Recruiting Brainfood for the week ahead - Issue #296

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One of the most interesting (and de-motivating!) features of remote working is this sense of fatigue in doing too many video meetings. All of us have experienced this, so very useful of WebEx to conduct some research on why this happens and how we can adjust our behaviour to mitigate against it. Accessible and necessary reading folks.

New term for us to learn: ‘workforce pixelation’. Visualise an image getting pixelated and the analogy immediately makes sense - work is being disaggregated into tasks, and increasingly, these tasks may be done by different people across functions, and even across employer boundaries. It certainly does increase organisational agility, but it might also disintegrate that organisation. Easy read - have a go here

Are you on TikTok yet? Don’t be shy, oldies are welcome on it too 🤣. It’s the most popular mobile app and recently overtook even Youtube for minutes watched, it’s way past time for us to learn about how it works and get involved in some content marketing there. Hootsuite as ever, with the data and insight.

The collapse in the value of commercial real estate - and the follow on collapse of residential real estate that places workers closers to the office - is something political leaders are keen to avoid. Some mathematical modelling from Colombia University suggests 32.5% decline in value in commercial real estate in New York and a permanent reduction of rental income from commercial leases. Not an easy read, but one bookmark in case you need ammo for those conversations on remote vs on-premise.

Companion piece to the above article, a post from StackOverflow describing the flight of tech workers from traditional metropolitan centres to so called 2nd tier cities, a movement confirmed by LinkedIn’s Workforce Insights post this week. Optimistic notes on the redevelopment of the small city - again, something to consider if your business is thinking of hiring to location.

The much maligned Inmail - I think it is coming too late from LinkedIn to see this type of data and insight, as the Inmail brand has already been damaged by years of misuse. Some interesting data nonetheless on which types of candidates are likely to respond to your message. H/T to brainfooder Simon McSorley for the share in the fb group

Corporate boards must have at least 40% seats occupied by women in 2026 - European Commission confirms political alignment between all 27 member states in last week’s ruling on gender equity. Press release contains the detail and is surprisingly readable.

I suspect this is going to be most popular post in this week’s newsletter - essentially, how to hire when you’re skint. Quality writing on recruitment, again coming from a non-specialist in the field, in this case, No4 hire at HubSpot, who therefore ended up doing a ton of hiring as that company grew. Essential reading folks. H/T to brainfooder Petar Vujosevic for the share.

IBM fired all of its Russian employees last week. The geopolitical risk of a ‘remote anywhere’ policy - or even any multi-national policy - has been laid bare in the ongoing catastrophe that is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This is the official update post, a sobering read.

Interesting post of the responsibilities of onboarding from the perspective of the new hire. I love the commitment to proper mindset, 100-day plan, and the sense of ownership required to make it work. This goes countervailing to most of the material we read about candidate & employee experience, but I think a necessary balance when we might have gone too far into the concierge. How this might us? Have a look at the moments that mattered for OP in this post, and see if you can make sure they have the opportunity to happen in your company’s onboarding process.

Interesting short post on the significance of confirmative outliers in validating our preconceptions. We want to believe what we believe, are sensitive to potential sources of validation and take singular examples as representative of the whole. More evidence, if you needed any, that we need more robots making decisions, not less.

What drives pay inequity? Turns out mega firms have a disproportionate impact given that they hire a lot of people, in increasingly high paying jobs, which skew towards men (i.e big tech, paying big bucks, to software engineers). Fascinating post, which goes one level further down on what drives pay distribution. Must read folks.

As we are on the subject of pay, one of the largest 4 day week experiments is happening in the UK right now - 70 employers, 1000’s of employees are shifting to a 4 day week on full pay. This doesn’t appear to be compressed hours, so its a true reduction of work time. Love to hear from people who are involved in this - get in touch if you are! H/T to brainfooder Caroline Hunter for the share.

Fascinating post on the limitations of global employer brand against entrenched local competitors. TSMC - the preeminent fab for semi-conductor chips - is encountering hiring challenges in it’s new site in Arizona. Reminds me a great deal of the Wisconsin / Foxconn challenge from the Trump era. Building EB, is hard.

The problem we have with ‘good work’ is that a) what constitutes it is different for different people and b) plans to get there are too often predicated on an industrialised era idea of social justice. Some useful ideas in this CTA from World Economic Forum but could do with an update on those two points.

It’s Dr. Charles Handler, with a great overview of the ‘state of assessment tech’. Brainfooders John Sumser and Jeanne Achille as the interviewers, so you get what you expect - deep dive, super smart and occasionally contested dialogue. Have a listen here

Two legit heavyweights have the expected enlightened conversation on the future of work, and of the importance of managers. Only 5000 views on this 30 minute conversation, certainly deserves more. Super relevant to everyone here.

Do you work across different time zones? How best do you do this? My own view is that one of the most challenging aspects of remote is managing time zone - even when is overlap, we are often in different times of the day and therefore in different moods….