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Friends,

So the big announcement this week is the return of the What Do Recruiters Want 2023 survey. I last ran the survey 2 years when we were at ‘peak recruiter’ and now need to run it again, as the world has changed for us so dramatically once more. If you have not complete already, please make time to do so today - it will take 10 minutes.

Some assurances:

1. It is 100% anonymous - email / ID data is not collected

2. Aggregate real time results will available immediately upon completion

3. Full report will be un-gated and publicly available via interactive data visualisations

It will be of value to anyone who wants to know what the sentiment is of the global recruiter community is to the job market, working modes, contract types, tech & tools and more.

Well done to those who have already completed it, and double thanks to those who have also shared it with their network, emailed it to their colleagues and pinged it to their communities - this is definitely more is merrier for the final data set.

Especial thanks to: Eugène van den Hemel, Joey NK Koksal, Dave Hazelhurst, Manjuri Sinha, Kevin Green, Megan Reif, Adam Armstrong, Mark Double, Megan Reif, Amy Schulz, Jordan Shlosberg, Belinda Kerr, Tena Lyons, Steve Jacobs, Hannah Morgan, Rob Walker, Cathy Watson, Debby Clement, Chantelle Jones, Andrea Marston, Craig Wood, Victoria Williams and David J Brammer for all the other things you’ve been doing to support the brainfood last week - scores updated on the Brainfood Hall of Fame 👊

Can you help? Share the newsletter or the survey with your mates on the Internet. Thanks!

Share Recruiting Brainfood

What Do Brainfooders Think?

It seems that we might broadly agree that AIGC will one day overtake HGC, and mainly dispute when this might occur. Some great observations made by some community members, particularly in how humans will interact with AIGC - who will read it, will we read it in the same way?

Lots to ponder on this, something which all content producers need to consider, including the writer of this newsletter. My position is pretty resolved though - I’m going to bet on humanity, as I think we will end up treasuring human content as a quirky artisan practice, maybe even think about it as a premium. Here’s hoping 🤣

Brainfood Live On Air Ep206 - Measuring the Impact of Employer Branding

Employer branding is one of those concepts where we all accept that it matters, but always have trouble of proving it. How exactly do we know that EB effort A, leads to increase quality of hire B? I don’t have any idea, so I have recruited some of the top experts from the community to help us find it out. We’re on Friday 19th May, 2pm BST - register here

1. LinkedIn Global Talent Trends Report May 2023

Cool thing about LinkedIn is that they have their own unique economically significant metrics to give us insight on what is going on at global scale. The ‘LinkedIn Hiring Rate’ is the frequency of new employer updates in individual profiles divided by number of profiles in that country. The news is confirmation of what we already know - hiring rate is decreasing across the globe.

ECONOMY

2. Will AI Fix Work

With Microsoft about to launch 365 Copilot and disseminate AI across hundreds of millions of white collar workers, you might expect them to be pretty much pro-AI. This article outlines how Microsoft thinks AI will help - release humanity from ‘digital debt’ and provide every worker with an AI assistant to save us from burnout. It’s an optimists vision, I think one which will happen for those who make it to Elsyium of AI enablement. Anyways, Microsoft are going to do it, so this is a necessary read.

FUTURE OF WORK

3. Prompt Engineering

Great post from a former skeptic (weren’t we all?), now convert to ChatGPT. I love particularly the self reflection at the beginning of the post, and then of the excellent ideas which other recruiters can use today to get better at ‘prompt engineering’. The mindset shift from keywords input to dialogue, is the critical step. Thanks to brainfooder Alexey Geht for the share.

SOURCING

4. “Data Driven” Decisions Aren’t Innovative Decisions

A fascinating provocation which makes more sense when you think about it; if all decisions were made from ‘the data’ alone, they wouldn’t actually be decisions but rather the results of an equation. And we would have never had the moments of inspiration which lead to genuine break through innovations, especially when seeking to serve unknown user / customer / citizen needs. Important corrective to the consensus of data driven decision making.

CULTURE

5. Trends in Ethnic Discrimination in Hiring in 6 Western Countries

The defeat of Nazi Germany de-legitimised racial prejudice as a cultural value and made it an inviable political position. The winners of WWII have progressively distanced themselves from it by a continuing series of anti-discriminatory laws, leading to the emergence of today’s widely adopted and endorsed DEIB ethos. But it’s really difficult to avoid in-group / out-group bias, especially when political events and the ambient propaganda surrounding them, continue to inform the people. Needless to say, this interesting research. H/T to brainfooder Melissa Meredith for the share in the online community.

D&I

6. 2023 Social Media Trends

Hubspot’s annual report, somewhat going under the radar these days, as the discourse online on online has become dominated by generative artificial intelligence. Without social media though, even AI wouldn’t have a distribution channel, so important we review how people are using traditional social media channels. H/T to brainfooder Martyn Redstone, for the share in the online community.

CONTENT MARKETING

7. Will AI Become The New McKinsey

Superb essay from one of the superb-est essayists of our modern times, Ted Chiang. A sci-fi writer by trade, Chiang applies his imaginative prowess to true purpose of technology, and whether it is inevitable that AI will follow the trend of technology innovation being aligned to capital (help corps make more profit) or aligned to the people (help humanity thrive by reducing workload). I think we are probably all pessimists on this view, but like Chiang, we need to imagine a better possible future. It’s a brilliant essay, I recommend you read it.

SOCIETY

8. Supercharging Search with Generative AI

We can credit Open AI for really motivating Google to iterate; the biggest transformation of search (including semantic) is underway, with broad implications for sourcers, content marketers, employer branders and job posters. The announcement post is pretty clear what supercharged search will look like - users spending more time on Google’s AI generated summaries rather than going to end destination sites. You can also download the PDF of ‘Search Generative Experience’ here. We’re going to do a brainfood live on this, so if you want to know more about these changes (you do), register here. H/T to brainfooder Steven Rothberg for the share in the online community

EMPLOYER BRANDING

9. Will Universal Basic Income Save Us from AI?

While people will still have jobs, many of those jobs won’t be ones that create a lot of economic value in the way we think of value today

So said Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, in a blog post in 2021. He’s almost certainly correct, and we need to match the technological innovation lead by his company, with the social innovation that enables human beings to have success even as our collective ability to offer economic value decreases. We could simply reduce the amount of work everyone is required to do and buffer everyone’s income with a survival base line. What was radical 5 years ago maybe necessary tomorrow.

UBI

10. Necrobrands

New term for us to learn: ‘Necrobrands’ - unmanned brands for defunct businesses yet which continue to grow and propagate as a result of being in the training data for AI and therefore constantly recycled for future use. Think about how a great EB campaign might continue to crop up ad infinitum as future users remix content for their own purposes. Or a CEO scandal. Brainfood for sure…

EMPLOYER BRANDING

The Podcasts

11. How Generative AI Changes Productivity

The cost of cognition will drop precipitously with the rise of generative AI

It’s fun to listen to AI people who have knew the world prior to the Internet 1.0 - they speak of this moment in the same terms as the browser or the hyperlink. The speakers are right, individual productivity will lead organisational enablement. Great listen.

AI

12. Interviewing Recruiters: Hung Lee

This is something new for you - my chat with brainfooder Siadhal Magos, CEO of Metaview on AI in recruiting, using Metaview’s AI transcription, summarisation and question features. I hope this was a good conversation on the topic, but also I think a demonstration of the future of podcasting. Need a Metaview account to view - check it out

AI

13. The Fight to Keep Our Brains Private

Another new term for us to learn: ‘cognitive liberty’ - an update to human rights, including the right to cognitive privacy. Fascinating conversation, and whichever our feelings on the matter, we might all agree that the legislative environment is insufficient a future which is already here. Colin McNicol for the share in the online community

AR / VR

End Note

Back in the UK after a fantastic week in Athens and Amsterdam. Got to say this was one of my most enjoyable trips, entirely because of the wonderful company that I was blessed to have. It’s super encouraging to see in-person events be met with such great enthusiasm by local communities. We’re going to need this more than ever as the the world continues to morph into its next phase. Big List of Recruiter Events to Attend in 2023 is here - make sure you get yourself to some.

Got me thinking: what do you think the main value of in-persons is for you? Vote on the poll below folks and let me know!

Leave a comment

That’s it folks, back in London now for the next 4 weeks. Will likely see you at something in town if you’re around.

Have a great week everybody

Hung