This week’s brainfood is supported by our friends Greenhouse.

Concern about bias doesn't dampen HR professionals' interest:

The 2023 Greenhouse EMEA HR Manager pulse report highlights how HR professionals turn to AI to boost efficiency, find the most suitable skilled candidates and reduce bias. Greenhouse surveyed 1,700 HR Managers in the UK, Germany and Ireland to understand their assessment of this trending technology.

Read the blog and explore our findings here.

SPONSORS

Friends,

The Big List of Recruiting & HR Events 2024 has been cleaned up, de-duped and updated. Bookmark this spreadsheet and share with your recruiter and HR network. I want us all to have the benefit of stronger connections, greater information flow, and better access to the collective intelligence of the community in 2024.

Recruitment is a hard job. 2023 has been a hard year. I don’t know what the next 12 months will bring but I do know that whatever comes we will meet it better if we stand closer together.

Rest assured I am working on new ideas on how we can do this! In the meantime, a reminder of the following spaces & initiatives you are all welcome to join and participate in.

Brainfood Online Community

Brainfood Tribune

Brainfood Talent Collective

Brainfood Live On Air

The Recruiting Brainfood Podcast

Thanks to: Eugène van den Hemel, Jan Tegze, Joey NK Koksal, Steven Rothberg, Manjuri Sinha, James Osborne, Ekaterina Ivanova, Juliana Park, Kelly Perez, Celeste Sirin, Adam Gordon, Rob Walker, Ambre-Océane Lavesque, Luke Davis, Caroline Hunter, Irina Shamaeva and Andy Foote - for your relentless support of all things brainfood last week - the only way to keep this newsletter growing 🙏

Can you help? Send this newsletter to a colleague who needs a boost for 2024 - cheers!

Share Recruiting Brainfood

What Do Brainfooders Think?

I think this means that a) we are not going to change our approach to LinkedIn much and b) we hope that LinkedIn do not raise the rates on us in 2024 🤣. Thank you everyone for voting on the poll - great fun to do these. Make sure you scroll down the end of the newsletter to vote on this week’s poll also.

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep238 - 2023 Year in Review: Economy, Labour Market & Jobs, Friday 22nd Dec, 2pm GMT

Final Brainfood Live of the Year folks - thank you all for following, joining and sharing the conversations we have live on air every Friday with you. We’re going to complete our look back series with a macro view on the state of the economy, the labour market and the state of jobs, including those for recruiters. With an ensemble cast of the best thinker-doers in the business, join us for the final show on Fri 22nd Dec, 2pm. Register here

The Brainfood

1. When is Hiring Coming back? Our Predictions for 2024

Nice bit research from tech interview training platform, Interviewing.io, combining data from TrueUp (whose founder, the brainfooder Amit Taylor is joining us for Forecasting 2024 in the first episode of Brainfood Live 2024) along with customer bookings for mock interviews to ascertain the state of the tech hiring market. Meta going to lead the tech hiring comeback in 2024 it seems, though worrying the No of tech recruiter roles does not seem to be increasing. Very interesting combination of data points from the US market - have a read

ECONOMY

2. GenAI Will Change How We Design Jobs. Here’s How

This is post is good because it actually gives you a framework on how to take control over the encroachment of AI into your work. Three step process: first, de-compose your job into tasks. Second, determine which of these tasks are most information processing intensive, and how the status of knowledge in those tasks (i.e defined, ambiguous, static, dynamic etc). Third, re-compose the tasks into a job that is least exposed to point No2. 100 critical recruiter skills here, if you want to try this exercise for yourself.

AI

3. Why and How We Do Work Trials at Linear

Does anyone do any work trials here? Its obviously the best way to understand whether a candidate is going to be a good employee or not, especially if the work has high degree of collaboration intensity. Linear here explain their why and also their how on it. Advantages are obvious with some equally important drawbacks - scale, not possible for in-work candidates etc. However, we could learn a lot from this approach, especially as it shows the inadequacy of many elements of our current hiring funnel.

ASSESSMENT

4. Glassdoor’s 2024 Workplace Trends

Excellent predictions post from Glassdoor, outlining 8 x trends for the workplace in 2024. Most interesting speculations: middle management continuing to be squeezed by cost conscious employers, recomposition of employee benefits, the long tail cultural damage from lay offs and the rise of the multi-generational workforce as Gen Z finally overtakes Baby Boomers. Really good read, -somehow missed it last month, so glad to get it in this issue.

CULTURE

5. Designer Layoff Stories

Another example of how small scale survey work can still yield valuable insights. OP is a UX coach who has an audience of designers, which he decided to survey on their current state of employment. Looks like design has been hit hard by Big Tech Winter. Complete with personal vignettes which offers important qualitative element to the numbers. Have a read

ECONOMY

6. JD Refresh

Amazon seem to have been relatively quiet about GAI but we would be foolish to mistake lack of fanfare as lack of capability or interest. Amazon Bedrock’s under-the-radar release provides compelling evidence, especially on industry applications like this job description builder from brainfooder Aaron Lintz. Get into this folks.

RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING

7. The Surprising Connection Between After-hours Work and Decreased Productivity

Research from Slack, who surveyed 10,000 knowledge workers on working times + productivity self reports. Unsurprisingly, those who work after hours report higher rates of burnout and lower levels of productivity. Other stuff we know: 2 hours of meetings per day is max. Article is good, PDF can be circulated around your organisation if you want to seed a conversation for reducing ‘meeting / email’ load in 2024…

REMOTE WORKING

8. Inside Foxconns Struggle to Make Iphones in India

Foxconn - the world’s largest manufacturer of electronics, and the world’s No1 assembler for the most popular smartphone brand in the world - is becoming one of the most interesting case studies for challenges of transferring ‘institutional knowledge’. Three years ago the long read was much trumpeted (mainly by Trump) relocation of a factory to Wisconsin, today it is diversification of Iphone manufacturing from China to India. Another long read, but tons in it from management practices, cultural differences and the demands / sacrifices required by the rich from the poor.

CULTURE

9. Synthetic Video vs Personalised Video Messages - An Unscientific Experiment

So this may be something of a disguised advert for the recruitment application of Synthesia’s AI video app 😀 but still a great example of how a little bit of research about your work can garner validation for your theories. Also: the use of video notes for recruitment outreach will only increase in 2024, so we might as well start talking about it here.

ENGAGEMENT

10. Manpower Global Employment Survey 2024

Recruitment giant Manpower survey 40,000 employers on their first quarter hiring intentions in 2024. The update is not barnstorming but it is upbeat as 42% expect increasing in hiring vs 16% decrease and 39% no change compared to Q4 2023. Some very interesting regional / sectoral variations - all caveats apply on sample bias etc - but well worth taking a look at least on the sentiment of surveyed employers.

ECONOMY

The Podcasts

11. How We Hire At Canonical

This is pretty cool - Head of TA interviewing CEO of the company on how hiring works in the organisation. Seems to me to be a great way for produce some inside / out type of content which can communicate the EVP of the organisation. Better if it were live though. Even so, more company’s should give this type of thing a go.

CULTURE

12. Jeff Bezos: Amazon & Blue Origin

A historically significant business leader, any interview with Jeff Bezos is well worth paying attention to, especially when he delves into building Amazon’s communciation culture. Loaded with practical take-aways which reveal profound understanding of human psychology. As the most senior figure in the room, you should always speak last.

CULTURE

13. Hung Lee - 2023 Review and AI Deep Dive

I’m always going to support new podcasts / webcasts and was delighted to appear as guest No1 on this new show from brainfooders Jake Paul and Will Ducey. Look forward to listening to more lucid guests in future, so go ahead and give Time To Hire a follow.

End Note

Final week coming up …and I think I am all out of meetings. Delighted to be honest, as I am knackered 🤣! Been great seeing everyone but I think a few days of emptiness are going to be what the doctored ordered. In the meantime though, lets continue with our forecasting polls for 2024.

Candidate Response Rate to Outreach…will be it increase, decrease or stay in same in 2024?

That’s it - thanks for reading everyone

Have a great week

Hung