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Friends,

The summer is over and its time to get back to work. I’m giving a talk at In-house Recruitment Live in London on the 26th Sept (register here if you’re in London and fancy a day out - free to attend). The topic still tbc, so this may well be the subject of the poll at the end of this newsletter - let me know what you want to me speak about!

Thank you to: Bas van de Haterd, Joey NK Koksal, Alexander Chukovski, Elizabeth Murphy, Ronen Daniel, Juliana Park, Jemma Wilkinson, Eugène van den Hemel, Alan Price, Helen Firth, Luke Eaton, Elena Volk and Edward Morgan for your conspicuous support on all things brainfood. Sharing the newsletter by members of the community is the only marketing I get - cheers to you 🥂

Can you help? Share this newsletter with a friend in need of brainfood

Share Recruiting Brainfood

What Do Brainfooders Think?

De-bunking the myth that ATS’s auto reject candidates has been an important corrective, but the technology is soon going to make myth reality. And as users, we’re going to help it along! Great poll everybody, thanks for voting 👊

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep273 - EU AI Act: Implications for Recruiters, Talent Acquisition & HR, Fri 20th Sep, 2pm BST

We’re already at 230 registrants for this show - a deep dive into the EU AI Act and the compliance environment all makers and users of software will have to be aware of. How do we make decisions which help us stay ahead of compliance? We’re on Friday 20th, 2pm BST. Must attend folks - register here

The Brainfood

1. The Future of European Competitiveness 2024

In a month when Europe hit the headlines for fining US tech and raising tariffs of China manufacturing, Mario Draghi’s report on the Future of European Competitiveness could not be more opportune. Comprehensive and surprisingly accessible, this report attempts to explain why the tri-polar economic world 2004 has collapsed into the bi-polar one in 2024. Europe has a lot to do

ECONOMY

2. The Lightcast Global AI Skills Outlook

What is the state of AI labour market? I’m going to be joining the crew at X-team next month to discuss (register here), and this report from Labour Analytics firm Lightcast is going to come in handy. Plenty of interesting insights, including the surprising dip in AI demand in 2023 and the premium paid by employers for non-technical workers with Gen AI skills. Great interactive - read and share.

AI

3. Breaking Down OnlyFans’ Stunning Economics

The depressing news is that by far the most successful platform in the creator economy is OnlyFans. This post breaks down data from the company’s public accounts, which shows that the average subscriber pays $24 per year, the average creator makes $1725 per year, whilst the owner the site - the reclusive Leonid Radvinsky - paid himself an incredible dividend of $472 million in the last financial year. With now a $1 billion paid in dividends since OF creation, Mr Radvinsky is surely the biggest pimp in the history of the oldest game.

CREATOR ECONOMY

4. The Evolution of Sourcing in Talent Acquisition: A Back to the Future Moment

Back to the mundanity of recruiting, and maybe back to the future with this thoughtful piece from brainfooder Toby Culshaw, on how the emergence of mass outreach by AI will saturate the inboxes of the highly skilled, in-demand who will revoke their attention from the public inbox - leading to a return to low volume / high value human driven sourcing. Is this the way sourcing rebounds? I think and hope so.

SOURCING

5. Future of Recruiting 2024 LinkedIn Talent Solutions

Some useful bits in this Future of Recruiting piece from LinkedIn Talent Solutions. I found this chart most interesting - are you getting involved in working with other departments on how AI will reshape their job roles / dept organisations? Seems like we should be doing this. Bonus: I have an embarrassing quote in this see if you can spot it 🤣

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

6. OpenAIo1 Passes OpenAI Engineering Coding Challenge

OpenAI released a new series of AI models this week, which looks like an attempt to get the AI to ‘reason’. I haven’t played with this yet, but it seems that it has been tested on OpenAI’s own engineering coding test - which it apparently passes at 90% of the time, begging the inevitable question: why hire the human engineer at all? At the other end of the s/w engineering career track, signs that graduate dev market has collapsed.

ASSESSMENT

7. How Did DEI Get Where It Finds Itself Today?

Brainfooder Petar Vujosevic with an unusual and thought provoking analysis on the state of DEI, contextualising the current ‘wokelash’ with the historical, political and societal foundations of the wider social justice movement. I haven’t made up my mind about the analysis and that, is as good a description of brainfood as there can be. Have a read.

D&I

8. LinkedIn’s Have Nots and Have Bots

The escalating contest between LinkedIn and the automated bot makers is not without casualties - the maker of mass apply bot has now unfortunately lost his own personal LinkedIn account as a direct result of doing so - LinkedIn not playing around. I’m not conflicted about this - users should not use their accounts for a single violation - it appears in the case of the mass apply bot, the developer was a jobseeker who simply made an optimisation public. Campaign to bring back Fede starts here! H/T to brainfooder Christopher Cruz for the share in the online community.

AI

9. China Raises Retirement Age for the First Time Since 1950’s

China’s ridiculously early retirement (50 for women, 60 for men) ages get revised upward, as the country rebalances against a declining working population. Some interesting tidbits from this: women’s retirement age is further split according to type of work (earlier for blue collar manual), as well as the mandatory nature of retirement often being used by corps to exit more expensive managers in favour of younger, cheaper up and comers. I had a great conversation with brainfooder Anne-Marie McCaughan on Brainfood Tribune on this - reach out to AM if you want insight on China hiring.

SOCIETY

10. World Bank Global Economic Prospects June 2024

Global economic growth is projected at 2.6%, but where is that growth coming from? The hard yards over the past two years is no cycle waiting for a rebound - it’s a new levelling to a slower growth, higher cost world. Massive report (at 220 pages) from the World Bank, so one of these to download and feed it into the machine to summarise. Download it here

ECONOMY

The Podcasts

11. Hung Lee: Networking, Resilience & Personal Branding

It was a real pleasure to join brainfooder Daisy Ilaria on her outstanding podcast TalentXChange. Great coffee, super production value and a very easy conversation partner: we cover job search, psychology of rejection and the value of personal brand. Have a watch / listen here.

PERSONAL BRANDING

12. Jobs in the Age of AI

Georgetown McDonough hosted an in person event on Jobs in the Age of AI and livestreamed all of the talks. I haven’t gone through this but I am gonna - 9 hours worth of presentations and discussions on a topic which should be of interest to us all.

FUTURE OF WORK

13. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski on Getting AI to Do the Work of 700 Customer Service Rep

The news that Klarna plan to get rid of Salesforce and Workday and replacing them with self built AI was a shot across the bows of the whole Saas market. Got me thinking that we should all get to know CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski a little more, hence H/T to brainfooder Alexander Chukovkski for the share of this interview with Sequoia Capital podcast from a month ago. Worth a watch, and Klarna, a company in the middle of restructure and transformation, is likewise worth a follow.

WORKFORCE AUTOMATION

End Note

It’s unseasonably cold in Europe atm - feels like crisp winter mornings, all of the sudden. Anyone else still not prepared to give up on summer gear. Shorts and flip flops are still there, ready to go 👊

On to talk topics….if you want to see me present on a topic, which of the below would be your choice…

Thanks for reading

Have a great week everyone

Hung