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Friends,

I hope you are finding the time to enjoy the last days of summer. I’m planning already for Q3 and in the main figuring out what events to attend, and what topics to cover in Brainfood Live. A few things to note:

1. Brainfood Live - follow the channel here - Aug / Sept is up

2. YouTube Channel - livestreaming on here via Crowdcast, in case you prefer to watch it here, subscribe to the channel here

3. The Recruiting Brainfood Podcast - here

Thanks to: Kevin Green, John Bersents, Jo Ioannidis, Joey NK Koksal, Liz Schwerd, Juliana Park, Eugène van den Hemel, Paul Daley and Gaetan Vanreusel - thank you for your support - your public endorsement of this newsletter is the only marketing we get!

Can you help? Share this newsletter with recruiter friends and have them subscribe - cheers!

Share Recruiting Brainfood

What Do Brainfooders Think?

Pretty clear message to the vendors - go above and beyond on data privacy / security and you’ll get more installs. Thanks for everyone who voted, I’m going to continue with these polls and keep working on a way to surface up the sentiment of the community via these questions. Make sure you go to the end of the newsletter and give us your view on this week’s topic. 👊

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep 269 - New UK Government: What Can Recruiters, TA & HR Professionals Expect? Thurs 22nd August, 2pm BST

Parliament will stay in summer recess until 4th September, so we have a couple weeks to review the new government proposals and how they will impact our work in recruiting & HR. Important show for all UK members and we’re on Thursday (not Friday as usual!) this week. Register here

The Brainfood

1. World Economic Outlook 2024: Global Economy in a Sticky Place

IMF produces quarterly updates on the state of the global economy - this one is the latest, encompassing July 2024 data. Low growth / no growth means TA needs to expand scope. For UK recruiters, ONS came out with the August data on the labour market - digestible stuff - and outlines the challenge ahead for the new Labour government when Parliament returns after summer recess.

PS: make sure you tune into Brainfood Live this Thursday - what the new govt is going to do is the topic of the conversation.

ECONOMY

2. How Algorithms Keep Workers Under Their Control

Insightful excerpt from the book Inside the Invisible Cage: How Algorithms Control Workers, by the author Hatim Rahman himself on how the gig economy workers are measured, qualified and sorted by algorithm. The metaphor of being in an invisible cage is resonant, yet what is vision this if not the manifestation of a data driven management culture, in a skill based organisation? We might have cause to prefer human bias in the end.

GIG ECONOMY

3. Recruiting Efficiency & Video Optimisation Model

Are you using video for recruiting? We probably all agree that we should, but as we struggle to invest time / resources to the task, we’re in danger of being left behind as the world migrates to the medium over text. Might be worthwhile taking a spot check on where we are so this maturity model is just the ticket. H/T to brainfooder Maury Hanigan for not only creating this model but also allowing it to be shared outside of reg wall.

EMPLOYER BRANDING

4. Job boards, Marketplaces & Communities

Big Lists are simply useful resources. This notion page put together by brainfooder Adriano Herdman is a collection of tech communities, which looks pretty useful as a list of sourcing sites.

SOURCING

5. Mastering the Science of Job Descriptions: Optimizing JDs to Drive More Conversions

Programmatic advertising platforms have the best data on job ad performance. What is most interesting to me is how the guidance from competitor vendors tend to align - we need industry standard job titles, a certain length of copy length and formal rather boring tone. That is, if you want to optimise for application rate. Good post on this on effective job ad writing, and have a play of the free Job Description Optimizer also

RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING

6. European Holiday Habits: The North-South Vacation Divide

I can tell that most of Europe is still on holiday due to the OOO I get from email. - that open rate remains consistent tells me that people are still opening brainfood whilst on the beach 🏖️ 🤣. Summer holidays are serious phenomena for recruiting, whether have you a European team or are hiring European candidates, its significant information to know what the habits are per country, per region. Super interesting post from brainfooder Mariano Mamertino on the imperfect North / South Vacation divide.

SOCIETY

7. Africans Have Become the Solution to the UK’s Elderly Care Crisis

Whilst raging against immigration has become the political norm for the culturally right wing, immigration itself continues to provide the essential workers (remember them?) that every society needs - sanitation, security, construction and especially healthcare, which we will be increasingly in need of as economies age out along long term demographic trends. Politics - and culture - has to catch up with necessity.

D&I

8. Loneliness in China Spurs Growth of Companionship Economy

The search for the Human Premium in the age of AI and automation might a reasonable end point in those jobs where we prefer a human to deliver it, irrespective of whether a robot might be technically superior. Being a friend - or lover - might obviously be one of those.

FUTURE OF WORK

9. Comparing Physician and Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Responses to Patient Questions Posted to a Public Social Media Forum

…but sometimes we also might prefer the robot. This paper from 2023 was one of the more robust experiments in measuring AI vs Human performance when it came to online interactions - patients prefer AI to Human at an outstanding 4 to 1 ratio. Conducting my own experiments with AI screening tools in recent days, I’ve become increasingly bullish on AI screening calls being the next marginal idea to mainstream in recruitment. What do you think?

ENGAGEMENT

10. In Bern, Switzerland, Some Locals have a Unique Way of Commuting to Work

Locals in Bern commute to work by diving into the river and have the current take them in, with the state providing waterproof bags for their clothes which act as flotation devices. Honestly, I think I would would RTO for this 🤣.

REMOTE WORKING

The Podcasts

11. The Human-Centered Economy: How Time Banking Can Change the World

Andrew Yang’s star has kind of faded since his inspired but failed run for President, but he remains an important and impressive contributor to the debate on the automation, future of work and what to do when machines do most of it for us. His experience as a parent to a high needs child gives hims perspective on the value on unpaid labour - human effort which is hugely valuable but not monetised. Can we bank it anyway? We need social, as much as technological, innovation. Have a listen

UBI

12. Recruiter's Insider Tips for Nuclear Industry Success - Taylor McDonald

Nuclear energy is obviously going to be part of our new energy future, especially as new reactor technology which eliminates the risk of catastrophic meltdown becomes proven in production. It’s going to be growth sector for hiring, so how do you go about getting job in the sector? Industry recruiter Taylor Macdonald explains..

ECONOMY

13. Navigating Web3 hiring with Talent Protocol CEO Pedro Oliveira

Great to hear brainfooder Pedro Oliveira on air. Two elements to this - firstly, what is the state of the labour force in Web3, and secondly, how web3 platforms can solve some of the key problems in the recruitment space. Have a listen here

ASSESSMENT

End Notes

I’ve been subjecting myself to Voice AI screening calls in recent weeks - applying to dummy jobs where there is AI that is going to conduct the first stage screening interview by phone or audio on computer. Have to say, I’m becoming increasingly bullish about it, and I think it will be the next category of recruitment tech to move from the margins to the mainstream. There’s lots to improve - especially removing the unnecessary small talk - but I think it will be a step change improvement on we do applicant first contact. What do you think of Voice AI Screening - would you use it?

Leave a comment

That’s it - thanks for reading

Have a great week everybody

Hung