Recruiting Brainfood for the week ahead - Issue #283

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Interesting mashup between Github and LinkedIn, tracking how skills have changed over the years for the 800 million of us now on LinkedIn. A bit of a fiddly UI to manipulate but plenty of data to pile into. Obviously I searched first for ‘global’ and ‘recruiter’ and guess what? Skills have stayed pretty much the same, make of this what you will. Have a play here. H/T brainfooder Nathan Perrott for the share

I’m excited about this category of ‘compensation tech’. We’re starting to be able to aggregate this data now, and from there, be able to provide true market intelligence as to how competitive our comp & bens really are. This report from Ledgy covers equity, share options and cap table trends for 2022. Useful for all recruiters in tech startup. Also might be a nice piece of nurture content for your tech talent pool - worth pinging this out to your tech candidates. H/T to brainfooder Joe Brennan for the share.

Is the key to diversifying the workforce using more, or less, candidate information? Dr John Sullivan is not providing a recommendation here, but he does outline all the actions you can take if you choose to provide less. Instrumental value in this post, but also a brainfood stimulant - if candidate assessment is so problematic that we need to put these mitigations in place, do we actually need an entirely new approach to how we do due diligence in hiring people?

I have been trying to find a way to highlight the most promising initiatives that have been launched to help the people impacted by the war in Ukraine. Most of these are going to be attached to the pinned thread in the fb group. This one was included also, given that directly speaks to the brainfood audience. Can you hire someone who has been displaced by conflict? Post your job here and Imagine will match it to someone who needs it.

I like to think I know a decent amount about email, having sent over 5 million of them in the course of doing this newsletter, but I learned something from this post, particularly on better use of alias and multiple accounts. Lot of us struggle with this, the inbox is a busy place. Useful post for anyone looking to make it less busy

Beautifully designed report on the ‘state of burnout’ in tech. It’s not just about the cute Pacman theme though, as it adds some real psychological insight into what burnout is and how it manifests. Deservingly shared multiple times in the fb group, so thanks to brainfooders Alexandru Gotoi, Martyn Redstone and Denys Dinkevych 🇺🇦 - it’s a must read folks.

This is low effort / high return recruitment marketing. Recruiters in competitive markets already have ‘target’ company’s to hire from, so why not get your CEO to make a public call out when one of them runs into difficulty? Simple stuff, not enough of us think to do it.

What more do you want? It’s a massive list of 4000+ sourcing resources, here

HR commentary from non-HR people remains my favourite kind of content. Simple analysis by this software engineer of two types of culture she has come across and what that means to how you need to behave. Do we apply this thinking in candidate assessment? We should, though we are currently too terrified about talking about ‘culture fit to get there. We need to get over it - have a read.

Interesting piece of analysis from McKinsey & Co, on which manufacturing organisations managed to escape ‘pilot purgatory’ and successfully realised the gains of using AI in business operations. Long, but accessible. Skip to the end if you want to see what the common characteristics of successful implementers were.

Been waiting for a post like this - comprehensive breakdown of the things you have to be think about when you’re hiring a true remote first, remote anywhere team. Brainfooder Jessica Zwaan with the outstanding knowledge drop.

Being ‘on-trend’ is probably more important than being good at what you do. It simply gives you a better chance of success, whilst reducing the chances of failure. Brainfooder Steph Smith with another one of her superb threads on the generation defining trends of today. Steph is a must follow on twitter btw.

I never thought I’d see social media scrutiny come back into relevance in recruitment, but in the era of cultural change, the things candidates say and do in their personal lives can no longer be discounted from our assessment of suitability. Good template / examples in this post by CheckSocial. Also a future Brainfood Live I think - what are the ethics of social media assessment, what is ok, not ok, marginal in what a potential hire has said in the past?

One of the many reasons why review sites are so hard to get right - how do we know what is said is true and if not, what can be done about it? We basically can’t rely on witness testimony alone, especially anonymous testimony. On the EB though, I wonder whether disputing things in court might be additionally bad EB. What do you think?

H/T to brainfooder Elaine Rice for the share

Apologies for the Business Insider link but this story is one of the few relevant ones on the Metaverse which is worth trying to read. It kind of resonated with own first experience of AR/VR conference a couple of years ago - it is weird but also pretty cool. Let me know if anyone is setting up one of these things. Maybe I have to do it actually, given the size of the brainfood audience - do enough people have an Occulus? H/T to brainfooder Bas van de Haterd for the share.

The stereotype that all US writers ‘live in Brooklyn’ is explained in this insightful and unusual post, which separates two variables - status and income - which are often correlated but not contingent. Lots of truth here about the creator economy, must read for anyone thinking of pursuing this path.

I’m always going to have a bias for anything that references Mark Granovetter. This short post is a lament for the decline of ‘peripheral friendships’ and why they are critical for information flow, especially for job and career.

Chris Russell is a good person to follow for recruitment technology, chatting here with brainfooder Gordon Stoddart on the state of recruitment technology.

Clearer Thinking is turning into one of my favourite podcasts. Host Spencer Greenberg is a pretty much a genius nerd who has a great way of interacting with equally intelligent guests. This one, on mental models, is useful for us to get a better grip on a world that refuses to show us the truth.

The fundamental weirdness of organisation of US sports occasionally produces outcomes like this - players unionising in a country that has been conventionally anti-union, and consequently, player strikes where entire seasons might not take place due to pay disputes. It’s a fascinating microcosm - have a listen here. H/T to brainfooder Bas van de Haterd for the share