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From real-time sourcing from a pool of over 100,000 elite contractors worldwide to streamlined onboarding and automated compliance checks, YunoJuno ensures that your every step in managing a future fit flexible workforce is handled with efficiency and precision. Save time, reduce costs and mitigate risk - contact one of our friendly customer success team for a personalised demo here.

NB: Hung Lee will be hosting an in-person breakfast with YunoJuno on Oct 2nd at Goldsmiths Centre, Farringdon on Total Talent Strategy. Email hung@recruitingbrainfood.com if you want to attend!

SPONSORS

Friends,

Two things happening this week: I’m talking Job Search being Nuked by AI tomorrow on X Spaces, and Talent Acquisition Trends in 2024 in IHR in Islington on Thursday. Both free, so get yourself along to them if you can 👊

Thanks to: Rob Walker, Eugène van den Hemel, Joey NK Koksal, Caroline Hunter, Elizabeth Murphy, Andrea Kirby, Hannah Morgan, Juno Zhuang, David Green, Ross Clennett, John Murat, Mark Smith, Thibault Allard, Daniel De Regt, Jaap Kersten, Martin Woodward, Marjaana Murtomaa, Alex Her and Juliana Park for your public support last week - definitely see a boost in subs numbers when you do this - thank you!

Can you help? Give Recruiting Brainfood a shout out on LinkedIn when you log in. Cheers!

Hung

What Do Brainfooders Think?

Are we tired of AI in TA? Seems like we might be, and have switched focus on how to find the human premium. Going to part of my talks going forward, so watch this space. Thanks for everyone who voted 👊

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep274 - Hiring Manager Self Serve: How Can TA Enable the Line? Friday 27th Sep, 2pm BST

Centralised talent acquisition is most suitable for knowledge based businesses where everyone is effectively working at HQ. But when you’re looking at a distributed organisation, the line become the most significant contributors to hiring. What is the role of TA in organisations like this? How can TA empower hiring managers, who are not specialists in recruiting? Should be a good one folks - we’re on Friday 27th Sep, 2pm BST - register here

The Brainfood

1. Message from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy: Strengthening our Culture & Teams

Hybrid was always going to mission creep back to full on-premise. Andy Jassy’s letter to the Amazonians last week, effectively called time on the remote work experiment at one of the most significant employers in the world. It’s a well written, with other interesting nuggets of information, such as the direction for functional heads to increase individual contributor component by 15%, at the expense of middle management. Two predictions: 1) resignations will be muted, as this call to RTO is perfectly timed and 2) other companies will follow with similar calls.

REMOTE WORKING

2. White Collar Gloom, Blue Collar Bloom

Remote work was always a white collar privilege - and the white collar job market is not looking in great shape. Nice piece of research from programmatic advertiser Appcast, especially like the taxonomy of white vs blue vs grey workforce - the latter of which being in-person service work, which is incidentally may be the best insulated from disruption by AI / Automation.

ECONOMY

3. LinkedIn Starts Training GenAI on Users' Personal Data - Without Notification

The no-notification update on LinkedIn’s terms and conditions last week that they were going to use users posts to train their AI on content creation rightly met with outrage from prominent users of the platform. Currently doing a vote on it on LinkedIn, so you can monitor how people think about it here. EU, UK, Switzerland exempt for now, legacy of the legislative divergency from the US - something we can be thank the outgoing Thierry Breton for? For those interested in EU AI Act and how it impacts recruiters, HR and recruitment tech founders, we did Brainfood Live on it last Friday - worth a rewatch in case you missed it. Thanks to brainfooder Debbie Fraser for sharing in the online community.

AI

4. How to Succeed in MrBeast Production

MrBeast - a.k.a as the popular YouTuber on the planet - wrote on employee onboarding document which made it’s way around the Internet last week like one of his viral videos. Lots to dive into here: tone of voice, simplicity of form, clear articulation of culture and vivid description of expectations, responsibilities and - how to succeed in the company. It’s a phenomenal example of an onboarding doc. H/T to brainfooder Ollie Glass for the share.

CULTURE

5. Global Workforce Report: Top Talent Is Hard to Find, Harder to Keep

More proprietary research, this time from Workday, which I believe remains the No1 ATS in terms of revenue worldwide. Job applications grew x 4 the rate of job advertisements, a strong indicator of distressed employment market. Also some interesting findings on how employers are using AI - I expect ‘conduct initial interviews’ to increase substantially as employers struggle to handle volume inbound.

ECONOMY

6. Despite AI Enthusiasm, Workforce Index Reveals Workers Aren’t Yet Unlocking its Benefits

10,000 desk workers surveyed by Slack on the usage of AI in work. Key line in the report is executive enthusiasm for AI-enablement is far ahead of employee adoption, a tension which might actually describe rational assessment of self interest from both parties. Survey published in June 2024, accessible reading.

AI

7. SparcStart ROI Calculator

Cool free tool from our friends SparcStart - a ROI calculator on creating video. We obviously should do more of this - human beings are increasingly moving from text to video in terms of consumption habits, and this is one of those where we do need to go with the flow. This should help build a business case.

EMPLOYER BRANDING

8. I Need to Hire 200 Engineers This Week. Comment Below for Interview Link

This is great for a number of reasons. As a marketing move, it’s a genius example of virality - the hook is amazing and demo has now be scaled out to millions to eyeballs, many thousands of whom might have gone through the AI powered interview. For recruiters, we also now know this product in a way we didn’t before. Finally, at a deeper level, the efficacy of tools like this suggest that AI is going to eat up more chunks of the hiring funnel, recruiters will increasing play overseeing roles, at least for inbound applications. H/T to brainfooder Matt Doyle for the share.

ASSESSMENT

9. Pizza Hut will Print Job Seekers’ Resumes on Pizza Boxes and Deliver to Employers in ‘the Toughest Job Market’

Is this an example of ‘whole-of-society’ mobilisation to fix the job market? Employers who need to workers, connected to workers who need jobs, by a 3rd party - this time, a food delivery service. Who knows how helpful this might be but the spiritual uplift of a single person getting a job this way might overwhelm any ROI considerations. Interesting example of corporate collaboration. H/T to brainfooder Bas van de Haterd for the share in the online community.

10. Working for the Future 2024

It’s been a privilege to have brainfooder Tony Wilson on Brainfood Live - he’s one of the most respected commentators on the future of work in the UK context. His foundation, Institute of Employment Studies, outlines recommendations for the government on how to help the country increase its labour force participation rate. Bit wonkish, but important one for UK readers here.

SOCIETY

The Podcasts

11. Selling Ollie Watkins & Winning with ZERO Budget

Fascinating podcast with former Exeter manager Paul Tisdale. Lots in here, from leadership, communication, culture - and also, how to hire talent when you’re a second rate employer. Funny, honest look at calibrate your hiring according to your status as an employer. Great all the way through, but best bits on hiring start here

TALENT INTELLIGENCE

12. I Tried To Apply For A Job In The Chinese Army

This is how you write a hook for today’s online world. Career fairs remain a thing for graduate recruitment in China, and this student takes us on a first person tour on what it looks like. Vox Pop with follow job seekers was especially interesting, but in truth this fellow is more likely to make his way into the creator economy than the PLA 🤣

ASSESSMENT

13. Top Three Things Clients Value from Their Recruiter - Hung Lee

Brainfooder Jon Brooks has a unique service - pricing consultancy for recruitment agencies. He also runs a great podcast focusing on the value of recruitment. I was delighted to join the show and chat about what clients really value from 3rd party suppliers. Have a listen and let me know what you think!

CULTURE

End Notes

I has a great chat with Brainfooder James Hutt (worth a follow / connect..) last week on Mr Beast’s onboarding doc. One of the understated but perhaps most significant themes was the defence of ‘A Player’ hiring - the insistence that everyone in team has to be top class. Got us talking about how TA / HR think about this, so this is the poll for this week - let me know what you think!

Leave a comment

Thats it - thanks for reading

Have a great week everyone

Hung