This week’s brainfood is sponsored by our buddies at Guide

How do you win top talent in 2023? Earn their TRUST.

Based on thousands of candidate surveys, we found that a winning candidate experience ranks high on the following 5 pillars (that spell TRUST, get it?): 

• Transparency: Does the candidate feel your organization has been sufficiently transparent? 

• Reciprocity: Does the candidate feel an equal sense of give-and-take? 

• Unity: Does the candidate feel they’ve been treated fairly and inclusively? 

• Speed: Does the candidate feel the pace of progress has been ideal?

• Truthfulness: Does the candidate feel your organization has been truthful with all information shared?

Check out Guide’s Candidate TRUST Framework for best practices to implement today and a step-by-step approach to measure your Candidate Trust Score.

SPONSORS

Friends,

It was tough to hear the news last week that a good friend had to close his business. Great company, renowned culture, great service but could not stay afloat having been buffeted by the chaotic swings in the global economy over the past 3 years. Another friend had to exit in a different way, after having also ran afoul of macro economic conditions, which can turn formerly reasonable risks into bad gambles and perhaps, worse decisions. Entrepreneurship is very tough because you have skin in the game, and sometimes, you’re going to lose it.

We’re going to talk more about entrepreneurship on Brainfood Discord server - once I’m back on euro timezone I will set up a time. All subscribers are welcome to join it here

In the meantime, Brainfood Jobs and Brainfood Talent Community are picking up. I suppose this must mean some companies are starting to move forward with growth plans, whilst others are still cutting back. Needless to say, if you are an employer growing and hiring for recruiters, apply for a company account here and use the code: BTCFREE to both post recruiter / HR jobs for free, and also connect with the 160+ community members who are ready to interview right now. If you’re looking for work, apply here

Finally, thanks to all of you who have promoted the brainfood to your network - it’s the only way we can keep this show on the road. Cheers to Kevin Green, Dave Hazlehurst, Dorothy Dalton, Tony Pitchford, Eugène van den Hemel, Kevin Lowe, Joey NK Koksal, Gorana Ferizovic, Roy Baladi, Gareth Flynn, Colin Donnery, Angela S. Diapari, Chris Eldridge and Eva Zils - scores on the Brainfood Hall of Fame updated!

Can you help? Share this newsletter with your team and network on LinkedIn. Thanks!

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What Do Brainfooders Think?

Thanks everyone who tackled last week’s poll.

The concept of transracialism - moving from one racial identity to another - might still be too new in the cultural discourse for strong ideas to have formed. This was explicitly stated by nearly half of the respondents, and the even distribution of votes across the remainder underlines the point.

I do believe we will see more instances of individuals coming out as another racial identity to that which they had previously been identified. We in TA / HR will need to find a policy position on it - and, as with gender, it will not be uncontested. More polls every week as we survey the sentiment of the community - scroll down below for this week’s poll.

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep195 - Recruiter Use Cases for ChatGPT, Part 3 - Ethics & Concerns!

It’s finally here folks - the final part of our series on Recruiter Use Cases for ChatGPT. This time we will illustrate the techniques, before analysing them through an ethical and legal lens. I suspect we recruiters will be amongst the first to encounter these challenges, so super important we understand the ethical critiques of ChatGPT and make informed decisions on how and when to use said techniques. I’ll be back in the UK, so back to regular time on Friday 3rd March, 2pm GMT, register here

The Brainfood

1. Introducing the ‘Problem Index’ - Which Countries Have the Worst Demographics?

What do the labour market paradox, the immigration debate, development economics and workers fiscal relationship with the state have in common? They are all manifestations of the state of demographics. As the late Hans Rosling famously demonstrated in a series of thrilling talks in the 00’s, economic development at country level is closely correlated female education, the rise of which increases the labour force participation rate and decreases the fertility rate. The problem we are encountering now is….have we created a circumstance where it is economically irrational to have children? With two income households are often now no longer enough to maintain a family in middle class lifestyle, every economically advanced country is experiencing declining birthrate, exacerbating the age dependency ratio with every year. Are robots are the answer? More immigration? Fairer society for mothers? Don’t know but we got to talk about it. H/T to brainfooder Jacob Sten Madsen for the share in the online community

SOCIETY

2. 2022 Starred Candidate Experience Benchmark Report

Outstanding report on the State of Candidate Experience from our buddies Starred (thanks Jasper!), who have made this available without a registration wall. I particularly like the contextualisation of CX into the wider economy, and especially by considering the variations in vacancy and unemployment rate in different countries and industry sectors. Must read folks.

CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE

3. Global HR Tech Report Q1 2023

H/T to brainfooder Pablo I. Lundershausen for allowing me to share this Quarterly report. Drake Star is a global investment bank with a keen interest in the HR Tech sector, and this report comprehensively breaks down the state of the HR tech market, benched against the state of the employment market. It’s an investor deck but everyone will get something from this - market maps, trends analysis and financial health of publicly listed HR tech firms. PDF here, download it

ECONOMY

4. Remote Work Is Costing Manhattan More Than $12 Billion a Year

There’s a reason why NY Mayor Eric Adams made an early call for RTO - it's costing local government billions of tax revenue from the moribund office and night economies. I suspect most of us here would strongly resist any call to return to the office, but the wider point of contraction of economic activity brought about by remote needs to be acknowledged, and it’s implications - the hollowing out of metropolitan centres, decline in innovation and the collapse of real estate value fully considered. Whether this is an opportunity to level up for the regions or a catastrophe for countries who have converted housing into de facto pensions is an open debate…

REMOTE WORKING

5. Talent Maturity Model 3.0

Some nice work from brainfooder Gareth Flynn and team at TQ Solutions. Iterating on the Talent Maturity Model on this regular cadence is super valuable for the community. Check it out here, and see how your organisation measures up. Radar chart visualisation of course a major bonus 👊

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

6. ChatGPT Has Already Decreased My Income Security, and Likely Yours Too

Universal Basic Income (UBI) has taken somewhat of a backseat in the cultural discourse in the Covid era but with Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) breaking through to the mainstream and clearly offering exponential productivity gains for knowledge workers, the concept really can’t come back soon enough, as what we gain in productivity, we lose in security. Not everyone is going to be able to reskill in the post-ChatGPT world, especially when it is not clear what the hell we are meant to reskilling towards. Great to hear from Scott Santens, one of the original evangelists for the radical rethink of H/T to brainfooder Garry Turner for the share

UBI

7. Who Gets Laid Off?

Read it and weep Recruiters - it’s us who are the most over represented category when a tech company decides to make redundancies. It makes sense folks - and despite our protestations of company shortsightedness, it would be weird for a company cutting back not to lay us off first. Data from Revelio Labs shows what the score was 9 months ago at early stages of the Big Tech Winter. Does the pattern still follow today? Waiting for the update.

CULTURE

8. February 2023 US Labor Market Update

Black History Month brings us a Radancy US Labour Market update special, with a focus on Black Americans in the workforce. Most striking statistic is income inequality by racial group - 11.3% of all Black Americans are making less than $10,000 per year. Persistent inequality remains one of the core challenges in multi-racial society and yet is always lower in the agenda of powerful than it should be. When will it change? Can it change. It surely must

D&I

9. The Best Tech Interview

Always interesting to read about recruiting from the candidates point of view. Here a developer job seeker went through an interview process where she was so impressed that she wrote about it, even though she ended up not being offered the role. Some interesting insight here for tech recruiters looking to design an assessment process that developers enjoy. Also, good nurture content to send out to tech candidates, to get their view. Have a read. H/T to brainfooder Denys Dinkevych 🇺🇦 for the share

ASSSESSMENT

10. Class and the City of London: My Decade of Research shows why Elitism is Endemic and Top Firms Don’t Really Care

Fascinating long read on something all UK folks might already know - the ‘City’ is full of social elites who ‘look and sound the part’. Not just a banker bashing piece, there is nuance here in why elitism is entrenched, despite (genuine I think) belief that talent does indeed come from every background, and its because of an approximate to the old IBM rule - nobody got fired for hiring a posh OxBridge graduate. Stark example of social class as a diversity issue.

D&I

The Podcasts

11. ChatGPT & Midjourney in Recruitment

Brainfooder Jose Kadlec takes us through an hour long screen shared tutorial on how ot use ChatGPT and MidJourney in Recruiting. This is an accessible watch and fantastic for anyone at any level of familiarity with these technologies. If you’re entirely new to it and have been resisting the inevitable so far, let this be your starter pack.

SOURCING

12. Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice and Politics

Tim Urban is the man behind one of the most remarkable artefacts of the Internet age, the amazing website Wait But Why which tells the story of human decision making in charming graphical form. He’s got a book out - What’s Our Problem - A Self Help Book for Societies, which I’m going to buy sight unseen. Here’s his interview on the Lex Fridmann podcast, sharing it having not heard it because I’m that sure it will be worth it.

SOCIETY

13. Why Leaders Should Rethink Their Decision-Making Process

What is your decision making process? It’s probably something you’ve learned over time, relying on pattern recognition, but it might not work so well at times of great risk or opportunity. Essential listening

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

End Note

Final couple days in Hong Kong before I had back to the UK on Tuesday. It’s been great to have a change of pace and chill out up in the rural north. Going to look to see if I can spend more time out here - my Granddad used to do the migratory bird routine with a 6 month oscillation between the European Summer and Asian Winter and I think I’m going to try the same. Just need to figure out what to do with pet turtle…

..anyways, RTO (return to office) - how much would it take for external job offer to tempt you back to 5 days in? New poll, vote below and comment why if it is more than 200%…

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Have a great week everybody

Hung