This week’s brainfood is supported by our friends Otta

Hire like a tech unicorn, with Otta. 

We appreciate that size doesn’t always matter, but when it comes to finding the right candidates, it really does. For tech companies who want to attract one of the largest pools of engaged, experienced candidates outside of LinkedIn, Otta is the place for you.

That’s why enterprises like Octopus Energy Group, JustEat, Cleo, and Wise, and startups like Spill, Elder and Osome, trust Otta. We match the right candidates to you, from our pool of over 1.7 million candidates. 

If you’re looking to get in front of the right talent who wouldn’t normally come to you – Otta helps you hire like a tech unicorn.

SPONSORS

Friends,

We’re struggling with LinkedIn Live atm so if you want to join our Friday discussions make sure click on this link and follow the Brainfood Live channel there. This will notify you whenever we go live - usually always Friday 2pm GMT - and that way you won’t miss any of debates 👊

I’m flying to Cape Town tomorrow where I’ll be co-hosting Recruiters Unite with the awesome Samantha-Leigh Hayward. Tickets are sold out but if you want to get on the waitlist, click here in case any become available. I’m there for a week from Tuesday so let me know if you’re around.

Thank you to: Eugène van den Hemel, Achyut “AK” Menon, Kevin Green, Colin Donnery, Joey NK Koksal, Femke Jongsma, Joseph Yeh, Jane Middleton, Andrew Kable, Jamie Dillon, Sean Wilkes, Karina Hsu, Agni Bermudez, Juliana Park, Octav Buzoianu, Emily Bland, Nelya Pearson - your public support of all things brainfood is so important in keeping this show on the road - thank you!

Can you help? Share this newsletter with a your team and have them subscribe

Share Recruiting Brainfood

What Do Brainfooders Think?

Very interested to speak with the 19% who have already implemented Skills Based Hiring. Going to do a Brainfood Live on this (register here) so if you have some insight / experience - good or bad - please let me know!

More to discuss on this topic, it is one which will get more interesting the more we turn theory into practice. Thanks for voting - make sure you scroll to the bottom of the newsletter and vote in this weeks poll too 👊

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep248 - Talent Trends Report: Sourcing in 2024, Friday 8th March, 2pm GMT

We’ve been talking a lot about sourcing on brainfood live and in the online community in recent weeks, but we haven’t really had the data to understand how to be more effective in doing it. Wait no more as our friends at Ashby plan to release their Talent Trends Report on Sourcing and we get the chance of an early view. What to put on subject line to get opens, how many points of personalisation work best, what is the impact of GenAi copy on response rate? All this and more on Friday 8th March, 2pm GMT. Register here

The Brainfood

1. Talent Acquisition Strategy per Growth Stage

Brainfooder Adriano Herdman’s one page visuals are fast becoming a regular feature in this newsletter. This is clarity of communication at its finest. Feel free to dispute the content within the cells, but consider how impactful this type of format is compared to a long email or word document. The key is lowering the cognitive effort for the reader. If you can do that, there is a good chance your message will get through. H/T to brainfooder Chris Haslam for the share.

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

2. Behind The Scenes - Hiring a Frontend Developer in 2023 - Part Two

Love this BTS stuff from brainfooder Michael Blakely. What’s it like hiring for Frontend Developer in 2023? Detailed breakdown of process, application sources, conversion metrics in Part One, and now a review of the assessment methods, pro vs cons of blind assessment, tech testing and interview in Part Two. Great reading - be a great exercise if everyone did similar public retros’s like this.

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

3. What if a Job Board Could Make More Money from Data Licensing than from Advertising?

Mindbending stuff from brainfooder Bill Fischer, on how (true) Web 3.0 is changing the revenue models of Web 1.0 and 2.0. The insatiable data requirements LLM’s need for training may well open up a new revenue model for job boards who have the proprietary data. Comment thread is also fire, including contributions from brainfooders Rich Collins, Doug Monro and other big brains of the recruitment advertising industry. Have a read.

RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING

4. Meet Marta: The Movie

Product Marketing Manager Marta Puerto was made redundant and this was her response: an amazing video advertisement for her skills which deservedly went viral across LinkedIn last week. The alignment between the medium of communication and the substance of her skillset, was perfect. Also, see how the personality is communicated via this medium also. Now not everyone should be shooting movie quality videos like this - but do have a think about a) how you can publicly provide evidence for how you work and b) communicate your personality, at scale. H/T to brainfooder Matt Bradburn for the share

PERSONAL BRANDING

5. I Analyzed 5M Freelancing Jobs to See What Jobs Are Being Replaced by AI

Data from Upwork has been one of the earliest pieces of evidence that AI is indeed having a disruptive impact on jobs - particularly translation, copywriting and social media marketing going down in terms of number of jobs and charge rate. Interestingly, we’re also see an increase in demand video editing / post production, which suggests what exactly? AI generated output not entirely there yet, or perhaps a shift of resources from in-house to gig because it nearly is? Nice piece of research this.

FUTURE OF WORK

6. Women’s Work: A Story of Irish Diary Farming

Fascinating theory on how innovation (payment by cheque) had unintended, profound and permanent impact on the balance of power between men and women in Irish farming households. Not sure how true any of this is, but it is a great parable on significance of what may initially appear to be trivial. You can kind of understand cultural conservatives who instinctively resist change - its better the devil you know.

CULTURE

7. The Unwritten Rules (Til Now) of Negotiating with Meta

Fascinating, high risk post from Aline Lerner of interview prep firm Interviewing.io. Meta seem to be the only FAANG continuing the hire engineers at scale and this temporary market dominance is manifesting in much tougher stance on compensation. Aline gives some pretty straight talking advice on how to get a better deal.

ECONOMY

8. Klarna AI Customer Support Agent

Some stunning statistics from fintech unicorn Klarna, who implemented an AI powered CS agent only a month ago: 25% reduction in repeat enquiries, on par with NPS score, call resolution in 2 minutes instead of 11 minutes. At 2.3 million conversations over the month trial, it was the equivalent of 700 full time agents. Tweet here, Klarna’s own blog post here. H/T to brainfooder Jacob Sten Madsen for the share in the online community.

FUTURE OF WORK

9. 10 Common Mistakes in the Compensation Review Process

Nice how-to guide from our friends at Figures. Most important insight from me was the separation of the conversations performance vs compensation review. Back in my day these would be entirely the same conversation, with the fairly predictable expectation that cut in pay due to performance would prompt a fairly quick resignation. Maybe separating them gives better chances of retention / turnaround?

CULTURE

10. How Bad Are Search Results? Let's Compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT

Dan Luu refusal to update his website is starting to annoy me 🤣, but his content continues to be so epic that you just have to plough through the wall of text . Here he is investigating the efficacy of search engines, especially as we all see to intuitively sense that they are getting worse. Are they really, how bad is it, and which products are the worst culprits? It’s a typically brilliant exposition of the state of search engines, highly relevant for sourcers.

SOURCING

The Podcasts

11. Singapore’s Survival: AI, Energy Security, Social Reserves

Society wide re-skilling is required for Singapore to survive, says MP Tan Wu Meng. Impressive 20 minutes speech from a politician who grasps the deep implications of technological innovation on energy, society and politics. Worth a watch, particularly on the need for mid-career re-skilling.

D&I

12. Neurodiversity & Employment

Neurodiversity has become last years diversity topic, so welcome to see some more content coming up highlighting issues facing the Neurodiversity. The conversations in this short video exposes how optimised for the neurotypical conventional recruitment processes really are. H/T to brainfooder Clive Smart for the share.

D&I

13. Why You Should Employ Ex-Offenders

I’m surprised James Timpson - MD of dominant high street shoe repair / key cutting chain Timpsons - isn’t more well known than he is. Very glad to see he is on the PR circuit, extolling the employer responsibility to society (Timpson’s workforce is 10% justice impacted) as well some unique ‘upside down management’ techniques. Watch and listen.

CULTURE

End Note

So 2024 has been a year where recruitment technology point solutions are building out from core product into all-in-one solutions, I think to increase revenue potential per customer and reduce risk of churn by having more touch points with the customer. This also aligns with talent teams consolidating their tech stack this year.

Question to the community then, give us your vote below!

Leave a comment

That’s it - thanks for reading.

Have a great week everyone

Hung