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Friends,

I’m giving Melbourne a massive thumbs up - I’ve been before but each time my impression of the city improves. Especially resonant to me was the vibrancy of the artisanal economy in the city. I’m seeing a future pathway for humanity in the AI dominated future via the boutique bakeries in Brunswick. More on this later, probably an essay on Open Kitchen at some point.

Just landed in another great Australian city earlier today. Sydneysiders, I’m here for three days, so let me know if you’re about and fancy to meet up 👊

Thanks to: Joey NK Koksal, Kevin Green, Tubga Gok, Dave Hazlehurst, Terry Aduh, Liz Duncan, Andrea Kirby, Rowan Cook, Liz Chan, Ric Arber, Gillian Kelly, Louise Whitelaw, Matthew Parker, Steve Chan, Amit Cruz, Deanne Barbary, Sarin Khan, Louise Hurst, Sandra Lim, Yana Martens, Laura White, Elle Green, Brian Daniel, Zichaun Lim, James Cochrane-Dyet, Gary Woollacott, Juliana Park, Dom Blossom, Matthias Schmeisser, Christina O’Connor, Nick Dean, Rob Walker, Matt Warzel, Adrien Moulias, Lyndsey Taylor & Trine Rulffs for your public endorsement of all things brainfood - essential to keep this community growing. Scores updated on the Brainfood Hall of Fame 👊.

Can you help? Share this newsletter with your colleagues in Teams or Slack tomorrow - cheers!

Share Recruiting Brainfood

What Do Brainfooders Think?

Looks like the brainfooders are not much up for industrial action 🤣. Should be no surprise though, TA / HR are on the side of management and have never really had the sort of sector consciousness that other professionals might. Something that we need to change in future?

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep277 - Hiring in Hong Kong in 2024 & Beyond, Fri 18th October, 10am HKT

I’m back in Hong Kong for the second time this year, and looking forward to chatting local recruiters on the stage of hiring in the ‘fragrant harbour’ on the year of our Lord, 2024. Expect luminaries like Tak Lo, Mat Gollop, Rita Tsang and more. Register here

1. Hype Cycle for the Future of Work, 2024

We’ve seen the famous Gartner Hype Cycle before, but perhaps not with the sort comprehensive plotting of emergent technologies on the single page before. This post provides this great visual for the single glance view, but also goes into cameo portraits on each technology. Good to one of the futurists to bookmark. H/T to brainfooder Andreea Lungulescu for the share.

FUTURE OF WORK

2. #Desperate on LinkedIn

Interesting conversation here on how whether emotional appeals are effective in securing desired outcomes. If #OpenToWork badge doesn’t work, would an honest escalation to #Desperate do better? Advice from recruiters / career coach types is generally don’t do it but I wonder whether any of this has yet been tested. Thoughts on this? Subject of today’s poll…(end of the newsletter)

PERSONAL BRANDING

3. Automattic Alignment

Followers on the tech media will be aware that last couple weeks has seen an ugly confrontation in the Wordpress eco-system, where CEO Matt Mullenweg going nuclear on hosting provider WP Engine, resulting in significant internal conflict as Wordpress employees voiced concerns as to the CEO’s behaviour. This was Mullenweg’s response. I don’t know about the minutae of the dispute, but I am interested in this technique - rapid escalation to end point, with an in vs out proposition, similar in many respects to Brian Armstrong’s ‘Coinbase is a Mission focused Business’ proposition in 2020. What do you think of this approach - tyrannical or great leadership, in pulling off the bandaid? H/T to brainfooder Pedro Oliveira for the share

CULTURE

4. AI in Organizations: Some Tactics

Ethan Mollick has become one of the must follows on X or Substack for his experiments and observations on the impact of AI on the workplace. The theme in this post is the dissonance between individual productivity vs organisational productivity; AI is having stronger positive impact on the former, but not yet the latter - why is this, and what can we do about it? Publicly rewarding ‘secret Cyborgs’ for AI use is one way. Ever interesting reading.

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

5. UK New Employment Rights Bill

After 17 years out of government, the minimum we can expect the Labour government to do is a package of reforms to support employees vs employers. We talked about this in Brainfood Live last month, but legislation is now here. BBC report has an accessible summary - the case for hiring is inevitably going to be a slow down as employers wait to figure out exactly what the changes will mean - minimum we in TA / HR can do is help accelerate this process. H/T to brainfooder Colin McNicol for the share in the online community

SOCIETY

6. The More Egalitarian A Society Is, The Greater the Gender Gap in STEM Enrolment

Fascinating thread of research on gender gap in STEM education. We’ve known for a long time the inverse relationship between equality and women’s choices of study - what we disagree upon is why, and whether this variance is a problem. Absent pragmatic imperatives, kids are going to choose what interests them most / might be easier to do.

D&I

7. “English Not Required”: How Language Flexibility Shapes Job Opportunities for Migrants

Hiring Lab from Indeed is becoming one of the most fascinating resources to follow on brainfood. This is post charts the requirements for native language proficiency across occupation types, industry sectors and different countries. ‘English not required’ was explicitly stated in 2.8% of job postings in the UK over the last 12 months. English language proficiency of the native population, immigration rate, demand for labour all relevant factors contributing to changing demands of language in work. Must read for the brainfood.

ECONOMY

8. Tesla Optimus Robots

Big week for AI & Automation with the blockbuster launch of Tesla’s Optimus robots. Some impressive demo’s of embodied AI which points to a future where a great deal of front line work (you know, the jobs where we do have a human talent shortage..?) might be performed by $30,000 per unit robots rather than human workers who cost at least that every year. AI is coming for everybody’s work - important we start the conversation on the ‘politics of productivity’ - and who to fairly distribute the gains from automation. H/T to brainfooders Stanislaw Wasowicz and Rob Dromgoole for their respective shares in the online community

WORKFORCE AUTOMATION

9. You Don’t Need to Abandon Jobs to Become a Skills-Based Organization

One of the best talks I saw this week in Melbourne was brainfooder Gareth Flynn’s discussion on the suitability of Skill Based Hiring for different organisation types. This post describes the scenario in similar style - it is most well suited for professional services organisations which inherently are more project based and thus have always had an internal marketplace of sorts, and less so for organisations which might make and move physical things. Good post for skeptic and evangelist alike.

CULTURE

10. Comprehensive List of Facts About UBI

This may be the longest thread on the history of all twitter / x threads. It’s UBI evangelist Scott Santens with his 100+ resources on UBI. Huge resource of referenced material on the experiments, studies, examples of universal basic income. Having watched Optimus in action, becoming a follower of Santens might become a good idea for a lot of us here.

UBI

The Podcasts

11. Recruitment is Broken, What Are Businesses Doing To Fix it?

Rare but welcome feature of our industry into the mainstream press, and I have to say, the FT does a really good job of this - covering labour market paradox, demographic crisis, AI arms race, age-ism in the workforce and more. Bonus to see brainfooder Robert Newry in the show. It really is really good. H/T to brainfooder Darren Bush for the share in the online community.

ASSESSMENT

12. Rethinking Recruiting - AI, Skills & The Future of Talent Acquisition

Fantastic to see the great Bill Boorman finally get into the podcast game. It will come to no surprise to anyone to he’s a natural at having great conversations with smart people in the industry, which Matt Charney certainly is. Have a listen folks.

AI

13. How the Rich Ate South Korea: Dark World of Chaebols

The economy of the ROK has been one of the miracle stories of the modern era but it has not come without astonishing concentration of economic power into the hands of a few dynastically managed conglomerates. As of 2023, the top 10 ‘chaebols’ owned over 50% of the entire GDP of the country, with deep implications for politics, economy and society. Great documentary.

ECONOMY

End Notes

The #Desperate graphic label has been on my mind this week; we have reached a welcome point in public discourse where honesty, transparency and vulnerability are considered to be positive things but at what point does this become overshare?

Vote on the poll below on this, and if you’re comfortable, let me know in comments why you voted this way.

Leave a comment

That’s it - thanks for reading

Have a great week everybody

Hung