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Friends,

Great to be back in the UK after a fantastic two weeks in North America, where I’ve had the chance to spend time in the great cities of Toronto, Montreal and Denver.

Huge thanks to Suky Sodhi for inviting me to speak at the Canadian Staffing Industry Summit, Kim Benedict for connecting me to the Executive TA forum, Nicolas Darcis for persuading me to hop over to Montreal where I got to finally meet Sandrine Théard, Sebastian Savard, David da Costa and the rest of the Sourcinc team and finally Molly McGuire, Denise Cautela and the rest of the crew at LinkedIn for your amazing support in making sure the Denver workshops were such a hit!

As most of you know, I’m a big advocate of in-person connect and these past two weeks have underlined it even more. We all need to get out and connect with people in industry: Big List of Recruiter & HR Events to Attend in 2024 - get yourself along to some of these!

Thanks to: Kevin Green, Joey NK Koksal, Caroline Hunter, Mark Shortall, Eugène van den Hemel, Gavin Johnston, Ross Clennett, Neil Armstrong, Jan Tegze, Richard Hillier, Caroline Hunter, Andrea Marston, Raniah Knapp and Peggy Perrier - your public endorsement of all things brainfood is the only thing keeping the show on the road! Scores updated on the Brainfood Hall of Fame 👊

Can you help? Share this newsletter with your team and have them subscribe - cheers!

Share Recruiting Brainfood

What Do Brainfooders Think?

Pretty clear that the community has a limited interest in video content (only 95 votes!) but amongst those who did have a thought on this, it seems that ‘Hot Take’ on a daily topic was exciting 🤣

Thanks for all who voted, I’ll be shooting these videos via mobile phone when I get a spare minute. Don’t expect great production quality folks, but I will do my best to give an honest take on a topic du jour. Probably will post these on LinkedIn but feel free to follow on Instagram, TikTok or X, they may also appear there.

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep256 - How To Set Up A Recruitment Analytics Dashboard, Friday 10th May 2pm

So the first thing to know is that there is no brainfood live this Friday - I am going to be giving at talk at HR Tech Europe at the RAI in Amsterdam at exactly the same time. Week following we will be back to usual programming, and we have a great show lined up - How to set up a Recruitment Analytics Dashboard, on Friday May 10th, 2pm - Register here

The Brainfood

1. Dream Destinations and Mobility Trends 2024

1 in 4 professionals being ‘actively mobile’ for international opportunities is the headline figure, for me a shockingly high ratio, but actually just a small increase from pre-pandemic era. What motivates people to move, what destination countries are most desired and why? Fascinating piece of research on human migration, relevant to us as we may need to revive the ‘destination branding’ concept as age-ing economies compete for workers. H/T to brainfooder Stefan Welack for the share in the online community.

EMPLOYER BRANDING

2. Candidate Response Rates: The Variables

What are the variables which impact candidate response rates? I blasted out 10 in an X article to help my thinking when building the presentation for the LinkedIn Connect sessions in Denver and soon Boston. What do you think - what else impacts candidate response rates?

ENGAGEMENT

3. The 37signals Guide to Internal Communication

Writing solidifies, chat dissolves. Substantial decisions start and end with an exchange of complete thoughts, not one-line-at-a-time jousts. If it’s important, critical, or fundamental, write it up, don’t chat it down.

Just one of many profound insights in this extraordinary explanation of 37signals communication culture. We can all learn something from this - must read.

CULTURE

4. Real-World Insights on Gender Diversity in IT Leadership Hiring

When looking for ‘data driven insights’ we too often get obsessed with sample size as the primary determinant of ‘truthiness’. Brainfooder Jan Bernhart demonstrates in this analysis of a search project that this is not always (if ever) the case. Great example to follow, more of us should do this. And follow Jan of course, he’s elite and more people should know it.

D&I

5. TSMC’s Debacle in the American Desert

Fascinating report on cultural clash between different communities of workers in TSMC’s new plant in Arizona. Neither group is portrayed in flattering light, but the main story is how hard it is be productive when very different working cultures are smashed together. Reminded me earlier attempt to do the same with Foxconn in Wisconsin during the Trump era, which was featured in brainfood in 2020. One lesson of globalisation is that when industries are lost, they rarely come back and when they do, it is often in a form you didn’t expect. Related news - TSMC will be (necessarily) charging more for chips built in this plant.

CULTURE

6. Gem 2023 Recruiting Benchmarks Report

I was sure I posted Gem’s benchmark report for 2023 but it seems I didn’t which is bad because it is so good. Massive document which breaks down the open rate from outbound email recruitment message, segmented by job function, department, seniority, ethnicity, gender and so on. Essential reading if you care about ‘open rate’.

ENGAGEMENT

7. Recruiting Metrics That Matter In 2024

To save you time, these are: Offer Acceptance Rate, Time to Hire, Pass-through Rate, Pass-through Rate by Demographic and Job non-compliance rate. Decent primer for our ‘how to build a recruitment analytics dashboard’ show next month (sign up for this here). H/T to brainfooder Michael Talarek

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

8. The AI Workforce is Here: The Rise of a New Labor Market

Founder centric blog post which extols the advent of AI as fusing software + labour in a way which will make it hyper efficient for founders to build valuable businesses. Market comparison between the size of services vs saas businesses presents the opportunity, whilst the current / future business idea of selling AI into an existing job description (i.e AI SDR’s) vs selling AI into an entire servive (i.e AI law firm). Fascinating, and frightening, you know the emotional journey by now.

FUTURE OF WORK

9. Hiring, Algorithms, and Choice: Why Interviews Still Matter

We all know that interviews are poor predictors of job performance, so why do they persist in the hiring funnel? According to this research paper by Cambridge University, it’s because interviews perform the essential social function of providing a sense of ownership, agency and control which humans need in order to commit to a decision. Are we beginning to understand that companies have social logic, as well as business logic? I hope so. H/T to brainfooder Omer Molad

ASSESSMENT

10. A U-Shaped Legacy

Fascinating and disturbing look at the demographics behind the UK’s record number of ‘economically inactive’ people - they are clustered amongst the young (16-24) and the old (50-64), which together comprise 90% of the 2.8 million people UK Gov thinks should be in work, but aren’t. Mental health amongst the young and physical ill health amongst the old are the main reasons cited. With the change in government all but certain in 2024, the incoming Labour govt will have a lot of work to do.

ECONOMY

The Podcasts

11. The Spectacular Rise (and Imminent Collapse) of Private Equity

The video polemic against the perceived malign influence of private equity firms is both a great explainer of what a P/E firm actually is, what their role has been unlocking investment for privately held companies and why their non-public nature gives them cover to take excessive risks deleterious to wider economy. It’s a great video

ECONOMY

12. Reid Hoffman Meets His AI Twin

So this ends up not being convincing, as well as being quite uncomfortable to see human Reid interacting with his digital twin but it is a sign of things to come. Has anyone trained a digital twin yet? Let me know if you have - love to hear how you’ve been getting on. H/T to brainfooder Jacob Sten Madsen for the share in the online community.

AI

13. Why Waymo's Robotaxis Are Hitting the Arizona Freeway

Would you ride a self driving car? 2024 has already seen Waymo piloted on city streets in the US and now we are seeing these vehicles entering the freeway. Where is the legislation, who is responsible in case of accident? It’s not clear who is in charge here, but the shift to automation everywhere is inevitable

AI

End Note

I’m in Amsterdam for HR Tech Europe this week, where I’ll be doing a fireside chat with Ashley Jones on the Greenhouse stage and then delivering a talk on the missing millions in the afternoon, in what looks like the last session of the day. Hope the audience will still be awake at this time - I’ll try and make it exciting 🤣

In the meantime, some interesting legislative developments in the US - the total ban on non-compete clauses in the employment contracts. Ostensibly this looks like a right thing to do but there are implications, especially for sales, and recruiting professions. Does this mean anyone you hire, can just walk out with their client list? Lets make this the topic of this week’s vote 👇

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That’s it - thanks for reading

Have a great week everyone

Hung