Asking the awkward question: Inside Getahead’s breakout social strategy 

“What do you do and how much do you make?”

It’s the question everyone wants answered, but no one’s supposed to ask. By building a content strategy around that single, taboo-testing line, Brisbane-based jobs app Getahead has turned salary transparency into a powerful engine for attention, engagement and growth.

At the centre of it all is CEO Sam McNamara. Frustrated by how opaque and clunky job searching had become, McNamara set out to build Getahead differently. Taking inspiration from Tinder, users swipe left or right through candidate profiles and job listings, with the app playing matchmaker for candidates and companies. Roles can be filtered by work type, flexibility and pay.

Getahead’s intuitive interface has plenty of built-in appeal, but its emphasis on salary transparency is what really sets it apart, with employers required to include salary expectations when advertising jobs on the platform. McNamara recognised an opportunity to extend that same principle beyond the product itself, folding it into Getahead’s content through brief street interviews shared on TikTok.

By hitting the streets and asking everyday Australians to talk openly about their work and pay, the brand has built a loyal social following. The format is simple, repeatable and deliberately rough around the edges, and in just a few years, it’s helped Getahead amass hundreds of thousands of followers and millions of engagements.

Ahead of his session at Content Summit Australia 2026, McNamara sat down with us to unpack why his shortform street content works, and how those views translate into real business value.

Content Summit Australia (CSA): So, Sam… what do you do and how much do you make? 

Sam McNamara (SM): I own a jobs app called Getahead. We’re a jobs matching app predominantly focused on Gen Z and millennials. Swipe, match, chat, get hired – it’s a very fast and fun way to find a job. As for what I make? I’ll let you head to the channel and find that interview for yourself…

CSA: The jobs market has traditionally been pretty dry, in terms of marketing, but you guys have been shaking things up.  

SM: Yeah, I think marketing for the jobs market sucks. It’s boring. Nobody wants to talk about jobs, and nobody wants to go home after work and swipe through content about jobs, either. So it’s been a fun industry to disrupt, and it’s been fun to learn what works and what doesn’t work. I love it, and I think there’s a lot more room for disruption. 

CSA: Getahead’s videos all share the same basic format, but it never gets old. People keep coming back and engaging with the content. Has that surprised you?

SM: No. I think it’s about being proactive and reactive to what’s working and not working. We have definitely had challenges. Some months we’ll have hundreds of millions of views and other months we’ll have less, but it’s about being quick on your feet. 

A lot of people spend big money on polished, perfectly planned content. But you can go out, film thirty pieces of rough shortform content, get more engagement, drive more conversions, and do it for a tenth of the cost. To me, that just makes sense. It’s a no-brainer.

CSA: How did you land on the ‘what do you do and how much do you make’ format? Whose idea was that and why do you think it’s been so successful?

SM: Getahead started with an idea to match people based on what they’re looking for in a job. It was actually a website, initially. We had a small room of users, and we said to them, ‘what do you want to know?’ Salary transparency was a big thing for our users. They wanted to know what they could make in different jobs, which made a lot of sense, so we made it compulsory on the app. 

So we thought it’d be an engaging form of content to go out there, meet people, ask them what careers they’re in and if it’s a career that they recommended. That pivoted into, ‘how much do you make in that career and how do you get there?’

I think a lot of students and school-leavers just follow what their parents or their friends’ parents do for a living, myself included. It’s just one of those things, unless you know what else is out there, what they’re getting paid and how to get there.

So that’s what we did. We just went out there and thought we’d walk up to people. And it has that shock factor as well, which is good for engagement. We were surprised that so many people were willing to share. It’s been a really good response.

CSA: I wanted to touch on that. Obviously, the content has performed well. Why do you think people have been so open and willing to share their salary with you when they’ve got a camera shoved in their face?

SM: I honestly think it is to help other people pick career paths. When people love their job and their industry, they do want to share that, especially with the younger generation. And that’s really who we’re targeting. 

We’re trying to show people leaving school or looking for a career change that, hey, this random job that you’ve never heard of is paying really well, and it’s relatively straightforward to get into that field. 

CSA: Are there any rules or guidelines about who you approach in the street, or the type of people you want to talk to?

SM: Not really. Anyone who either makes eye contact with us or runs the other way is fair game! We’ll either chase them or have a conversation. We speak to hundreds of people every time we go out. You can generally pick who’s going to be a fun, interesting, ‘out there’ interview, but it’s really a numbers game for us. We’ll talk to anyone and everyone, and you’d be surprised at some of the stories people have that you really wouldn’t expect.

CSA: So part of it is finding diverse people with diverse backgrounds and diverse stories to tell?

SM: Absolutely. If we speak to 100 people, 50 of them will tell you where to go, and the other 50 will tell you about their career. And 10 of those interviews will be really, really interesting. It’s just a numbers game.

CSA: With so many eyeballs on your brand across social media, how do you go about actually converting those views into app downloads and users?

SM: A big thing for me is, we are not a business that’s trying to make money out of our content. We are literally trying to share knowledge and show all the different career paths that are out there. That’s a core focus within our company. We are a jobs app trying to help people get ahead in their careers. 

Content, for us, is an extension of that. We’re showing people different career paths, whether that’s through Getahead or other platforms. A lot of those jobs aren’t relevant to our audience either, but at the end of the day we’re just out there to learn and share the knowledge. 

We tell everyone we meet about Getahead. It works really, really well; I’m stunned by the conversion rate for views to downloads. Then it’s our job on the tech front to get those downloads into jobs. I’ll dive into this more at CSA, but for every couple of thousand views, we’ll get an app user. And a number of those users will go through to a successful position.

CSA: Users are only 50 per cent of the platform – you need brands and organisations to post their jobs as well. Do businesses and brands want to get around Getahead? Are your styles compatible?

SM: That’s a really good question. When we started, I thought exactly that: Job seekers are going to love the young, fun street content that’s a bit off-cuff, but companies might frown upon it. And then we had brands like The Star casino and Domino’s, some really reputable organisations, reach out because of content they’d seen on TikTok.

So we quickly shut down that doubt and went all in on content. It converts – my mum, my dad, my neighbours, their neighbours, everybody is on social media. Even platforms like TikTok; a lot of their faster growing demographics are slightly older at the moment as well, which is interesting. It converts both job seekers and companies for us. The US market is interesting, too.

CSA: So you’re not just an Australian-based company? 

SM: No. We’ve filmed in every city in Australia bar Perth at this point – Perth, we’re coming up!  We’ve done LA, we’ve done Vegas. That was a really interesting experience. 

Going to different countries and different areas of the country has been fascinating, too, just to see the responses from different people and demographics. I was shocked that the older generations were so willing to share their stories with us, and we’ve met some really interesting people. 

We filmed Santa Claus last week, which was one of the coolest interviews I’ve done. There was a guy walking down the beach at Burleigh – he would have been mid-70s, I reckon, and he was a Santa Claus actor! Walking up to people and not having a clue what they’ll come out with is so much fun. I love it.

CSA: What do you hope people take away from your session at CSA 2026? 

SM: Well, I’d love to share our learnings. We’ve got a hell of a lot of data from years of consistently posting content. I’m a firm believer in shortform and street content. It’s cheap to produce, it’s reliable, it’s consistent, and it works. I think it’s something everyone should be doing and it shocks me that the industry isn’t taking advantage of the opportunity. I’m keen to share what we’ve learned there and what other people can do, too.

Sam McNamara will share his learnings from years of shortform content experimentation at Content Summit Australia 2026.

Across two days and three dedicated content tracks at Brisbane Powerhouse, Content Summit Australia brings together marketers, strategists and creatives to talk all things content, from brand storytelling and strategy to social, video, design and audience engagement.

Early bird tickets are on sale now until 31 January 2026, or sooner if they sell out. Secure your spot now.