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Friends,

Thanks everyone who attended my talk at IHR Live last week - great to see so many friends old and new in attendance. I’m going to rebuilding that talk into a readable version so let me know in comments or reply to this email if you’re interested in receiving a copy.

In the meantime, last few days in UK before I fly to APAC for the next month. I’ll be doing…

• AI-enabled Candidates: What TA has to do to adapt - webinar with Arctic Shores on Oct 1st register here

• How to Hire for AI Skills - webinar with X-team, on Oct 1st register here

Landing in Bangkok on the 3rd Oct, so let me know if you’re about - love to meetup and as minimum, I will organise a small meetup after Brainfood Live on Friday.

Thanks to: Eugène van den Hemel, Joey NK Koksal, Debbie Harrison, Dave Hazlehurst, Kevin Green, Paul Daley, Caroline Hunter, Matt Warzel, Rob Walker, James Hutt, Dom Blossom, Kirsty Eccles, Harriet Hughes and everyone who said hello in Islington earlier this week - your warmth and support is what keeps this show on the road!

Can you help? Share this newsletter with your colleagues in Teams or Slack and get them to subscribe. Thank you 🙏

Hung

Share Recruiting Brainfood

What Do Brainfooders Think?

Are we confused about A-player hiring or are do we dislike the connotation? The ambiguity here suggests a debate to be had on the merits / demerits of this - worth a Brainfood Live imo. Thanks for all who voted - make sure you scroll to the end of the newsletter to vote on this week topic 👊

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep275 - Hiring in Thailand in 2024 & Beyond, Friday 8am BST / 2pm ICT

Beaming in Live from Bangkok, I will be speaking with local recruiters on the state of hiring in Thailand in 2024 and beyond. What have been the recruitment challenges over the past 12 months here, what have been the solutions? We need to broaden horizons and learn from recruiters from different parts of the world - tune in, or if you can’t make it live, register and watch on replay here

The Brainfood

1. McKinsey Technology Trends Outlook 2024

Interesting post from McKinsey, mainly for the selection of the 15 key technology trends identified, most of which are identifiably concerned with new productive forces from which the foundations of the next economy will be built. Includes job posting data (tho from McKinsey ‘proprietary research’), which nevertheless might give us recruiters some ideas as to which sectors have strong hiring needs in near future. Worth a read.

SOCIETY

2. Hiring Lab Data Portal

Indeed’s Hiring Lab Data Portal has become one of those resources which you have to bookmark. Currently tracking wage, remote and AI mentions, in an easy-to-use interface. One fun exercise is the compare job postings with job search, to identify the discrepancy between employers and employees actually want.

REMOTE WORKING

3. The Elite's War on Remote Work Has Nothing to Do with Productivity

Speaking of remote, this post viralised on the Internet last week, I suspect because most of the readers supported the premise that employers case for RTO on the basis of productivity was bogus, and more likely a disguise of the real motivations - the collapse of commercial real estate value, which employers are keen to prop up. Good debate on this in the online community. Might be worth a brainfood live at some point.

REMOTE WORKING

4. How to Lead Your Team when the House Is on FireT

Thought provoking post from an s/w engineering manager perspective, which I think translates into any management role - the need to lead from the front, protect focus time, ensure ruthless prioritisation - and the hiring of ‘experienced, stress tolerant’ individual contributors.

CULTURE

5. The State of Global Mobility 2024

One of the ironies of de-globalisation is that the increases to the cost of doing business by increasing trade friction fuels the global search for productivity will in turn leads to the geographical dispersal of jobs. Increasingly, this means employers will need to manage cross-border workforce - how are we set up for it?

ECONOMY

6. Everything Wrong with the Product Management Job Market. And How to Fix It

The interesting content often comes from non-specialist recruiters, investigating the the job search and recruitment market. Love this post from Mind the Product, on the state of the PM job market covering recent history, the reduction of friction to application to the use of ATS multi-posting. It’s impressively accurate for an non-specialist, though we need to wait for Part 2 for deliverance on ‘how to fix it’ 🤣. In the meantime, Lenny Rachitsky, who runs the No1 PM newsletter has been doing his own research on the State of the Product Manager Job Market

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

7. Embracing Flexibility 2024

Might we be missing the point in the battle of Remote vs RTO? Thoughtful guide from our friends Willo who argue that what we really want and need is flexibility in working mode, not binary choices. Great balance between comprehensiveness and accessibility in this PDF - download here

REMOTE WORKING

8. I think I Am Working for an AI

Anecdata is often better than data data when it comes to providing stimulating brainfood. We already algorithmically manage gig workers, so can expect the expansion of the technique as jobs get disaggregated into tasks which can be outsourced on the way to automation. Thought provoking cameo of the future at hand.

FUTURE OF WORK

9. Questions to Ask Your Recruitment Tech Vendor When it Comes to AI

Joveo again with the good stuff. They have a freely available library of guides like this (see Issue 413), but I am separating this one out given that the topic of buying technology to increase operational efficiency is not only top of mind but also inevitably going to involve AI. Download here, no gate

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

10. Gallup State of the Global Workplace: Voice of the Employees 2024

Most of us would agree that there is a strong relationship between individual well being, employee engagement and organisational performance. Some interesting insights in this global survey from Gallup, particularly on the impact of engaged managers to engaged employees, as well as country-by-country breakdown, which is obviously useful for anyone with a multi-country remit.

CULTURE

The Podcast

11. Why Is No One Talking About India's Unorganised Sector?

Been getting into Indian YouTube recently - fascinating to learn from Indian commentators on the state of society, economy and politics. Halfway through this interview on one of the most under rated topics in any economic analysis - what is going on in the unofficial economy? Lots of GDP unmeasured here, India has a large portion of the labour force in this ‘grey’ economy. Fascinating watch / listen

ECONOMY

12. Unplug with Hung Lee

Unusual but important interview series launched by our friend and brainfooder Doeke Geertsma, which deep dives into the personal stories of people in industry. This is an audio / video version of the Brainfood Tribune, so if love those stories, this type of podcast will be right up your street. I’m first up, so have a listen about third country immigrant experience, how to avoid radicalisation and the emotional significance of feather dusters…🤣

CULTURE

13. The Professional Network for AI Agents

We’ve had AI-as-a-tool, AI-as-Assistant and we soon have AI-as-Agent - an autonomous worker which can make local decisions towards an objective you set. How about a ‘LinkedIn’ for these agents? That’s the topic of this interview with Agent.ai engineering lead, Andrei Oprisan.

FUTURE OF WORK

End Notes

Last weeks Brainfood Live got me on the topic of whether we should do shows which are adjacent to but not directly core to recruiting and HR. I’m personally interested and I think you might be too but wanted to get a gauge from the community what you felt. Which of the following topics would you attend a show on?

No is ok also, but let me know

Open Kitchen tomorrow for Part Two on The 4M Framework Applied to Talent Acquisition.

Thanks for reading - have a great week everybody

Hung