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Friends,

Most of you know that I do a video livestream on Friday’s. If you’re interested in live panel discussion on the topics of the day, follow the channel here and you’ll not only get access to the whole archive (free) but also get notified every time we go live. I recommend you do this - email outreach will continue to have delivery issues in 2024 and important that we are proactive in keeping connected 👊

Thanks to: Eugène van den Hemel, Joey NK Koksal, Kevin Green, Colin Donnery, Dave Hazlehurst, Peter Wharton, Andreea Lungulescu, Alexander Chukovski, Jo Cattini, Cathryn Barnard, Sian Visser, Juliana Park, Michelle Mellor and Hannah Morgan for your public endorsement of all things brainfood - it’s the only way this show keeps on the road! Scores updated on the Brainfood Hall of Fame

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Share Recruiting Brainfood

What Do Brainfooders Think?

Amazing how dated this poll already looks, as of course Sam Altman has returned in triumph as CEO, after an unprecedented intervention by employees who not only showed loyalty to their King but also had the not inconsiderable vested interest of millions dollars worth of equity to try and preserve. As it was, we were off base on our speculations, though given the circumstances, entirely forgivable 🤣

Thanks for voting everyone. More this week - scroll down and cast your vote.

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep235 - Year in Review 2023 - AI, Worktech investment & DEIB

We are in the final stretch for Brainfood Live - and we’re going to start a 4 part ‘look back’ series where we review the main events of the year through the lens of recruitment domains which we care about. Kicking off we’re going to timeline AI, assess tech investment in HR Tech and honestly(!) review whether 2023 has been a regressive year for DEIB. Join the chat - we’re on Friday 1st December, 2pm GMT - register here.

The Brainfood

1. What Can Microsoft Copilot Teach Us About Generative AI at Work?

The global roll out of Microsoft Copilot will be the superspreader event for Generative AI. With MS 365 already being used by over 1 million companies worldwide, we can expect hundreds of millions of workers all becoming ‘AI-enabled’ with the Copilot deployment. Workplace productivity study on the value of Copilot already in, whilst Windows 10 users can expect access as roll out begins. If you weren’t into AI before this, you will have no choice now. H/T to brainfooder Jim Berrisford for the share.

PS: if you prefer snappy video demo’s on how Copilot works in office apps, this tweet thread is excellent.

AI

2. The Value of Recruitment 2023

Very interesting study by brainfooder Jon Brooks on how recruitment agency owners think about pricing. Key insights: lack of differentiation is the No1 factor for agencies having a weaker negotiating position on recruitment fees. Points the arrow towards increased specialisation and innovation on service delivery. This is also an excellent example of how anyone can conduct valuable small sample research. Have a read here. btw: get in touch with Jon if you want support on your pricing strategy.

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

3. Talent Density at Coinbase

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong came in for opprobrium with his anti-woke ‘mission focused company’ post a couple years ago, but he nevertheless demonstrates deep commitment to the idea of increasing the ‘talent density’ of his business. This 5 point plan includes the extension of cognitive testing to the hiring process, amongst more prosaic changes such as CEO approval for all hires. Not everyone’s flavour but it will be for more than a few. H/T to brainfooder Pedro Oliveira for the share.

ASSESSMENT

4. How To Spot High Agency People

X is not everyone’s flavour either but undeniably there is a some quality content being shared there. This long form tweet is a 5 point framework for assessing ‘high agency’ job candidates. They are all unusual (weird teenage hobbies, energy distortion field, golden question, you can never guess their opinions, immigrant mentality) non-PC but brainfood-y for sure, and possibly adaptable for more formal use in recruiting.

ASSESSMENT

5. Behind the Scenes: Hiring a Front-end Developer in 2023

Love this post from brainfooder Michael Blakely - it’s precisely what I mean by ‘externalising operational data’ - it always makes the best recruiting content. This is Michael’s account of hiring a Front-end Developer for his interview intelligence tech firm Equitas. It provides fascinating insight on founder / hiring manager mentality, tech market conditions and job candidate behaviour, especially in the use of GAI. Can’t wait for Part 2

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

6. Millionaire CEO Top 5 Interview Questions He Asks Every Applicant

TikTok is another platform which is not to everyone’s flavour yet again it is full of banging content relevant to our work. This is a condensation of an interview with Matteo Franceschetti, who describes the top 5 interview questions he asks every candidate. Always great to hear directly from non-specialists who nevertheless has great hiring experience. Not PC again, but not entirely unworthy for all that - have a watch, let me know what you think.

ASSESSMENT

7. Thrive

This is so good that I hesitate to share it here in case community members think that this is the standard required to do a great marketing video. However, I hope we find inspiration from this, rather than be intimidated by it 🤣. Watch Julien-Junior Larrieu tell us about his new communications services. H/T to brainfooder Clair Bush for the share.

CONTENT MARKETING

8. AI, Automation & Demonstrating Our Value in Employer Brand & Talent Marketing

Brainfooder Ben Phillips with another outstanding post on content repurposing, a lesson which brainfood needs to learn as well. This post creates a very clear outline on how to multiply the assets from a single video, with the most useful part perhaps being the folder structure on Google Drive. Simple stuff but really good.

EMPLOYER BRANDING

9. Underage Workers Are Training AI

Reinforcement Learning by Human Feedback - RLHF - is one of the core components of Generative Artificial Intelligence. This is basically a lot of humans clicking yes / no on images generated by AI. It is not without its ethical problems, as this sort of ‘click work’ is low paid, monotonous and usually offshored. However, we can also say that for countries and people who take on the work the Global North refuses to do, it can also be a way out of poverty.

SOCIETY

10. To Get Off Fossil Fuels, America is Going to Need a Lot More Electricians

In the past, Reyes recruited workers out of high school and trained them up. But he’s reluctant to do it again. It costs his technicians time, it costs him money, and there’s no guarantee that the people he invests in will stick around because the job market is so competitive. 

There is a point where skills shortage becomes a vicious circle, where employers become reluctant to hire-to-train for fear of losing qualified staff to competitors who will just outbid. Fascinating story of the electrician shortage in California, a story replicated across skilled trade everywhere. Great read.

SOCIETY

The Podcasts

11. The Future of Trust and Evidence, in the Age of AI

Emmett Shear’s 72 hour stint as Interim CEO of Open AI made me look a little deeper at the thinking of the man, and I stumbled across this one hour lecture on the nature of truth, evidence and AI. He comes across very well, and outlines the epistemological challenge that modern communications and GAI-ed internet presents to our now outmoded ideas of truth and evidence. Must watch.

AI

12. Post Labor Economics: How Will the Economy Work after AGI?

Another AI aficionado and another interesting lecture, speculating on the nature of the economy in a world where a lot of human beings might not have any real competitive advantage vs AI. We are starting to rehabilitate the idea of UBI, because what else can we do? Shapiro also makes a strong argument against the overly simplistic utopian view that ‘technology produces more jobs’ - not directly, and not always. Another must watch.

ECONOMY

13. Getting Your Enterprise Ready for Microsoft 365 Copilot

Yeah I know it’s been a bit Microsoft heavy this week, but I think that Copilot is likely to be the way most of us will end up being ‘AI-enabled’ so we might as well absorb as much intelligence about it as we can. This was a recording of an internal talk on the roll out, and covers important stuff like what you need in order to get ‘enterprise ready’

Hint: its all aligning your data strategy with your data policy

AI

End Note

I am always incredulous this time of year - hard to believe that we are already coming to the end of the year with only 4 weeks to go. Retros are an important part of self improvement so I will doing a fair share of this over this period. As ever, I’ll share these as publicly as I can, with the only consideration being whether it is value free self-indulgence 🤣

Lets review the year in terms of ‘hiring rate’. Have a look the poll below and let me know how your year went. Love to hear your comments on why you think you answered the way you did - lets start a conversation on this 👊

Leave a comment

Thats it - thanks for reading

Have a great week everybody

Hung