Recruiting Brainfood - Issue 320
It's recruiting brainfood for your week ahead
This week’s brainfood is supported by our friends at Cronofy
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SPONSORS
Friends,
100+ recruiters immediately available in Brainfood Talent Collective - employers sign up here, use this code: BTCFREE2022 to freely access and message that talent. There is an approval process, but no charge if you use that code - get to it if you’re hiring for experienced recruiters (who also happen to be subscribers of brainfood!)
I’ve been to a few end-of-year events these past few days and it reminded me to cast an eye forward as to what is happening in 2023. Event organisers, add your events to the Big List of Recruitment / HR Events to Attend - I’ll circulate this round to everyone next week and we make sure everyone has a decent view as to what’s going on in 2023.
Finally, shout out to Joey NK Koksal, Jon Hull, Nims Dhawan, Clair Mohamed, Colin Donnery, Eugène van den Hemel, Kevin Green, Dorothy Dalton, Dave Hazlehurst, Bas van de Haterd and Paul Daley for your public support of all things brainfood last week - essential for keeping this show on the road. Scores updated on the Brainfood Hall of Fame, check it out!
What Do Brainfooders Think?
Over 50% of responders thought the 2022 has been the story of the Big Tech Winter, with all of the FAANG missing revenue targets, followed by high profile tech lay offs and headcount freezes, and perhaps topped off with Elon Musk’s astonishing evisceration of the Twitter workforce.
Poll every week folks, so make sure to make your feelings known at the poll at the end of this newsletter.
Founders Focus - Ep34 - David Rivel, Co-founder, PathMotion
I’ve known David since the early days and it is great to see first time founders go forward to success, with PathMotion joining the PageUp Group this time last year, and exciting new consolidation to be announced in the coming days. Speaking to recruitment technology founders on their entreprenurial journey has been my favourite work thing to do - join us for the insights! We’re on Weds 30th November, 10am GMT - register here
Brainfood Live On Air - Ep183 - Psychology of Redundancy: Mental Health Tips for Recruiters Affected
It’s been heartening to see the mount of support provided by the recruitment community to fellow members who have been made redundant, but almost all of that support has been practical, very little about the psychological! We do not want to underestimate the emotional challenges of a surprise redundancy, nor of the job search during more challenging economic times. Expert panel from psychology, TA and the newly made redundant. Must attend this one folks - Friday 2nd December, 2pm GMT - register here
The Brainfood
1. Content Rules for the LinkedIn Newsfeed
Richard van der Blom is one of the most forensic analysts of the mighty Linkedin newsfeed algorithm. Here are his latest findings, in an simple summary post + one page infographic. Main spoiler? dwell time no longer most relevant signal, it is the frequency of engagements within 90 minutes of post. Essential reading for anyone with an interest in getting more traffic to your LinkedIn content.
CONTENT MARKETING
2. Income & Wealth Inequality Explained in 5 Charts
Accessible multi-decadal trends analysis from the Institute of Fiscal Studies. This sort of research is important for us to better understand the macro economic foundations behind some of the clear challenges we have today. Increase demand from employees who want a better deal? Look at income stagnation from 1990’s onward. Charts are cool interactives too, full report downloadable here
ECONOMY
3. Futurepedia - The Largest AI Tools Directory
Generative AI has broken through into mainstream consciousness. We recruiters need to be at the very leading edge of adoption curve. Think about the work we do - searching, copy writing, marketing, engaging - all of these essential elements of recruiting work now have AI tools to support and scale our work. Getting good at this will make individual recruiters quantitative better, so this searchable directory of AI tools should come in handy for us. H/T to brainfooder Stanislaw Wasowicz for the share in the fb group.
AI
4. A Leaked Amazon Memo May Help Explain Why the Tech Giant is Pushing (read: "forcing") Out So Many Recruiters.
Usual caveats apply on this piece of speculation but included in brainfood for two reason: firstly, the automated screening of candidates is the logical endgame of the objective we in recruitment & HR have been aiming for - the fusion of employee performance + candidate assessment data. And secondly, because if any company was going to do it, it would be Amazon. Have a read of the reddit thread here and the Vox article here. We cannot complain about the future, when we are busy architecting it. H/T to brainfooder Wim Dammans for the share in the fb group
ASSESSMENT
5. 18 Years A Transient – My Journey Through the American Immigration System as a Computer Engineer
Layoffs affect immigrant workers on an employer dependent visa much more than most, leaving people with mere weeks to find alternative sponsor before being deported from the country, along with their families. The brutally crude cuts made by Elon Musk at the Twitter workforce made me think particularly about this demographic, which led me in turn to this incredible account of a computer engineer whose journey to US citizenship took 18 years to complete. Lots to think about here - do we factor in impact-for-employee when making redundancies, and how we can we make it easier for motivated people to become citizens of countries where they work, pay taxes and add value to society.
D&I
6. The Power of Work Friends
Some intriguing implications in this article from HBR, particularly on the likelihood of workers recommending their employer if they had a close friend who also works there. Should personal friendships be something CHRO’s try to engineer? This article makes the case that you should.
EMPLOYER BRANDING
7. Are You Ready for Workplace Brain Scanning?
Rhetorical question because, who is 🤣? Technology innovation forces cultural adaption though and neurotechnology may just be the next logical step in the wearable evolution we’ve all largely adopted. Long read on some startups in US and Israel, doing some cool things in ‘brain scanning’, with the specific objective of figuring out when you are most ready for focus and deep work. Going to categorise this as people analytics because it is not categorically different….
PEOPLE ANALYTICS
8. 8 Questions International Employees Should Ask About Their Company’s ESOP
‘Employee Stock Ownership Plan’ or ESOP’s are potentially the most significant component on an employers compensation offering, particularly in the world of VC backed rocket ships. We don’t know enough about it, so this explainer is education for us but also perhaps useful nurture content for those candidates you said you’d stay in touch with.
ENGAGEMENT
9. Employee Cost Calculator
Decent tool on the homepage of Deel, in which calculates ‘cost of employee’ in different countries based on the salary you set and the local taxation and employer obligations. Not sure if I’ve seen a comparable offering, surprising that someone has built a startup focused entirely on this, a FundApps for employer tax. Just an idea.
REMOTE WORKING
10. Facebook Removing Information Fields from User Profiles
End of social media will happen not through some sort of recognisably cataclysmic event, but through low profile, high impact administrative changes like this. As users, we will likely not mourn the end of unnecessary data collection, but as recruiters we may like to note that the golden era of sourcing was contemporaneous with the rise of social networks, where user profiles had usable biographical. Future will look like TikTok and it’s a lot harder to source there.
SOURCING
The Podcasts
13. The Creative Power of Misfits
Adam Grant with a who’s who list of celebrities how diversity of mind can unlock innovation commonly blocked by adherence of process and hierarchy. The fine line between ‘disrupting the status quo’ and straight up destruction is not explored however; I suspect this doesn’t become clear until we have the outcome.
D&I
14. Talent & Growth - 100th Episode
Great to chat with Paul and it was an honour to appear on his 100th episode of T&G. We’re talking Putin, energy crisis, IR35, remote to offshore, employer vs employee conflict and more. Tune in if you want to hear the chat.
ECONOMY
15. The Best Advice A Recruiter Can Get
Fantastic to see this podcast reach the 50 episode milestone - I would guess than less 5% of podcast ever get to this figure. It’s brainfooder Bas van de Haterd with an ensemble line up of guests, each giving their one piece of advice which made the greatest difference in their recruitment careers. Great listen
PRODUCTIVITY
End Notes
As we move into December, end of year feeling is very much here. Haven’t seen the usual ‘review of the year’ type content so far - maybe the year has simply been too chaotic for anyone to really get a grip of it? I’m going to give it a go - either here in a series of Thursday editions or on Open Kitchen segment of This Week, In Recruiting. Got 4 weeks, so that’s a 4 part series attempting to cover the major developments in every part of the industry.
Looking forward, I’m always thinking about how to get the balance in this newsletter right. Some help from you in the poll below please - only 5 options availables, so if you have other thoughts, please add them in comment below:
OK that’s it for this week folks, remember TWIR tomorrow, Founders Focus on Weds and Brainfood Live on Friday - see you all then.
PS: check out this cool website of Every Noise at Once
Re the poll, would like more content on trends in recruiting analytics. Thanks!!