they can see the salary, the responsibilities or how to apply. If someone wants to buy from you, they should not have to read three paragraphs about your mission before they know what you offer.

Your brand is not what you make people read before you help them.

In the recruitment project, clarity meant using headings that matched the questions applicants had. It meant explaining the stages of the process in the order they happened. It meant writing enough about the organisation for people outside its existing world to judge whether they wanted to join.

None of that made the organisation less distinctive. It made its distinction easier to understand.

I still see businesses hide their useful information behind polished language. A service page tells you it delivers “tailored solutions”, but not what is included. A contact form asks for a detailed brief, but does not say whether the business is taking on new work. An about page makes broad claims about care and quality, but gives you no example of how it works.

That is not a branding problem. It is a comprehension problem.

The test I still use: would this survive someone’s worst day?

I still use a simple test on commercial content: would this page work if the reader is stressed, tired, short on time or already doubtful?

If the answer is no, it is not finished.

For the recruitment site, that meant assuming applicants would not read every word. They needed obvious signposts. They needed to know what happened next. They needed the important information before they had invested an hour in an application.

The same test applies to your website.

Imagine a potential client has been let down by another supplier. They land on your services page looking for a reliable alternative. Can they tell, quickly, whether you solve their problem? Can they see how you work? Can they find the next step without guessing?

Or imagine someone has heard about you through a recommendation. They are interested but cautious. Does your site answer the questions they would be embarrassed to ask on a sales call?

You do not need to make every page blunt or joyless. You do need to respect the conditions in which people read it.

What this means if your reader actually has a choice

Your reader having a choice is not a reason to make content more elaborate. It is a reason to make it easier to leave with confidence.

That may sound counterintuitive. Most businesses want content to keep people on the page. I want it to help the right people make a decision.

If your content makes your offer clearer, some people will decide you are not for them. That is useful. The recruitment site worked better partly because it gave people enough information to opt out before applying for a role that did not fit.

The people who continued were more prepared.

That is the discipline I bring from public-sector work. I write for the person who does not know your internal language, does not have time to hunt for the answer and may leave if you make them work too hard.

If your content can help that person, it can help the person who chose to visit you too.