This week’s brainfood is supported by our friends BrightHire

Creating “Talent Density” has quickly become a top priority for many companies.

Talent Density is a shift to talent quality over quantity – making effective hiring critical.

As I’ve said before, Interview Intelligence is a * game-changer * for quality of hire. 

And BrightHire has built the most robust Interview Intelligence platform trusted by game-changing companies like Canva, Zapier, and Rippling up to the Fortune 100. 

They use BrightHire’s AI to level up every aspect of their interview process:

• Job descriptions and robust structured interview plans generated in minutes

• AI Interview Notes with 1-click scorecard submission into the ATS

• AI Candidate Highlights and Writeups to level up hiring decisions

• Candidate Alerts that automatically surface candidate intel to close the best talent

• Robust Interview Insights that transform hiring quality and candidate experience

• And much more…

See why Zapier’s TA team calls Interview Intelligence a “game-changer”.

And, If you are interested in learning more about Talent Density, BrightHire is hosting a webinar on June 6th on this topic with an incredible panel. 

Join Tracy St. Dic, Global Head of Talent at Zapier and Dave Carhart, People Strategist at Lattice, for a conversation on how leading TA teams are increasing talent density today.

Save your seat.

SPONSORS

Friends,

What a fantastic week for in-person events last week - I found myself triple booked on Thursday for events I wanted to attend! Glad to see this - we need to do more, and attend more - important for learning, networking and I think, your confidence.

One big one I’m excited to host this week is AI Skills and Tech Talent Summit, essential learning for who want to know the future direction of software engineering hiring in the era of AI. Cream Tea and AI-Saac Newton at the Royal Society on 23rd May 1pm-5pm. TA Leaders - apply here

Thanks to: Eugène van den Hemel, Joey NK Koksal, Colin Donnery, Gautam Ghosh, Kevin Green, John Bersentes, Shireen DuPreez, Dave Hazlehurst, Sonia Douspis, Chris Pateman and Nikki Remkes - your public endorsement of all things brainfood helps this newsletter grow - thank you. Scores updated in the Brainfood Hall of Fame 👊

Can you help? Share this is newsletter with a recruiter friend and have them subscribe

Share Recruiting Brainfood

What Do Brainfooders Think?

I took some heat for setting this poll but the reason was to discover whether we do have a preference when it comes to gendering AI. What we can see from last weeks poll was that both male and female voters preferred female voice by over 2 to 1 margin. No idea why, nor whether this is good or bad, but there it is. Thanks for all who voted, make sure to scroll to the bottom of the newsletter for this week’s vote.

Founders Focus - Ep43 - Up close and personal with Reiner Bruns, CTO, Scotty AI, Tuesday 21st May, 12pm BST / 1pm CEST

Recruitment Automation on Brainfood Live last week was DIY implementation case studies; we’re following this up with a Founders Focus on recruitment automation as seen from a CTO building the whole solution. If you curious about the future of recruitment tech, this is the show to watch - Tues 21st May, 12pm BST. Register here

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep258 - Programmatic Job Advertising: A Masterclass, Fri 24th May, 2pm BST

Programmatic is one of those predictions I have not been getting right, and I think a big part of the reason is the literacy gap we still have on how job advertising actually works. Hence, I’ve seconded brainfooder Yazad Dalal to give us a free 1 hour masterclass on Programmatic Job Advertising. If you want to learn about how become x100 more efficiency on job board advertising, this is for you. Friday 24th May, 2pm BST. Register here

The Brainfood

1. ChatGPT4o Spring Update

OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT4o last week, and it’s a blockbuster: multi-media input, real time language translation and a conversational AI that you might actually like to verbal conversation with. As a no-additional cost update for Premium users it’s also an example of market cornering overcapacity. Launch demo video here - worth watching in its entirety. Further note: Co-founder Ilya Sutskever leaves next day, along with several more data scientists from the Superalignment team - this is the group of employees in charge of ensuring human control over AI, mos.t of whom signed a disparagement order tied to equity to prevent leavers from speaking negatively about OpenAI…

AI

2. Pragmatists Playbook for Skills Based Hiring

Huge hat tip to Arctic Shores for diving into Skills Based Hiring, investing in the research and producing the output which might actually help recruiters at implementation stage. Things I like: does not avoid the contention, introduces useful concepts (‘skills enablers’) and has a practical step-by-step guide. Download

ASSESSMENT

3. “Hey Microsoft”

2024 has been a year of job seeker pb - we’ve seen some great examples of job seekers making unique attempts at differentiation. This is the latest go viral, Marketing Manager Alexandra Hockey-Parmenter inserting herself into one of the Internet’s most iconic scenes and it’s a fine effort. h/t to brainfooder Andrea Kirby for sharing in the online community

CONTENT MARKETING

4. How Many Jobs Are Available in Technology in the US?

Apologies for the pop-ups on this website, but the content is worth it after you blast ‘no’ to everything coming at you 🤣. ComputerWorld tracks the US IT / Tech job market using a variety of data sources, including interviews with recruiters, who basically profess not to know very much. Paradox: tech layoffs continue but tech unemployment is not high. One thing that does seem to be happening though, is Tech Jobs Leaving California

ECONOMY

5. Lower Engagement, Stretched Managers, and More

Between 2022 and 2023, eNPS decreased from an already low 33.33 to 24.8 — a difference of almost nine points.

Employees are not happy in 2023 vs 2022, and I suspect, no more happier in 2024 vs 2023. Increase in cadence of performance reviews, less 1-2-1 support from over worked managers, high frequency of business change… all factors contributing to high anxiety environment. Accessible report from Lattice, well worth a read.

CULTURE

6. 'AI Can Help People Keep Physical Jobs for Longer'

Early retirement is not always a choice, especially for those who work in physical jobs. How about using AI + robotics to reduce injury risk and prolong working life? Nice story here about positive use of AI to keep people in work, rather than replace them. Though, with Unitree G1 Humanoid robot going onto the market for $16K, it might just be another matter of time.

WORKFORCE AUTOMATION

7. Google’s Broken Link to the Web

‘Google will now google for you’ is a very nice way to describe the direction of travel signalled in Google’s latest search update. This tweet thread gives a good idea as to what’s available, including AI overviews and search with / on video. Some deep implications for the future of the web which this superb essay outlines. If Google can generate good enough answers for the enquirer, then it will reduce the incentive for that person visit the source site. The era of clicking on blue links may be coming to an end, and with it, the web as we know it.

SOURCING

8. Fertility Rate

Demographic crisis is finally making the move from the margins to the mainstream as we collectively begin to understand the fiscal relationship we all have to the state; the ‘pipeline’ of tax payers is on what seems to be an inexorable decline. World In Data keeps count. Positive take: this dovetails with workforce automation and we get the robots to do the work.

SOCIETY

9. The Psychology of Short-Form Content: Why We Love Bite-Sized Videos

In short: attention spans are shortening, they are low-effort to consume and they can be amazingly informative or entertaining. I also think there is a sense of human connection on short form video, as they are mainly shot on to-the-camera on the mobile device. Decent read from Hubspot. Need to do more myself - trying this on so follow along on LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram and X.

CONTENT MARKETING

10. The Silicone Ceiling: Auditing GPT’s Race and Gender Biases in Hiring

One of most obvious ways to use LLM’s is to have them review and rank CVs - it was one of the more impressive examples discussed in last week’s Brainfood Live on Recruitment Automation. However, this important research on resume generation and resume assessment should be required reading for anyone thinking of implementing such a solution. Well designed experiment with some fascinating results on how LLM’s generate and rank candidates based on race and gender.

D&I

The Podcasts

11. Larry Shurtz: How To Hire, Train and Retain the Best Vertical Teams

I like it particularly when entrepreneurs talk hiring. Lessons from real experience trump all the theory that we in TA / HR can often overly consumed with. Larry Shurtz led billion dollar revenue sales at Salesforce and has some hiring lessons to share. Excellent brainfood. H/T to brainfooder Pedro Oliveira for the share.

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

12. How the U.S. and China Compete in Planes, EVs, Chips and More

With President Joe Biden’s unilateral tariff impositions on Chinese imports this week, it’s clear that the free market rhetoric which has dominated economic thinking over the past 30 years has now been consigned to the ideological dustbin. Hostile de-globalisation is inherently inflationary, so if we you want to know why cost of living will continue to rise, this video from Wall Street Journal is a useful watch.

ECONOMY

13. The REAL Story of Elon Musk’s Mass Firings of Tesla Supercharger Team

Elon Musk shocking dismissal of the entire Tesla Supercharger department, was apparently an escalatory demonstration of the costs of disobedience. Tyrannical stuff from a remarkable CEO who plays by his own rules. Electric Viking with the analysis

CULTURE

End Note

I had an interesting conversation with REC MD and dedicated brainfooder Neil Carberry last week. We’re going to steelman controversies in a Oxford Union style debate - some entertainment but also a way to think through some of the topics driving the conversation in our industry today. Which one is your favourite?

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That’s it - thanks for reading

Have a great week everybody

Hung