Recruiting Brainfood for the week ahead - Issue #312

This week’s brainfood is supported by our buddies, Join Talent

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It’s the people you know less well that are more likely to be valuable to you in career optimisation. Why? Because you are less likely to share the same contacts. Extraordinary experiment from LinkedIn, read all about it here H/T to brainfooder Pedro Barahona for the share in the fb group.

PS: I get the ethical argument but I kind of agree with Bas on this one 🤣

Incredible story from a software engineer who discovered someone was paying other engineers to pretend to him in order to convert job interviews, for which the original trickster would then presumably deliver the work. It’s complicated example of candidate fraud with unclear motivation (they guy just didn’t like interviews?), but a phenomena brought into sharper focus by the remote work revolution. Btw I’m are doing a special on hiring fraud with our buddies FloCareer next month - How To Detect Candidate Fraud in Remote Interviews - recommend everyone to join here

H/T to brainfooder Martyn Redstone for the share in the fb group

One person’s troubles is another person’s opportunity. 81,000 people have been laid off from tech startup since the start of 2022, so a list of resources on where to find them might be useful. H/T to brainfooder Jan Tegze for the share in the fb group.

Star Wars might’ve been the first franchise to use deep fakes of real actors when they used CGI of the late Carrie Fisher to complete Princess Leia’s story arc. Now with we see another movie icon theoretically live forever, with James Earl Jones unmistakable voice now to be generated by AI whilst the actor himself goes into well deserved retirement. Another example? Bruce Willis becomes the first celebrity to sell rights to a deepfake firm, who will presumably ensure the immortality of John McClane. We might already seen the last of the great movie stars, as producers might increasingly prefer to preserve existing ones ad infinitum or even digitally resurrect those who are long gone. It is a fascinating future of work…

NB: Willis has now denied the report

Fascinating piece of research from Bangladesh, where the email communications from HR practitioners of at large non-governmental organisation were analysed for email frequency, new recipient volume and whether emails had attachments. Key insights? Hybrid work produced greatest variance in the number of email recipients, lending credence to the theory that workers become siloed in remote. Summary is great, and you can also download the full the paper here

You know what? I think management is hard and getting harder, with the elevated employee expectations, increased emotional labour and new skills required for management remote or hybrid teams. FirstRound with a no nonsense this-is-how-you-do-it how to. Must read for recruitment leaders

Hilarious short collection pro-am job adverts from parents looking for help with Timmy and Tasmin. Unrealistic hiring manager expectations hit the domestic realm 🤣

A community member asked me about how it felt working as creator (more of curator, but you know what I mean..), and thought that perhaps more people might like to know how the economics of this type of work style works. Very decent twitter thread on this, which might dispel some myths as who makes money and what your chances are of being one of those people.

I’ve been doing a cool compensation focused webinar series with our friends at Figures, and this levelling framework was shared in the last event. Its Figures own internal notion page, freely available for us by anyone else. Useful, especially if you have not yet levelled your business yet….

Very interesting research. Contextualises the old working class dictum of people needing to get ‘a proper job’.

Think about this extrapolated to the entire Global South and you can see that perhaps the early warnings that the remote work revolution will turn out to be stepping stone to the permanent offshoring of highly skilled knowledge work. Great reading - as employers, remote workers and recruiters, we should be able to see it from all three sides.

Le dollar bean, unalive, and seggs - new words are being coined on the social web as users seek to avoid censors by inventing new ways of saying what we mean. An example of how constraint produces innovation. Maybe useful for those who want to get better at engaging with Gen Z, the youth always being at the forefront of linguistic development.

Love this blog, primarily because it is always breaking the rules which we in recruiting / HR have to abide by 🤣. File this under: ‘unusable advice’ and yet it is impossible to think that the author might just be onto something….

The emergence of informal and parallel systems of labour organisation has been a theme of gig working, as the workers seek to maximise ROI by cooperating against the algorithm. Great story coming out of Indonesia where Gojek delivery riders take centre stage. H/T to brainfooder Bas van de Haterd for the share.

Hot on the heels of a wonderful Brainfood Live on Where Are The Missing Workers?, this post describes the challenges of the service sector economy in attracting workers. Labour force reallocation may be overblown, but for some industries it is undoubtedly true. Get ready for robot service / self service if you want to eat out.

REC has been a superb commentator on the state of the UK economy, using its lens as representative of staffing agencies to better understand the implications of government policy. Must watch for UK brainfooders.

Well this is fascinating scenario - senior exec on the brink of burn out quits 7 figure salary to become an Amazon warehouse worker. Sounds a little like text-to-speech, but its listenable and if true, opens up a window on how Amazon conducts its warehouse recruitment. Have a listen.

So this might be the best thing I’ve watched on multi-generational workforce. Dr Eliza Filby has a unique facility for communication, handling intellectual topics with concision whilst always making sure to connect it with concrete reality. This is superb occupational anthropology. Must watch.