Recruiting Brainfood - Issue 319
It's recruiting brainfood for your week ahead
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SPONSORS
Friends,
Thanks for your support on BTC last week - we’ve got 66 of signed up already, about half that number ready-to-go in terms of new job opportunities. If you are an employer and interested in connecting with brainfooders who are looking for work, sign up as a company on the here and comment below and I will create you a code for 100% free access. Go get them if you’re hiring for recruiters for your team! If you are a recruiter or HR pro and have made redundant and / or are looking for work, sign up as a candidate. I’m also going to amplify everyone who marks themselves ‘ready to interview’ in This Week, In Recruiting tomorrow.
Shout out to Kevin Green, Colin Donnery, Piret Luts, Hannah Morgan, Jenni Kivikoski, Joey NK Koksal, Steve Jacobs, Dave Hazlehurst, Jon Hull, Ross Clennett, Iain Everett, Emira Blomberg, Elliott Garlock, Mark Pearce and Carin Ewald for your public endorsement of all things brainfood last week - so important for keeping this show on the road. Scores updated on the Brainfood Hall of Fame, which can now scrape this Substack!
What Do Brainfooders Think….. of Crypto?
The ongoing combustion of the crypto industry with the collapse of FTX, the loss of upwards of $50 Billion of investors funds and the unfolding revelations of founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s connections with regulators, politicians and media have met with a resounding verdict from the community….
We are not impressed at all with Crypto, with results probably a fair reflection of the mainstream sentiment. Good to see some optimists though - 30% holding out hope for better things 👊. Check out the new poll at the end of this newsletter, and make your views known there.
Founders Focus - Ep33 - Up close and personal with Arielle Kilroy, CEO of Dado
We’re back with my favourite work thing to do - interviewing the CEO’s of recruitment technology companies who were so annoyed about the particular problem in recruiting that they thought to build a product to fix it. If you know Arielle, you know will that this is going to be fun, inspiring and unconventional conversation 🤣. Tuesday 22nd November, 12pm GMT / 1pm CET - register here
Brainfood Live On Air - Ep182 - True Inclusion: Hiring the Formerly Institutionalised
Perhaps no other group of people are more marginalised and excluded that the formerly incarcerated. As recruiters we are by definition the gatekeepers to another way of life to those who need it most. Looking forward to speaking with two fellows whose life stories combine tragedy with triumph, with lessons all of us can learn from. James Fellows and Chance Bleu-Montgomery from the Bridge of Hope, on Brainfood Live this Friday 25th November, 2pm GMT, with the awesome Christine Ng in the co-pilot seat. Register here
The Brainfood
1. A Fork In The Road
Not content with firing 50% of the staff the week previously, Elon Musk kept up the pace this week with an email announcing that Twitter 2.0 can only be achieved by being ‘extremely hardcore’, predictably triggering another round of mass departures. Hard to know how many employees Twitter has left but it may be less than 5% of the 7500 they had before the Musk takeover. We’ve never seen this type of cultural triage before, and certainly not played out in public on the very platform the company operates. One thing is for sure - this is culture change - and a fascinating test of the hypothesis that the quickest way to effect transformation, is to take it to the edge of destruction….
CULTURE
2. Generative AI: A Creative New World
The opposite of destruction is creation and few things have been exciting this year than the breakthrough of killer apps in Generative AI. This excellent post from Sequoia is a short history of GAI - a great introductory read for those who are new to the subject. My recommendation is that we recruiters all need to get good with GAI - it’s a going to be differentiator for anyone who creates or communicates - and recruiters who get good at this, are going to be highly sort after regardless of macro economic conditions.
AI
3. The Bubble Has Popped for Unprofitable Software Companies
No sweeter moment for David Heinemeier Hansson than right now. The inventor of Ruby on Rails, and co-founder of Basecamp and HEY, Hansson and his companies have long ploughed the lonely furrow as profits-before-growth businesses, often being accused of lacking ambition in the era of mega fundraises and hyper scaling. Now that the Big Tech Winter has truly set in, his words are again worth paying attention to - it’s going to be new/old paradigm for tech businesses for the next decade.
ECONOMY
4. Layoffs.fyi - Lists of Employees
Some cool resources for us: Layoffs FYI are aggregating lists of employees of tech companies making said layoffs (H/T to brainfooder Christian Payne for the share in the fb group), PLEO provide a great example of how to do layoffs with their Alumni List Coda (H/T to brainfooder Deborah Caulet for the share) and Gergely Orosz (follow on Twitter) has coordinated a massive list of 750+ tech organisations still hiring engineers, and therefore, maybe also recruiters (H/T to brainfooder Jacob Sten Madsen for the share in the fb group)
SOURCING
5. Recruiter ‘Hot 100’ Website Review
An interesting technical breakdown of the company websites of Recruiter’s Hot 100 Recruitment Agencies list. As an industry, recruiters are notorious for having below standard web properties, an egregious problem especially for agencies who purport to supply for tech roles. Looks like lots of companies needing an upgrade here…H/T to brainfooder Keith Devon for the share
EMPLOYER BRANDING
6. November 2022 US Labour Market Update
There’s a couple of numbers I look for when trying the read the runes of rune readers of US labour market data - quit rates, as a sign of job seeker confidence and labour force participation rate, as a sign of whether Quantitative Tightening is having the intended impact of encouraging the economic inactive back to the workforce.Valuable monthly update again from brainfooder Sarah Ali - have a read.
ECONOMY
7. Employee Experience 2023 Trends Report
No huge revelations in this Qualtrics report on ‘what employees want’, though notable that there is increased interest in company success, which might otherwise be known as interest in personal job security. I get the feeling that most employers are doing what they can, with very few wandering away from mainstream prescriptions, all of which are dependent on robust revenue. Readable report, download it here
H/T to brainfooder Vicki Saunders for the share
CULTURE
8. OSINT Start.me Aggregator
We were talking about Dean Da Costa’s Start.me pages in Brainfood Live last Friday, and it got me thinking about what other Start.mes are out there which might be useful to use recruiters. Good job some enterprising soul has scraped them all into this aggregator where the search is snappy and seems to immediately bring up relevant results.
SOURCING
9. CEO Coach Matt Mochary’s Curriculum
Even CEO’s need coaching (maybe especially CEO’s…). One of the most prominent coaches is Matt Mochary, whose curriculum has somehow found its way on a Google Doc circulated online. Some good stuff here which is relevant to us - especially on mindset, communication, meeting management, leadership. Have a read.
PRODUCTIVITY
10. What’s Driving the Great Retirement?
Interesting piece of research from retirements business Phoenix Group, who polled 3000 over 50’s individuals from UK, Germany and USA on their labour force participation. Granted, we know the business agenda here, but an intriguing line of thought on the relationship between home ownership + lower labour force participation rate; people who own their homes, retire earlier than those who rent.
SOCIETY
The Podcasts
13. How HR Cheats Employees
Probably no need for a trigger warning with a title like this 🤣. Uncompromising and perhaps a little unfair commentary from employment lawyer Branigan Robertson, who nevertheless makes a valid point - HR play both sides, but they - we - are only ever on one side. H/T to brainfooder Stephen O’Donnell for the share in fb group.
CULTURE
14. New AI and the Creator Economy with Karen X Cheng
Two of my favourite people in conversation on the Creator Economy, each a pioneer in their own way of making side lines into main lines. Karen X Cheng is a genius videographer whose amazingly production skills make her an Instagram sensation whilst, Steph Smith was one of the first to really understand how content + community came together to be the same thing. It’s a great conversation.
AI
15. Are MBA’s To Blame for Wage Stagnation?
Fascinating premise exploring the ‘non-trivial’ but significant effect of MBA training on wage stagnation, specifically that business leaders who have gone through MBA schools with its focus on profit optimisation, end up suppressing payroll inflation more so that CEO’s who didn’t. Plausible theory, argued and contested in this fascinating podcast.
ECONOMY
End Notes
So much happening ‘outside’ that sometimes we can fail to notice how quickly time is passing us by - mid November already and before we know, another year will have sped by. I’d better get busy putting together some posts on Best of the Best for 2022, as well as predictions for 2023, so lets see whether you can help me with this - check out the poll below and let me know what you think has been the most significant theme in our industry this year.
Finally, check out this Map of the Universe - there’s a lot of bad internet out there, but worth remembering there is plenty of great internet too.
Have a great week everybody
Hung
Hello Hung and I've just signed up on the Brainfood Talent Collective. We've just started a search for a recruiter or researcher.
Covid mass movement bubble bursting. Movement to employer advantaged market again.