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Friends,

It’s time to say goodbye to Cambodia. I hadn’t intended to spend the amount of time I did in this country, but I am very glad that I did - intriguing place, wonderful people, a country in the midsts of transformation. Going to miss it but onwards I go as I roll slowly toward Australia.

I’ll be in Singapore by tonight where I will spend the next three days - join us at Overeasy for a meetup on Tuesday 25th Feb, 6pm and make sure you tune in Brainfood on Tour How to Hire in Singapore in 2025 on Wednesday 26th Feb, 09.30 am local time. By Thursday, I’m going to be Jakarta - so if you’re around there for the next 5 days, let me know if you want to meet up

Thanks to: Andreea Lungulescu, Bas van de Haterd, Joey NK Koksal, Kevin Green, Clair Mohammed, Randy Bailey, Jamie Leonard, Steven Rothberg, Rob Walker, Martin Warren, Pratima Prasad, Joe Atkinson, Bill Fischer, Dhairya Modi, James Osborne, Juliana Park, Alex Gotoi, Dave Hazlehurst and Paul McCardle - thank you for your public endorsement of all things brainfood last week - keeping the show on the road with your promotions - cheers!

Can you help? Share this newsletter with your friends in HR / TA who need to be better connected with quality info!

Share Recruiting Brainfood

What Do Brainfooders Think?

So it looks like we know after a month whether a new hire is going to work out or not. I think on the other side, you probably know as the hire whether the job is right in that time frame. We probably should talk about PIP’s then - are they just performative, legal cover for an inevitable exit? Thanks for all who voted!

Brainfood Live On Air & Brainfood On Tour

We have a triple header this week!

1) How to Hire in Singapore in 2025 (Weds 26th 09.30am ST) register here

2) followed by Introducing AI Agent by PeopleGPT later same day 3pm GMT / 7am PT. I’m doing a series of live demo’s of Agentic AI for recruiting - David Paffenholz is first up to show us what it can do! Register here.

3) Finally, on Friday we’re with Ahryun Moon, CEO of Goodtime as we talk about their latest report on hiring efficiency: Unlocking the 2025 Hiring Insights Report Friday 28th 7am PT / 10am ET / 3pm GMT - register here

The Brainfood

1. Edelman Trust Barometer 2025

Calls for RTO + continued layoffs + roll back of DEI - can we be surprised that trust in employers has suffered a significant decline over the past 12 months? The greatest surprise that despite this, the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer still has employers remaining the most trusted of institutions, with media, government and even science suffering greater declines. Social media has introduced an epistemic crisis; genAI will only accelerate it. EB gains to be made for those who can figure it out.

EMPLOYER BRANDING

2. Beyond Hires per Recruiter: A Smarter Way to Measure Recruiting Performance

Don’t be shy about sending me your work. Brainfooder Will Ducey wasn’t and this is the second week in a row in which his stuff is featured. It’s another banger, this time discussing a topic we have all have vested interest - a more granular and accurate understanding of recruiter performance, based on difficulty of hire. Have a read. Will is probably worth a follow.

RECRUITING OPERATIONS

3. Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking 2025

Everyone technological innovation will be an act of de-skilling. I know for a fact my basic mental arithmetic skills have atrophied since the ubiquity of online calculators! Same will go with languages, with universal translators and maybe a whole lot more with generalist AI. Important paper on how ChatGPT will reduce capacity for critical thinking - the very reason why it is useful is the reason why it will make us use-less. HuffPost article for easy reading here, full paper worth a download here. H/T to brainfooder Lauren Sharp for the share in the online community.

AI

4. International AI Safety Report 2025

The recently concluded Paris AI Summit was unsurprisingly hijacked by a JD Vance speech on ‘AI opportunity’ which signposts a future where the US abandons consideration for AI safety - and pretence of adherence to any agreements reached between nation states - in pursuit of AI supremacy. This changes the game most for the EU, whose cautious approach to AI will come under increasing pressure if self imposed constraints slow down AI development. On the other hand, a divergent vision of AI may be just what the world needs - a multi-polar AI at least gives the user choices to make. International AI Safety Report doesn’t really talk about this but it does give an outstanding outline on where we’re at, somehow managing to be legible to the complete newcomer and advanced reader at the same time. Download this, it is very well put together.

AI

5. 5 x Common Hiring Funnels by Role Type - Visualised

Who is doing the design for these amazing visuals? Fantastic one page overview again from brainfooder Dave Owen on how hiring funnels differ by role type. Kind of helps us thinking about automation opportunity also. Have a read on Dave’s thoughts here. H/T to brainfooder Ivan Harrison for the share.

RECRUITING OPERATIONS

6. The State of Company Offsites Report 2025

Are you planning on a company offsite this year? This is a fascinating report on what is increasingly becoming a critical event in the organisational calendar. Barcelona / Lisbon are the most popular individual destinations, 3 days is the most common duration and somewhere near a beach the most common type of retreat. Data from a domain where we usually don’t get much so take a look ;-) H/T to brainfooder Omer Har-shai for the share.

CULTURE

7. The Labor Market Effects of Generative Artificial Intelligence

We find, consistent with other surveys (Bick, Blandin, and Deming (2024) and Pew) that Generative AI tools like large language models (LLMs) are most commonly used in the labor force by younger individuals, more highly educated individuals, higher income individuals, and those in particular industries such as customer service, marketing and information technology.

‘younger individuals’ is interesting to me - what is the dividing line? As I get older, my connection with younger generations inevitably weakens. Probably need to do a youth focused Brainfood live on this. Lots more of interest in this research paper, including a useful list of existing literature on the topic GenAI impact on work, as well as survey results on current usage. H/T to brainfooder Donna Svei for the share.

AI

8. The US is No Longer a Nation of Small Business.

Interesting thread on the distribution of employment in the US, which is becoming concentrated in bigger organisations over time. I wonder whether this is due to the nature of market competition where the big beasts gobble up the small to eventually establish de facto monopolies (Boeing, Amazon, Walgreens etc). A problem especially if AI / Automation may bring biggest value to the largest employers - be interested to know if anyone has a study on AI vs organisation size. Let me know if you know of one…

ECONOMY

9. New Junior Developers Can’t Actually Code

Related to the No3 in this newsletter, here is a personal anecdote from a tech hiring manager exacerbated by the quality of junior developers coming into their hiring funnel. What are we hiring for? If it is purely for the output, then perhaps we just need the output and not the human who pushes a button ‘generate’. A moat is emerging between pre-AI professionals who subsequently become accomplished AI-users vs those who never developed the skills because AI did it for them.

ASSESSMENT

10. Not Forbes but Mort's: Germany’s Top 30 HR, Branding & Hiring Influencers (2025)

Generally dislike lists because they do tend to ‘make the richer richer’ but this one was great because a) its well researched b) doesn’t take itself too seriously and c) is in fact a great resource for anyone who wants to get deeper in the Germany HR / TA scene. Great to see quite a few brainfooders in this; missing Andreea Lungulescu but I am sure that will be fixed for next year.

PERSONAL BRANDING

The Podcasts

11. Is DEI Dead?

It’s a tough debate but one which we must continually surface in our sector; Trump 2.0 certainly wants it dead so how are we in HR / TA going to react? Transatlantic divergence will obviously occur now, but for US based companies with offices overseas - as is the case in this example - we can expect local offices to adhere to the new regime in the US. Good listen, lots to think about. H/T to brainfooder Matt Farrah

D&I

12. Gen Zs Are Rethinking 9-To-5 Work: Will Hong Kong Cope Without The Hustle?

I posted a poll on LinkedIn on Saturday on where we’re at with Gen Z, so this YT video of the youth in Hong Kong was timely. It’s always hard to know how representative these personal stories are in documentaries like this, but if we take them on face value, it looks like Gen Z may still be operating as if it was 2021, and not 2025. What do you think?

SOCIETY

13. Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone: What Is It? Will It Work?

Special Economic Zones or SEZ’s have been in vogue as mechanisms to spur economic growth, especially if you can connect capital + labour often separated by different legal jurisdictions. The iconic example is Shenzhen / Hong Kong which transformed the former into a powerhouse of tech innovation and economic growth today. Can the Johor-Singapore SEZ do the same? Good mini documentary on this case. It’s significant, for recruiting.

SOCIETY

End Note

Every technology advance produces de-skilling effects. Practically none of us know how to ride horses, but most of us might know how to drive a car. With automonous driving coming, one day soon we will forget how to do that too. Is this effect already making itself felt in recruiting, and if so, is it a problem? This is the poll for this week folks…

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That’s it - thanks for reading

Have a great week everyone

Hung