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Friends,

It’s that time of year when most of us are just about ready for shut down. If you’re taking your foot off the pedal this week, don’t feel guilty!

It’s been another challenging year for us in TA & HR and if you’ve been in work, I know you’ve been grinding hard; if you’ve been out, I know its been incredibly tough. Everyone deserves a break and we need one to recharge.

As we shift mode from BAU, I am going to repeat the three things which I think all of us need think about for 2025

1. AI Self Enablement - we all need to become AI enabled in 2025. No more excuses. No business hiring knowledge workers in 2025 will be hiring anyone who cannot demonstrate fluency with AI. You owe it to yourself to get good at this.

2. Network Value - is key to maintain human advantage in the era of AI. Think of your network as an appreciating asset - how can you invest in it to make it grow further? Getting involved in events is one.

3. Privacy vs Publicity - we rightly care about privacy but we do not care enough about publicity. It’s not a bad word or a bad thing that people know who you are or what you do. Personal branding is back in 2025 and it might have greater meaning than ever before. Benefits will disproportionately accrue to those members who find themselves in the training data….be more public and add your voice to the public discourse. We need polyphony from the community, not an oligarchy of influencers.
   

More to come on all of this from me - watch this space 👊

Thanks to: Martyn Redstone, Kevin Green, Garry Turner, Eugène Van Den Hemel, Stacey A Gordon, David Green, Antoine Gigomas, Bas van de Haterd, Kate Ellenbaum, Will Stoat, Marie-Laurence Hanot, Brendan Macomber, Sonia Douspis, Taz Rajabali, Paul McCardle, Steven Rothberg, Rob Walker, Andreea Lungulescu, Jim Miller, Bob Pulver, Tim Sanchez and Dave Hazlehurst - your public endorsement of all things brainfood helps me keep the lights on around here - cheers!

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What Do Brainfooders Think?

A record low vote count! I wonder whether there should be a minimum threshold on these polls in order to be democratically valid 🤣. Anyways, all pretty inconclusive and w/o demographic data, we probably won’t know too much more. Thanks to all who voted nonetheless - great to have your contribution!

Brainfood Double Header

Final two Brainfood Lives of 2024 are happening in the same week - this week! Starting tomorrow afternoon, we are doing the rescheduled Sustainable Recruitment in Healthcare: Strategies for 2024 & Beyond. Do we know why we have a hiring crisis in healthcare? It’s one of the most pressing challenges we as recruiters can play an active role in solving. Monday 16th Dec, 4pm GMT - register here

Finally, we are ending the year on with the Brainfood Live Christmas Special: Special announcements, special tributes, special people on the screen. Going to be an Open Mic section too so make sure you’re wearing your favourite Christmas jumper. Friday 20th December, 2pm GMT - register here

The Brainfood

1. The Cold Email Handbook

Are we still cold emailing? This is maybe the single best resource I’ve ever read about how to do it. Full stack, from tech infrastructure, domain warming, profile targeting, copy composition, receiver psychology, timing, style, intonation and - ‘message architecture which AI can personalise’. I stand by my prediction that AI will soon trigger collapse in engagement as we all get better at stuff like this. But between then and now, this email playbook is absolutely worth your read.

ENGAGEMENT

2. TalentUp European Salary Benchmarking 2024

What is the state of compensation in Europe? Our friends at TalentUp release their annual report, highly key metropolitan centres across Europe. Data is not payroll but a mix of sources, mostly job advertised. The chart about is for Amsterdam - what do we think of the ranges here? Loads of other cities profiled, including Barcelona, Berlin, London, Lisbon etc. Download it here

CULTURE

3. Talent Tech Trends to Watch in 2025

Some smart thinking by one of the smartest around, brainfooder Jonathan Kestenbaum pens three bullet points in this post about the future of recruiting tech. Going to get Jonathan onto an early 2025 Brainfood Live (follow the channel here if you haven’t already) to discuss how rectech roadmap - I’m pretty sure TA / HR don’t see what’s coming.

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

4. Amazon RTO: It’s 3+2 for the Luxembourgers

Andy Jassy’s announcement of a full RTO for Amazonians meets with local resistance from workers councils who are then able to pull of a compromise. The eventual resolution to a 4+1 working week is a reasonable deal, and a great manifestation of the Hegelian dialectic in action! Well done the Amazonian Luxembourgers, workers of the world unite…

REMOTE WORKING

5. The State of Pre-Employment Screening

I’m in this, but don’t let that put you off 🤣. Collection of thoughts from practitioners and product makers on the where we’re at with pre-employment screening. We’re obviously going to have to do more as the job applicant flood will keep surging in 2025 and beyond. Reference checks to make a comeback, and anyone who can promise to ethically convert 1000 applicants to 50 most qualified will get business. Check out the chat here

ASSESSMENT

6. How Video Transforms Outbound Sourcing Strategies

How are you using video in your candidate engagement? Ever since the days of Loom-video-as-message, I’ve become a believer. Rich media has greater information density - it’s just processed at the subconscious level. Some data here to support the case that it definitely works.

ENGAGEMENT

7. The Cost of Failure & Competitiveness in Disruptive Innovation

The crisis in the Europe - anaemic economic growth, high cost of living, high cost of doing business, the political rise of the Trumpian nativist right - has triggered a huge amount of online navel gazing, most of which erroneously attribute European failure to excessive red tape. This research paper makes that case, though via an interesting angle - for companies which are end up being disruptive unicorns often need to be able to quickly pivot as they find product-market-fit. Worker protections prevent this, hence US dominance of big tech. Thoughts on this?
SOCIETY

8. The Intelligence Imperative: How AI Went From Feature to Foundation

Interesting collection of charts from Tom Tunguz, breaking down US VC investment into rounds. Two arguments here: 1) all SaaS companies have AI in them anyway, so this tells us nothing, or 2) AI first companies will eat traditional SaaS, with disruption occurring at the business model level (see Kestenbaum’s post earlier). Whichever case, companies with investment as not funnelling the money into payroll as much as they were - it is going into compute, not headcount.

AI

9. Every Company Should Be Owned By Its Employees

With Donald Trump coming out in favour of Luddism, I’m reminded of the potentially negative role labour organisation can play; the temporary protection of existing worker’s benefits, coming at the expense of future, more devastating disruption. The US Longshoremen should take a closer look at the workers in the VW factories which are about to be shut down. The problem may be the structure of relations, which inevitably pits employer vs employee. So what if you were always both?

WORKFORCE AUTOMATION

10. A Guide to HR Predictions, Trends, and Forecasts

We’re in predictions season and I really enjoy these speculations because I am also a huge fan of science fiction 🤣. That said, it is a worthy exercise to get your thoughts into writing - the act of doing so sharpens your thinking. That said, sometimes you need a decent critique of the whole predictions genre. This post from reviews the phenomenon of HR predictions - it’s a great read of some original thinking. H/T to brainfooder Jesse Sims for the share.

FUTURE OF WORK

The Podcast

11. The State of Talent Acquisition with Hung Lee

Delighted to join brainfooder Paul Church on this Talent & Growth Podcast. We’re talking about the State of Talent Acquisition here - same topic as we had on Brainfood Live last Friday. Have a listen to my view on Paul’s podcast and on the panels view on Brainfood Live.

ECONOMY

12. Jobs of the Future: Where Hardware Meets Software

Great to see brainfooder Steph Smith continue to ask smart people smart questions on the a16z podcast. It’s positive take on how on hostile de-globalisation will create new jobs as economic growth + national security become increasingly intertwined. Electrical Engineering is hard though, and we might soon see the validity of the software as an ‘engineering’ discipline. Have a watch.

FUTURE OF WORK

13. Mastering AI in Recruitment to Enhance Sourcing and Improve Client Engagement with Reiss McNally

Had a great Christmas lunch last week (hosted by the recruitment pricing expert himself, brainfooder Jon Brooks) and was reminded at the table that one of the guests runs a podcast. I had a listen - it’s really good. Brainfooder Ben Browning with his excellent 1-2-1 podcast with recruitment business owners. Agency owners are at the forefront of AI adoption - I think we will soon see some very compelling service offerings which will reverse the flow of requisition that has been going inhouse for the past decade. Watch here

ENGAGEMENT

End Note

I’m out every day of the week of this week, in a frantic scramble to see as many people as I can before the holiday break. Brainfood will keep going though, though Brainfood Live will on break until 10th Jan. This Week, In Recruiting will continue uninterrupted, though I am seriously thinking of a rebrand to ‘Open Kitchen’ as that is what most people read it for - what do you think?

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That’s it - thanks for reading

Have a great week everybody

Hung