Brainfood Live On Air - Issue 374

Gemini from Google, Blackrock geopolitical risk dashboard, a very cool first 90 days in TA one pager and research on the state of jobs, recruiters and how to get a 90% response rate...

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Friends,

I’m currently writing a ‘look back’ series on TWIR on Monday, and will end the year with a final two essays - ‘Grading my Forecast of 2023’ and Forecasting 2024. One of the things I want to do this time is to make my predictions SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time bound) in order to hold myself more accountable for forecasts made. It got me thinking whether this could be a fun exercise for us to do as a community 🤣

Example Prediction:

Specific: Chatbot adoption on employer career sites will increase from 8% to 30%

Measurable: We will know the prediction is succeeds / fails using Bas van de Haterd annual research on Dutch career sites as proxy for wider market

Achievable: Don’t see why not

Realistic: it is reasonable at least!

Time bound: by end of 2024

Do you have any SMART predictions for 2024? Leave a comment at the end of this newsletter with your most confident prediction - lets collect together some thoughts on this 👊

BTW: I am moderating a panel on future HR / TA trends this Tuesday 12 December 2023 at 15:00 GMT, 10:00 EST, sign up here

Thanks to: Eugène van den Hemel, Steve Jacobs, Bas van de Haterd, Carlo Pezzuto, Kevin Green, Oana Iordachescu, Martin Poole, Barry Flack, Caroline Hunter, Adam Gordon, Vicki Saunders, Alexandra Gyetvai, Luke Davis, Josh Willows, Bob Pulver, David Green and Stephen O’Donnell for your public endorsement of all things brainfood - needed to keep this show on the road 🙏

Can you help? Share this newsletter on LinkedIn and have your recruiter network subscribe - cheers

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What Do Brainfooders Think?

What do we see from this? I think this shows that brainfooders are not naive optimists but realists who are girding themselves for another challenging year ahead. This is a winnowing period - the people and businesses who make it past this Winter will dominate the Spring. Thanks for voting everyone - make sure you scroll to the end and vote on this week’s topic.

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Brainfood Live On Air - Ep237 - 2023 Year in Review in LinkedIn, Content & Sourcing, Friday 15th December, 2pm GMT

You can’t get away from LinkedIn - if you’re a recruiter, you log on every day, even on Sundays 🤣. We’re going to look at Linkedin via two lens - from a content / newsfeed perspective with brainfooder Andy Foote, then switch to sourcing / search with brainfooder Irina Shamaeva. Going to be a must watched folks. Register here

PS: anyone want to LinkedIn Live this show, additionally click on this link and set up (free to do, and you get the traffic for it!)

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The Brainfood

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1. Introducing Gemini

Google’s so far underwhelming offering to the GAI space received a massive boost with the release of Gemini, a multi-modal LLM illustrated with a jaw dropping intro video, which seemed to demonstrate the AI’s ability to seamlessly move between input modes, whilst being prompted with voice commands. Of course, none of it was really real, and the ongoing backlash on the video maybe turning a PR triumph into disaster. However, more detail on how it works from DeepMind and Google Developers blog suggest something significant. Google have also thought about the money as well - Gemini will be available in Ultra, Pro and Nano tiers - the future revenue model of the AI enabled internet looks pretty much set.

AI

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2. Celebrating the First Year of Copilot with Significant New Innovations

Microsoft remains the most likely super spreader of AI - this post not only celebrates 12 months of Copilot (it’s been in beta internally) but also includes research on where productivity gains have been secured by using AI-assistants. Main takeaway? AI resolves the speed vs quality trade off on a wide variety of information processing tasks.

AI

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3. How Top TAs Achieve a 90% Positive Response Rate

Spoiler: mainly by writing highly personalised messages and following up. Not rocket science this recruitment business eh 😀? However, it is great to validate theories we know already to be true - this insight is taken from tech labour marketplace cord, who continue their excellent practice of regularly reporting on activity data on their platform. NB: ‘True personalisation’ will become a communication skill in the near future - how a recruiter can communicate human-ness in comms in an era of GAI messaging.

ENGAGEMENT

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4. Indeed’s 2024 UK Jobs & Hiring Trends Report: Challenges Ahead in 2024

Another company with a great habit of sharing insight from proprietary data, is Indeed - or more precisely, the Hiring Lab team at Indeed. It’s not great news for the UK I am afraid, with jobs market slowing down as employers hold on FTE hiring until the country has some sort of stability in policy making, and maybe, some sort of vision beyond anti-immigrant tribal signalling. It’s great research on a mismanaged economy.

ECONOMY

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5. My 90-day New Head of Talent Acquisition Roadmap in 2024: One Pager

How cool is this? Another example of pro-level content quality being produced by members of the community. Of course you can tailor all the bits to your own tastes but the discipline of forcing all the parameters into a one pager is something we could all learn if we want to create frameworks that we are actually going to use.

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

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6. LinkedIn 2024: Asia and Africa Recruiters Surge as Europe and South America Stumble

Maybe some other places are doing better. Brainfooder Jan Tegze certainly thinks so, as this outstanding piece of research on the volume of recruiter profiles on LinkedIn seems to show. Three reasons why this is a great piece: 1) demonstrates that one person can do research 2) shows the world is bigger than we usually think and 3) inspires recruiting brainfood to further globalise...

ECONOMY

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7. How Much Hiring is Managerial Career Building?

Interesting thread from a former exec at Amazon, outlining one of the problems that inflate headcount growth - hiring manager careerism. Have you seen this in your employer? Lets be honest - we recruiters have also been beneficiaries of it. Lots to think about on individual vs organisation misalignment, as well as the power that a mass of people can provide to the leader. H/T to brainfooder Pedro Oliveira for the share.

CULTURE

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8. How to Create a Culture Where Recruiting Is Everyone’s Job

How much of a recruiters job is 'activation’ vs operation? The ideal case may be equal parts both, but being able to distribute the workload of hiring to other members of the company might be the key to scalability, agility and resilience. Some good examples from the community on how to do this, and this LinkedIn post - a write up of a talk brainfooder John Vlastelica gave at Talent Connect does a reasonable job of outlining some practical things you can do get started.

CULTURE

9. No Women Speakers? Why Not Create Some Fake Ones?

Well here is an ill thought out ‘solution’ to a lack of diversity - just make up fake people to deflect the opprobrium. This story is a sad and outrageous example of where rhetoric fails to meet reality. None of this was GAI by the way - just old school fake LinkedIn profiles etc - and we can imagine that we might get to a point where GAI will be used to disguise lack of visible diversity. H/T to brainfooder Luke Davis for the share in the online community

D&I

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10. Blackrock’s Geopolitical Risk Dashboard

One of the more unwelcome trends over the past few years has been the intrusion of geopolitics into the world of work. None of us can afford to be ignorant of the geopolitical macro, so what we need is an at-a-glance dashboard of the geopolitical risks and scenario plan how things might impact our businesses should the predicted outcomes come to pass. 2024 is a multi-election year also, so expect more energy into the chaos - this website from Blackrock is useful, whilst we also bear in mind that investment houses are no passive observers of the events they describe…

SOCIETY

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The Podcasts

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11. You Probably Won’t Survive 2024... Top 10 Tech Trends

Developer orientated Youtube channel on what is going to happen in 2024, taking time time drop acid takes on foreign policy, domestic spyware, employers vs employees debate and why programming frameworks have already peaked in the era of GAI. It’s gallows humour + acute commentary, delivered in high octane style.

SOCIETY

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12. Generative AI Special, Peter Hinsen with Pascal Coppens

Peter Hinsen has long been one of the true thought leaders in the TA / HR space. His interview here with Pascal Coppens on the state of GAI in China turned into an excellent blog post, as well as an enlightening conversation of where AI is in the East. Have a listen.

AI

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13. Was a Roman Salary Really Enough to Live On?

Fascinating video on the compensation and benefits for a Roman soldier. No question a tough life but enough similarities with modern wages to resonate with a lot of us here. Especially liked the final 5 minutes, which covered the stories of the few successful retirees and what they did with their money.

SOCIETY

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End Note

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So last week was maybe the last week for big events, this week is going to be final 1-2-1 meetings with friends I should’ve done a better job of keeping in contact with. Hope everyone has the opportunity to reconnect in the same way 🙏

This week’s poll is going to be on LinkedIn and your anticipated spend on it.

That’s it - thanks for reading

Have a great week everybody

Hung