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Friends,

What a fantastic event NJA People & Talent Summit really was - so great to see the community of recruiters & people professionals come together and share knowledge and reconnect. Massive congrats to the Sydney Talent Meetup for their first event - one of many to come for sure. If you’re a Sydneysider and not part of this group, sort it out it now. It was a real pleasure and privilege to take part - great to meet so many brainfooders there - and so sorry for amateur move of holding the mic too low during my talk!

Special mention to the uber generous Laura Johnson - thanks for putting up with me for the past week 🙏. Unlimited Greggs Steak Bakes on me when I see you in London this summer 👊

I’m now in inland somewhere in Victoria. Hope to see some Kangaroos and Emus, will update on the ‘gram if I do. Will be back in Melbourne in time for 19th, where I will dropping into AvatureUpfront 2025 (thanks Lin Xin for the invite!) come up and say hello if you’re going.

Then end of the month: TalentPalooza in Abbotsford Convent on the March 26th - 27th. Grab your tickets here (RECRUITINGBRAINFOOD) for discount code.

Thanks to: Kevin Green, Joey NK Koksal, Dave Hazlehurst, Eugene van den Hemel, Sinead English, Tess Kirley, Pedro Oliveira, John Vlastelica, Rob Walker, Mary Kay Baldino, Gautam Ghosh, Beth Hargreaves, Pooja Nimal, Eryn Button, Joseph Tamaiva, Michelle Barrett, Teresa Lilly, Sarah Bolitho, Surabhi Nigam, Matt MacFarlane, Noa Rein, Cameron Robinson, Lauren Sharp, Kimberly Drury Lightning, Donna Svei, Juliana Park, Sinead English, Tess Kirley, Andy Dunne and Stephen Donaldson - your public endorsement of all things brainfood is the only marketing this newsletter gets. Cheers!

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Share Recruiting Brainfood

What Do Brainfooders Think?

Hiring Manager Self Serve is a topic we need to talk more about, especially as the earliest ways in which AI is impact hiring seems to be directly empowering hiring managers to do more. Episode 300 of Brainfood Live is already dedicated to exploring this further - you can already register here for it now.

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep297 - DOGE, US Fed Gov & Future of TA & HR, Friday 21st, 11am PST / 2pm EST

My take on Elon Musk is that he is an existential threat to TA & HR. I have not seen anyone else make this case, so am I being sensationalist? Lets talk to US recruiters / HR pro’s & employment law experts to get their take on what Trump 2.0, Elon Musk, DOGE and the rest mean for TA & HR. We’re again on US friendly timezone, on Friday 21st, 11am PST / 2pm EST. Register here

The Brainfood

1. Agentic AI: The Next Evolution in Talent Acquisition?

Brainfooder Matt Staney with a digestible overview of the potential of Agentic AI in Talent Acquisition. As some of you might know, I’ve been running an informal demo series of Agentic AI products in Brainfood Live (vendors who think they got one, CEO got to come on and live demo 🤣) and its pretty clear to me that we’re already at the next phase of AI. How can TA prepare? Matt’s got some thoughts on that too.

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

2. How to Get Your Website Featured by ChatGPT and Other AI Search Engines

Are you in the training data? AI-powered chatbots are changing how we discover information and any one providing any service has a vested interest in being having your business in the generated answer. Inevitably, the SEO optimisers - which some might credibly argue contributed to the decline of the search engine as a useful tool - have got a plan to ensure your business gets the AI recommendation. Long and a bit technical, but everyone really should read this.

CONTENT MARKETING

3. DOGE Comes for the Consultants

Elon Musk’s maniacal war against waste might actually end up having some legitimate targets. Channelling Maria Mazzucato’s crusade against management consultancies, Musk is making his move against a sector which constitutes a $100 billion per year cost to US government.

CULTURE

4. WEF 2025: Global Skills Taxonomy Adoption Toolkit

Can we ever get to a point where we all share a global skills taxonomy? Would be pretty useful if we could get there - perhaps the sheer impracticality of creating your own taxonomy will lead to mass adoption of the one already pre-built for you by the WEF. Somewhat turgid document which is nevertheless useful for anyone under going company transformation or shift to SBH/SBO. Download here.

ASSESSMENT

5. Confessions of a Reluctant Thought Leader

A profoundly personal post from brainfooder Lars Schmidt, who explains why he changed career track from being an influencer back to being operator. If you didn’t know why Lars became such a well loved and respected leader in the TA/HR community, this post will give you a clue. Lots to think about here, especially as the path of the ‘influencer’ is likely to continue to be compelling for many.

COMMUNITY

6. Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index: Starting 2025 on the Wrong Foot

That employee confidence is at record low might be squarely and fairly attributed to Trump 2.0 - laying off hundreds of thousands of Federal employees with combination of casual carelessness + sadistic relish might have that effect. Anyways, universal trade wars, now you see it / now you don’t tariffs all make CEO’s think twice about investing for growth - look forward to seeing where we’re at in six month’s time.

ECONOMY

7. Candidates Faking Identity or Appearance?

We have actually caught one in the wild! Brainfooder Bettina Lipporazzi interviews a candidate who seems to be using facial alteration tech and when challenged on the matter, bounces on the call. Three things to think about here: 1) the tech will get better and we will soon have to make honest candidates prove they are not faking by default, thereby damaging CX, 2) fraud detection will become an increasingly important part of a recruiters role, 3) in-person interviews requirement will continue to dry out the remote market. Love to get you back on Brainfood Live Bettina, talk us through what you thought the motivations were here. H/T to another brainfooder, Simon McSorley, for the share.

ASSESSMENT

8. America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

As AI is coming for white collar work, so Robotics is coming for blue collar work. Incredible essay from Semianalysis on the state of the ‘new labour economy’ when robots will play an increasingly important part of real world economic output. Written as a CTA for American manufacturing to accelerate on automation, it nevertheless retains enough objectivity to be readable as a ‘state of the market’ piece. Give it a read here.

WORKFORCE AUTOMATION

9. Have Humans Passed Peak Brain Power?

Well referenced article from the Financial Times which argues that our relationship with information is changing and not in a good way. The barrage of notifications, availability of infinite scroll, the algorithmically induced addiction to social media, have all contributed to an erosion of our ‘capacity to understand’. AI will accelerate this deterioration so that the challenge for the next gen recruiter will be how to engage the permanently inattentive. Walled cities for some, clever sensationalism for most I should imagine. Worth a read, but the links are where the greatest value here

ENGAGEMENT

10. Dubai Is a Vision of the Future

Hostility to immigration has moved from margins to the mainstream over the past decade, so it was no surprise to see countries previously denigrated as ‘authoritarian’ states now being held up as potential examples to for the formerly liberal Western democracies to follow. Dubai is a country with very clear immigration policy - no path to citizenships, employer sponsored visas dominate, rights of all residents, conspicuously tiered. Pays a lot though, and that’s the deal. This post seems to me to be a fair portrait of a system that many countries might be tempted to adopt - have a read.

D&I

The Podcasts

11. Financial Crash Now Looks More Likely

Somehow this guy’s low production value, dead pan British delivery makes dense economic analysis easy to consume. US stock market is crashing and here are the reasons why: speculative bubble, a pre-DeepSeek AI powered boom, early Trump promise of tax cuts / de-regulation and - as it turned out - a gross underestimation of scale of tariffs and reality of DOGE. Easy listening on a tough topic.

ECONOMY

12. Watch a 14 Minute Demo of Me using Manus for the First Time

This is why I much prefer livestreaming to podcasting - you get real time reactions from people which is so difficult to fake, or edit out on post. AI builder McKay Wrigley tests Manus for the first time and is blown away. Great watch / listen, especially on this focus on what the agent is trying to do, which is ‘computer use’…

AI

13. Ideal Structure of AI-enabled TA

I rarely promote Brainfood Lives on this newsletter but this one is well worth more of us to dig into. Brainfooders John Vlastelica, Jim Miller and Mary Kay Baldino are amongst the most intelligent operators in our business today. We (they really) talk about the future structure of TA - including one very important point - that the conversation of AI needs to diversify away from just cost / efficiency. Must watch folks, do it here

End Note

I want to talk about fraud mitigation. Bettina’s experience above will surely become much more common - if not ubiquitous - in the near future. Imagine if we sent forward a candidate like this to a hiring manager? Our credibility would be (rightly) shot. So….what are we doing about it? Topic for this week’s poll where are we with candidate fraud detection mitigation?

Leave a comment

Let me know in comments what kinds of mitigation strategy you think would work in Bettina’s example - definitely need a conversation on this!

That’s it for now - thanks for reading

Have a great week everybody

Hung