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Friends,

Solar eclipse, end of the Easter break, a new financial year in the UK and - dare I say - signs of Spring finally in the air?

This is the start a long series of in person events and meet ups I’ll be doing - from next week, it’s Canadian Staffing Summit in Toronto, catching up with brainfooder Nicolas Darcis in Montreal, LinkedIn Hire Connect in Denver, HR Tech Europe in Amsterdam and LinkedIn Hire Connect again, this time in Boston. Going to hope to see as many of you as I can in those places - maybe do an ancillary brainfood meetup in each city. Let me know if you think this is a good idea!

Thanks to: Joey NK Koksal, Kevin Green, Colin Donnery, Eugène van den Hemel, Juliana Park, Usama Nasir and Sarah Sen for your public endorsement of all things brainfood last week - much appreciated! Scores updated on the Brainfood Hall of Fame 👊

Can you help? Share this newsletter with your team and have them subscribe. Thank you!

Share Recruiting Brainfood

What Do Brainfooders Want?

I think this is fair read of the market to so far in 2024. Remember that ‘the economy’ manifests differently according to region and sector, and your relative position to it. But fair to say that 2024 is going to be another year of hard yards. Very important we stick together on this folks - being part of the brainfood community has been huge for me and I hope it has been for you too 👊

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep253 - Skill Based Hiring: Rhetoric or Reality?, Friday 12th April, 2pm BST

I outed myself as a skeptic of SKH / SBO in last week’s Brainfood Live so I am going to do my best to adjudicate on what should be a very interesting debate on whether it is really TA / HR’s next big slogan or whether there really is a fundamental shift going on. Lets have an open debate on this and see where the arguments lay. We’re on Friday 12th April, 2pm BST. Register here

The Brainfood

1. The Post Covid Recruitment Sunset

Kudos to RecruiterFlow for aggregating publicly available financial data from global staffing giants Randstad, Kelly Services, Page Group, Manpower, Korn Ferry and Robert Half. It tells a story we all know, but great to see it validated at global scale. Must read for agencies and in-house TA as it contextualises our lived experience at the micro level with the global trends at macro level. H/T to brainfooder Sagrika Mehta for the share in the online community

ECONOMY

2. iCIMS Workforce Insights March Report 2024

ATS provider iCIMS produce monthly Workforce Insights reports which draw on behavioural data from the thousands of employers they have on platform. Some intriguing insights especially on D&I, with validation on what most of us probably already know is the case: women spend more time on career sites, but make less applications than men.

D&I

3. A Deep Dive into Email Deliverability in 2024

With Brainfood itself seemingly suffering a downturn in email deliverability, this post is a timely reminder of all of things you have to do if you send high volume of email (anything above 5000 in a day). Useful for anyone doing outbound - make sure you check your DKIM, spf and DMARC…

ENGAGEMENT

4. 10 Years of Hacker News "Ask HN: Who is hiring" Trends

Hacker News - the Y Combinator message board, has become the de facto locus of conversation for tech startup types. It has a monthly ‘Who is Hiring’ thread, where employers simply add their jobs onto what becomes a massive comment thread. Some person with a lot of time of their hands scraped 10 years of data from these comments and produced the analysis. [Spoiler] - the term ‘hacker’ is now out of fashion for job ads, AI has shot through the roof and remote has become default setting for tech startup devs. Must read for tech recruiters.

RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING

5. PwC 27th Annual CEO Survey 2024

Annual PwC survey of 15,000 CEO’s - important reading to find out what the boss thinks. Some sobering insights: 1 in 4 of CEO’s believe AI will reduce headcount in their business by at least 5% in 2024 and, that they see 40% of hiring activity by HR to be unproductive. Got to read this folks - this is the internal customer whether you’re corporate or 3rd party. Download the PDF here

CULTURE

6. Where Are The Workers?

BBC Economist Editor Faisal Islam with a fantastic tweet thread of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi’s sensational debut as an EV manufacturer, selling over 100,000 cars in 72 hours of launch. The innovation may be less in the vehicle but more in the highly automated ‘dark factory’ in which they were made. The AI / Automated future will collapse the costs of goods & services (great for consumers, cost of living) precisely because they reduce the most expensive input - human workers (not so great for said workers). Entire thread is well worth the reading

WORKFORCE AUTOMATION

7. Liberal Arts Grads Are Supposedly Well-Rounded, But How's Their Pay?

Interesting piece of research from Revelio Labs on the impact going to a Liberal Arts College has for future pay. Turns out, they do better than students who went to larger universities. We don’t get any speculation as to why, so we’re left to ruminate on whether it is because of higher skills development due to smaller class sizes, or possibly that students carry advantage in through having more material support from the family.

SOCIETY

8. Candidate for VP of HR Role Rejected for Not Wearing Makeup During Interview…

Lots of things to think about here: the undeniable (yet always denied) role physical appearance plays in assessment, the obvious gendered nature of this case and the specific role makeup as a signifier of effort or commitment on behalf of the candidate. Have a watch of this TikTok from the candidate herself and let me know what you think of the question she asks at the end.

NB: added twist to this story is that the candidate was going for a VP of HR role, and quite possibly a member of this community

ASSESSMENT

9. Remote Work Trends 2024

Brainfooder Henley Wing Chiu, Founder of Revealera, has conducted a review of Remote jobs since 2020. Some fascinating insights including percentage of jobs remote (going up), which jobs most likely to be remote (Account Execs, S/W Eng, Digital Marketeers), degree of seniority most likely remote and more. It’s a massive blog, stuffed full of fascinating data. Well worth a look for any who cares about remote.

REMOTE WORKING

10. The Soft Life: Why Millennials Are Quitting The Rat Race

So I think ‘soft life’ is a 2024 version of ‘lying flat’ - a counter culture phenomena where Millenials who, faced with cost of living crisis, the third economic recession in their lifetimes, as well as the realisation that they are never going to be able to afford a house, give up on the rat race and downshift. Economists will say that this is chronic ‘underemployment’ but I think there is any way to look at it. What do you think?

FUTURE OF WORK

The Podcasts

11. Here’s How Trust & Kindness Make a Business Successful

Timpson’s - the high street cobbler and key cutting company - are one of the most remarkable businesses in the UK. 10% quota on hiring the formerly incarcerated, they also practice ‘upside down’ management. Here is CEO James Timpson on a TedX. 13 minutes in business culture, have a watch.

CULTURE

12. Talent Lessons from Elite Sports with former England Cricket Team Captain, Sir Andrew Strauss

We have a huge amount to learn from elite sportspeople. How can lessons from elite sports be translated to the corporate world? Sir Andrew Strauss gives his insight: its mindset, especially on how you handle threat vs reward. Very similar to Arsene Wenger’s dictum that if the external pressure is, the leader must lower the pressure, and vice versa. Have a listen.

CULTURE

13. Conversation with Mariana Mazzucato, Mission Economy

Mariana Mazzucato has been one of the leading new wave economists who are challenging old paradigms, arguing that the State has an underweighted contribution to innovation, especially when it comes to laying down the infrastructure necessary for transformatory innovation to take place. Great chat here with Prof Jeffrey Sachs, have a watch / listen.

ECONOMY

End Note

I can’t help but think about that story (see 8 above) candidate who lost out on the job (for a VP of HR) due to not wearing makeup in the final interview. We all know beauty bias exists, but the issue here seems to be that the perceived lack of attention to personal presentation signified a lack of preparation / motivation for the role.

Question for this weeks poll….how much do you think someone’s appearance contributes to a hire / no hire decision for a senior level position?

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That’s it - thanks for reading

Have a great week

Hung