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Friends,

Thank you to everyone in Los Angeles and Anaheim that made me so welcome this past week. It’s been an amazing week full of new and old connections. I remain convinced that one of the most important things we can each do is: find a way to connect in person with other members of industry and contribute your voice to the public discourse, especially when that discourse is now training data for future AI. Big List of Events is about to turn from 2024 to 2025, so bookmark it, add any events you’re going to but are missing from this schedule and share it publicly with other people in industry and have them do the same.

Event organisers: add your 2025 events to this now!

Back in London this week, where I hope to see you at HR Vision and make sure you also tune when I moderate Worksome’s webinar on Mastering the Skills Economy: Freelance Operations & Techology. And if you’re at the BBC on Friday, come up and say hello 👋

Thank you to: Martyn Redstone, Achyut AK Menon, Joey NK Koksal, Matt McFarlane, James Stanton, Juliana Park, Bas van de Haterd, Kevin Wheeler, Adam Posner, Evan White, Michael Glenn, David Manaster, Corinne Long, Rob Walker, James Shenton, Kevin Walker, Hannah Morgan, Carmen Hudson, Steve Rothberg, Richard Bradley, Colin Donnery and Stephen O’Donnell - your public shares of the newsletter is the best digital word-of-mouth marketing anyone can ask for - thank you!

Can you help? Share this newsletter on LinkedIn and have your network susbcribe. Cheers!

Share Recruiting Brainfood

What Do Brainfooders Think?

The gym was closed 🤣! I did in fact do most of these but perhaps the most worthwhile was the recommendation by brainfooder Maarten Brand who suggested a hike up to Griffith Observatory for some nighttime views of Los Angeles. Totally worth it.

Founders Focus - Ep52 - Up close and personal with Matthijs Metzemaekers, CEO of Carv, Tues 19th Nov, 10am GMT / 11am CET

We’re back with one of my favourite things to do - getting up close and personal with the recruitment tech builders changing the way we hire and work today. It’s fantastic to grab some time with Matthijs Metzemaekers, CEO of Carv. What lessons can we learn from a rectec entrepreneur in Europe? Tune in here

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep283 - Sustainable Recruitment in Healthcare: Strategies in 2024 & Beyond, Fri 22nd Nov, 2pm GMT

Healthcare hiring has been one of the most persistently challenging sectors in recruitment. With societies aging all over the world, the need for healthcare professionals is sure to continue; we’re taking a sectoral deep dive on the state of the healthcare market. Obviously must attend for anyone in sector - register here

The Brainfood

1. Executive Insights for 2025

200 C-level execs surveyed on where they are are with AI; we know the story by now, everyone wants to move from strategy to implementation but seem to be struggling to do so. This chart on which ideas could be tried to help with unblocking had some decent ideas - I suspect some combination of ‘all of the above’ might be the idea. Last column is most important though - we need to create the bandwidth to experiment - that means coming off 100% execution mode.

AI

2. Global Power 150 Women in Staffing

Generally dislike listicles - there are always those who should be there but are not - but we can nevertheless use this article from SIA to find more interesting people to follow on line. It’s 150 Women leaders in staffing - check it out here.

D&I

3. Department of Government Efficiency

Perhaps the greatest immediate impact Trump 2.0 is going to have on the sector is mass firings of the public sector workforce. The announcement that Elon Musk - along with Vivek Ramaswamy - has been appointed the 'Department of Government Efficiency’ augurs ill for the 20+ million workers currently on the government payroll. Lyn Alden provides a breakdown on who these workers are, where in the government structure they operate and how much money would be ‘saved’ if they were all fired, and contextualises it on where the federal budget is currently distributed.

SOCIETY

4. The Role of Humans in an AI-Driven Talent Acquisition Process

Eric Knauf writes a thoughtful post on the irreplaceable value human recruiters will perform when AI takes away the information carrying / processing demands of the current workflow. Rapport building, cultural fit analysis, human judgement where data is ambiguous - hard to disagree with all of this - even though it inexorably leads us to an uncomfortable end point - the necessary rehabilitation of bias. Have a read.

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

5. Understanding Talent Scarcity: Randstad AI & Equity Report 2024

12,000 people surveyed on their use of AI, segmented by gender, generation and disability. Controversial opinion: I’m not sure it matters as much as it might seem that some demographics are ahead of others in usage of AI - vendor deployed AI will equalise usage for most. What do you think - am I wrong not to be alarmed by this?? Have a read

D&I

6. Understanding AI Agents: Moving Beyond RPA

Boolean Black Belt may be over, but I am very pleased to see the high impact return of brainfooder Glen Cathey, who is now frequently posting on LinkedIn, mainly on the topic of AI. As Director of Innovation at Randstad, as well as a founding father of the whole sourcing idea, Glen’s commentary is as credible, comprehensive and thought provoking as it comes. This post is an example of the quality of his output - a must read, on the AI Agents. And Glen is a must follow of course.

AI

7. Who is AI Replacing? The Impact of Generative AI on Online Freelance Economy

What jobs are most exposed to AI? Academic study on job posting volume before / after ChatGPT found that writing jobs experienced the largest decrease in demand (30.37%), followed by software/app development (20.62%) and engineering (10.42%). Most AI insulated jobs? Manual intensive. Plumbers staying around longer that copywriters, at least until the robots get rolled out.

AI

8. TA Tech Landscape

Vendor landscape maps are problematic but not without value. This is a tremendous piece of work from brainfooder Glenn Lindley, whose shown to be open to updating this map through input from the community members. Useful for anyone wanting an at-a-glance snapshot of the some of the leading recruitment tech vendors in some of the most important categories.

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

9. Levelling up: Against Just "Cities and Skills"

This post is an example of the value of ‘asking stupid questions’. UK’s industrial policy green paper on up levelling economically unproductive cities might have missed an essential point - what exactly is a city? Productivity numbers would look different if we gerrymandered the geography - and maybe we should. Bit of a mind bender but definitely brainfood.

SOCIETY

10. TSMC Sued for Race and Citizenship Discrimination at its Arizona Facilities

The story of TSMC in Arizona continues to be a case study of the importance of company culture. Failure to hire (and retain) US workers, led to the mass importation of workers from Taiwan, which is now led to allegation of race and citizenship discrimination, this time with the American citizens being the ones discriminated against.

D&I

The Podcasts

11. RL100 Middle East - 100 Voices

It was a pleasure to be interviewed by Shereen Ghanem last month on the 100 Voices podcast. Its great to see local podcasts covering the region, featuring local hosts and guests. I go and visit local recruiter communities more to learn than to teach, believe me. Have a listen.

CULTURE

10. 9 Humanoid Robots That Are Shaping the Future of Work

As embodied intelligence, human beings are processing much more information than even the world’s most advanced AI. But the bodies are coming to the AI too and we’re about to see another step change in the future of work when embodied AI begins showing up to work. A selection of models on the production floor now. Rewatch this in 6 months time to see how dated these robots seem then.

WORKFORCE AUTOMATION

11. Deindustrialization in Europe?

Patrick Boyle again - with his annoyingly compelling dictation again. The episode doesn’t really doesn’t need a question mark though, as Europe enters the Trump 2.0 era in a geopolitical position much worse than Trump 1.0 with domestically weak national leaders, anaemic economic growth, an energy crisis w/o possibility of short term resolution, and looming tariff wars with the two biggest economies on the planet. It’s grim stuff, but we have to look reality squarely in the face before we’re able to get out of it.

ECONOMY

End Notes

Jenson Huang was interviewed the other day and he made a comment which I think 12 months ago would’ve been accepted without much thought, but today sounds cliche - that AI will not replace human workers but human workers enabled by AI will replace who are not so enabled. This is the ‘AI Optimist’ view and whilst it might be true, I wonder on what it may be based. Then there is another view, that AI is going to doom us all (pessimist) and then another which says that AI is not as big a deal as either optimist or pessimist think (skeptic). The poll for this week folks - which statement most accurately describes your position on AI?

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That’s it - thanks for reading

Have a great week everybody

Hung