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Friends,

I’m still in summer mode, so enjoying the last few days of the sun in London. I will be here until mid September, so let me know if you’re around and want to meet up for a coffee.

Q3/Q4 is beginning to take shape, itinerary is not 100% fixed but it looks like the following is going to happen: Dublin: w/c 16th Sept, Bangkok: 3rd Oct, Melbourne: 8th Oct, Sydney: 12th Oct, Hong Kong: 16th Oct, Shanghai: 20th Oct, Dubai: 23rd Oct, Anaheim: 11th Nov, Berlin: 23rd Nov. My plan is to do meetup in each of these places, so if you’re in town and in those places, let me know and we can coordinate 👊

Thanks to: Martyn Redstone, Denise Pereira, Bas van de Haterd, Kevin Green, Caroline Hunter, Rob Walker, Stanislaw Wasowicz, Caroline Hunter, Juliana Park, Jordan Shlosberg, Mark Chaffey, Mayar Macwan and Sam Dhesi - your public support of all things brainfood keeps the show on the road - thank you!

Can you help? Share this newsletter to your network on LinkedIn and have your mates subscribe

Share Recruiting Brainfood

What Do Brainfooders Think?

The phenomenon of ‘ghost’ jobs isn’t nefarious, it is just inefficient. Thanks for everyone for voting on this, this is an example of how important it is to participate in these conversations and how community intelligence can contribute to value to the discourse!

Brainfood Live on Air - Ep268 - How To Build a Web Scraper Using Python (as a Non-Coder!), Friday 16th Aug, 2pm BST

We’re continuing in our informal series on AI / Automation and this week, we’re going to seeing how a non-coder recruiter learned how to build a web scraper using Python, in order to pull TA jobs from the internet. Fantastic example from brainfooder Aaron Lintz, who is going to walk us through the build. One for all recruiters interested in learning more about how to code. We’re on Friday 16th Aug, 2pm BST - register here

The Brainfood

1. AI Survey: Four Themes Emerging

Tracking user sentiment over time, Bain’s Generative AI Survey project is well worth keeping an eye on. The 4 themes are: 1) Majority of companies already developing or deploying AI, 2) Focus shift on delivering value 3) Tech companies furthest ahead and 4) Build rather than Buy, because off the shelf solutions not ready. Sample of Bain customers is obviously of the biggest corporations, so this really is a view from enterprise. Well worth a read.

AI

2. How to Retain and Attract High Performers

“Desire for change” was cited by 36.7% of the 1100 respondents of this survey from our friends at cord - got me thinking: are we doing enough to ensure our top performers are working on stimulating and rewarding work? Obviously current market conditions make voluntary job search something of a rarity but I wonder how many employers have lapsed into complacency on this issue. Might be cool to do a Brainfood Live on this topic from a TA POV - how to keep the job interesting - worth doing? H/T to brainfooder Tom Woods for the share

EMPLOYER BRANDING

3. How Intel is Resorting to Financial Engineering To Raise Billions for Fabs

Intel - recipient of $20 Billion of US govt subsidies care of the CHIPS act - laid off 15,000 employees last week. Adam Tooze dives in to see why: a story of a company whose market dominance during the Wintel era caused it to miss not one (mobile) but two (AI) revolutions.

ECONOMY

4. Product Managers Career Ladders

Lenny Rachitsky runs one of the most successful domain specific industry newsletter. He is now probably the most connected person in the Product Manager space, consequently easy for him to knock up a bare bones Google sheet like this and have it go viral. Useful for all PM recruiters; also good nurture content to send to your PM candidates. H/T to brainfooder Mitasha Singh for the share.

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

5. OpenAI and Generative AI are at a Crossroads

It’s been a massive week for AI (isn’t every week like this now?) with some particularly note worthy exits from OpenAI, including co-founders John Schulmann and Greg Brockman both leaving the totally-not-not-for-profit business. This post lays out the most bearish case for OpenAI and GenAI in general - it’s a huge bubble and none of them are getting their money back - and OpenAI is this era’s WeWork. Not just a hit piece, but a well referenced, well thought out, entertaining screed 🤣

AI

6. Where is the Human Premium?

And yet AI continues to truck on. Synchronicity being a marker of authenticity may already be history, as this frame-within-frame example shows. For recruiters, this can only mean a return to ‘recruitment vintage’ - on-premise, in-person interviews, which ultimately also means, RTO. Make sure to also read up on Peter Hinssen’s latest essay - his term ‘human premium’ is one I’m going to steal.

ASSESSMENT

7. Case Diagnostic: Deep Dive

With the challenges of recruiting decisively shifting away from candidate discovery to candidate assessment, greater focus must come to what types of assessments we are actually using to filter candidates - and whether they are efficient. This crucial question is missing in most of our conversations on assessment, mainly because very few of us know to measure it. Brainfooder Dr Philipp Karl Seegers has a method. Check it out, lots to think about here, especially on the how relevancy of context to academic results (it is relevant but only in comparison with peers).

ASSESSMENT

8. So, Human Resources Is Making You Miserable?

Thought provoking post in the New York Times on the state of HR: three areas of interest: how macro economic environment particularly demoralises HR, as it generates unpleasant work (layoffs…) and increases employee / employer antagonism for which HR is called upon to referee. Also includes a nice sketch of the history of the profession, and how the branding of HR changed over time. Features a few of the brainfooder favourite community members as a bonus - have a read.

CULTURE

9. Questions To Ask When Building Your Next Career Site

Continuing an excellent series of How-To guides, our friends at Joveo have put together another excellent document, this time for employers looking to revamp their career site. Free to access, with no gate, so have at it here.

EMPLOYER BRANDING

10. Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index: Unsteady improvements

How confident are US employees on the state of the economy? Most interesting part of this research is the industry segmentation, with finance, tech and management consultant reporting the greatest confidence (we are not surprised, are we?). These scores are lagging indicators but you can check yourself as Glassdoor updates these monthly.

ECONOMY

The Podcasts

11. The Future Of The Workforce Has Arrived, Can’t You See It?

What we are seeing is a decomposition of the industrial model of work

Hard to do a monologue type podcast, but Josh Bersin has mastered the format. This is essentially an audio only version of one of the talks he might give. He’s not wrong with his analysis here - the model worked when companies were stable but that stability is long gone.

FUTURE OF WORK

12. Big Tech Doesn't Want You Anymore

New YouTube channel for me but I like the depth of research Patrick Boyle puts into his monologues, and even though his ‘empathy-lite’ demeanour will be off putting to some, I found his analysis of the state of the big tech job market - and of the challenges of the graduate market in general - persuasive. Have a watch.

ECONOMY

13. The Slaves Sending You Scam Texts

There are job scams, then there job scams. The government in Myanmar is currently battling at least 3 civil wars with ethnic separatists, some of whom have created mini-statelets, who finance their efforts by ‘recruiting’ job seekers and training them to send scam texts. Many levels to think about here: (real) fake jobs, human trafficking, volume outbound and the collapse of state authority. An incredible listen. H/T to brainfooder Bas van de Haterd for the share.

SOCIETY

End Note

I’m inspired by some of the survey work from the Bain article at the top of this newsletter, so a good chance that I’m going to roll out another survey to you at the start of the Autumn period. We might as well get started with a teaser - with regards to AI, what factors are causing you to move more slowly than you would like?

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That’s it - thanks for reading

Have a great week everybody

Hung