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Friends,

I’m afraid I erroneously called several hundred of you ‘Karen’ in an email last week. I’m tempted to blame ChatGPT but in truth it was a non-AI and very human error with no one to blame than me. I want to apologise to all who received that note as well thank the great many of you who took it in good humour and gave good natured rebuke in return 🤣

The email was about the Look Back at 2023 series I’m concluding this years Brainfood Live series with - part one already done last week, part two this Friday. I’m keen to tell you about it because it’s a great way to collectively retro the year on the key topics that have impacted our community this year. If you want to watch or listen to the community conversations, follow the channel here, and / or subscribe to the podcast here.

Thanks to: Eugène van den Hemel, Joey NK Koksal, Kevin Green, Bas van de Haterd, Dave Hazlehurst, Colin Donnery, Doug Bryant, Aoife Brady, Donna Svei and Dave Netley for your public support of all things brainfood - vital to keep this show on the road. Scores updated on the Brainfood Hall of Fame - need to give some rewards out for this in 2024!

Can you help? Share this newsletter with a friend who needs to read it.

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What Do Brainfooders Think?

We know it has been a challenging year for the recruiting industry. Confirmations like this need to be balanced with note that 26% of us say they hired more heads this year than last, whilst nearly 30% hired for the same number.

Thanks everyone for voting. We’re going to do a forecast forward poll at the end of this newsletter so please remember to vote down there too. Cheers

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep236 - Year in Review 2023 Recruitment Advertising & Employer Branding

Part Two of our Four part Look Back series where we review the year in recruiting across as many domains as we can manage! This week, we’re going to review Recruitment Advertising and Employer Branding. I think we have set our expectations and realise this is going to be at least a 90 minute episode! We have a spectacular ensemble cast to talk to us about Google for Jobs, SEO, programmatic advertising, ad retargeting, employer branding, user generated content and more. Friday 8th December, 2023 - register here

The Brainfood

1. State of European Tech 2023

Atomico’s State of European Tech is one of the annual must-read reports. Investment focused, the report tells the story of capital allocation in European technology, which sectors its going to, how this year compared to years previous and how it compares to other regions in the world. 50% of the brainfood audience is in tech startup, so if you felt that its been a tough 12 months, this will give you the explanation why.

ECONOMY

2. When A.I. Comes for the Elites

Peter Turchin is an academic most famous for developing the idea of cliodynamics, which includes the application of mathematical modelling to history. Amongst his better ideas is the notion that revolutions are mainly intra-elite competitions, which occur when societies ‘overproduce’ elites, who become frustrated aspirants motivated to overturn the system by mobilising the mob. It’s a compelling theory, and in his latest essay, suggests that AI - which is already commoditising elite knowledge work - will bring such revolution closer. Uncomfortable food for thought.

SOCIETY

3. SearchGPT

Custom GPT’s are turning out to the a similar category of product to Custom Search Engines - useful, pre-configured tools for a specialist audience, but without the distribution channel to ever achieve mass adoption. With OpenAI GPT store now delayed into 2024, we might be waiting a little while before we can effectively discover useful tools. This one might become one of the more popular for us in brainfood - a GPT optimised for sourcing-like prompts. Check it out.

SOURCING

4. Robots At Amazon

AI is not just coming for the elites of course, they were always coming for the manual workers too. Fascinating long read on the history of robot installation at one of US’s biggest employers, Amazon. Remember that Amazon currently employees 1.5 million plus workers and recently overtook UPS and FedEx to become the leading parcel distributor in the US. How many people work in these companies today, how many will work in these companies tomorrow? UBI needs to come back into the public discourse, stat…

WORKFORCE AUTOMATION

5. Reports of AI Ending Human Labour May Be Greatly Exaggerated

…and yet, there is always a counter narrative. European Central Bank with meta analysis of 3 reports on the impact of AI on employment and actually found that employment increased in segments most exposed to AI. Notably this was AI pre-2022, but nevertheless underlines the techno-optimist case that innovation might mean short term disruption but also long term job creation.

SOCIETY

6. The Job Sharing Apps That Feel Like Dating

One of the social innovations which we might need to invest more thought into is job sharing - having more than one person do a full time role. This is especially important for workforce diversity, where many more women work part time than men and might otherwise be denied opportunity or lost to the labour market, for want of opportunities compatible with lifestyle. Think also of older workers - if we are all to extend the retirement age, it might make sense to understand that 67 year old might prefer 20 hours rather than 40 hours per week. Interested to know if any members have a formal job share programme - let me know if you have!

D&I

7. If Hiring Is a Team Sport, We Need to Give Hiring Managers Feedback

Practically everything that brainfooder John Vlastelica writes makes it into this newsletter so you might as well just follow him on LinkedIn. Here he is underlining an obvious-in-hindsight point - hiring managers need to be rewarded for being great hiring managers - and includes a mechanism on how to do it.

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

8. Freelance Recruiter Barometer 2023

Interesting research from brainfooder David Kieffer on the state of the French recruiter market in 2023. The rise of the freelancer recruiter and the occasional coagulation of these indies into recruitment collectives are two trends worth noting. Companies are going to have a diverse range of options when engaging recruiters in 2024. In French, but Google translate works well and if in doubt, of course we now have AI to do the translations for you.

FUTURE OF WORK

9. Using ONA to find Optimal Team Size

Great to see Organisation Network Analysis make something of a comeback - unquestionably the best way of understanding what actually happens in a company is examine how information flows through it. Tracking team size with managers comments on JIRA tickets + employee sentiment leads to the neat equation - too small a team means overly involved managers and disaffected employees. This is quantified company culture folks and I’m here for it 👊

ONA

10. Are Remote Workers More Productive? That’s the Wrong Question.

Glad to see somebody making the case that remote is good for reasons other than ‘productivity’. Remote is good precisely because we do less work, hence are far less likely to burn out, quit or otherwise be disaffected if can claim back some of our time from our employers. CEO’s dislike remote for exactly the same reason. Lets have this fight folks, at least it will be on honest grounds! 👊

REMOTE WORKING

The Podcasts

11. The New Normal: Working from Home in 2023

‘Working from home is shirking from home’ is an old norm which has been broken by the pandemic and that’s a good thing. 1/4 of all US work days are now working from home and RTO not happening much on aggregate. 30 minutes, packed with great one liners on the intersection between remote working and education, gender, age, geography, pandemic response, home size and the rest. It’s an excellent podcast. H/T to brainfooder Bas van de Haterd for the share.

REMOTE WORKING

12. If Companies Are Desperate For Workers...Why Can Nobody Find A Job?

A real curate’s egg piece which manages to deliver great analysis (flawed definition of ‘unemployed’ as per US JOLTS data) at one moment followed by urban mythology (jobs advertised has an internal management technique) the next. It’s an exhilarating contentious watch and, I suspect, the inevitable future of how media is going to be look like going forward. Enjoy but think is the message.

ECONOMY

13. Spanish AI-Powered Model Aitana Has Taken Internet By Storm

..and apparently making $$$ for whoever is ‘her’ controller. AI coming for the creator economy, because creators are not immune to AI. In fact, the creator economy window might already be closing with the advent of ever more compelling AI competitors. btw: follow Aitana here if you want to see when she upgrades from photo to video.

CREATOR ECONOMY

End note

Busy week ahead as we crash into the party / Xmas period. I think I am going out every night this week, so if you are any of the TATech, NORA’s or drinks meet ups around London, let me know or come up and say hello.

Poll of the week is a complement to last week. What are your hiring forecasts for your business next year compared to this? Vote below, let us know.

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That’s it - thanks for reading

Have a great week everybody

Hung