Recruiting Brainfood - Issue 342

Continued tech candidate shortage explained, grass is greener but only for some job categories, plus some awesome how-to's on recruitment, ChatGPT and recruitment marketing

This week’s brainfood is supported by our buddies at Guide

How do you win top talent in 2023? Earn their TRUST.

Based on thousands of candidate surveys, we found that a winning candidate experience ranks high on the following 5 pillars (that spell TRUST, get it?): 

• Transparency: Does the candidate feel your organization has been sufficiently transparent? 

• Reciprocity: Does the candidate feel an equal sense of give-and-take? 

• Unity: Does the candidate feel they’ve been treated fairly and inclusively? 

• Speed: Does the candidate feel the pace of progress has been ideal?

• Truthfulness: Does the candidate feel your organization has been truthful with all information shared?

Check out Guide’s Candidate TRUST Framework for best practices to implement today. 

P.S. Want a behind-the-scenes look at Notion’s unique approach to building trust through efficient and effective candidate communications? Watch the video.

SPONSORS

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Friends,

I’m pleased to report that a couple of the experiments have been going well of late. Brainfood Grow has spawned at least 3 new newsletters, the Brainfood Tribune has restarted with some great personal stories and last week was the first week that we successfully livestreamed Brainfood Live from other community members social channels, doubling the video view count of the show.

We’re going to keep pushing with these so:

1. Brainfood Grow - workshop for newsletter writers (fill in this form)

2. Brainfood Tribune - tell your story via 20 Questions (comment in this newsletter to get involved, everyone welcome to do it)

3. Brainfood Live Restreamed - DM if you want to live stream Brainfood Live from your LinkedIn this Friday

Thanks to Eugène van den Hemel, Colin Donnery, Elizabeth Murphy, Ron Laneve, Donna Oshana, Tim Sanchez, Jamie Leonard, Nikitas Marinos, Nataliia Chekh, Patricia Chmielowiec, Matthew Goddard, Clair Mohamed, Léo Bernard, David Green, Luke Davis, Richard Bradley, Piret Luts, Jade Venter, Robert Nunn, Adam Zeiff, Simon Sypula and Martin Poole for your amazing support last week - every share, comment or repost really helps other recruiters find out about this newsletter. Thank you!

Can you help? Share this newsletter with a friend who needs it!

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What Do Brainfooders Think?

Seems like we’re split between being pro-doxxing and generally unthreatened by it 🤣. I’m encouraged by the confidence and the pro-social positioning we have in the community, even though I suspect our views might change should we ever become a victim of it!

Thanks to everyone who voted - we’re going to keep doing these, so make sure that you scroll through to the end of this newsletter to cast your vote of these week’s question.

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Brainfood Live On Air - Ep204 - How to Measure Quality of Hire

Perhaps the most viral post I’ve written these past 12 months has been about QofH. I’m delighted to be bringing the topic to Brainfood Live On Air this week, where we bring in practitioners, consultants and critics into the conversation and sketch out exactly who is meant to be doing this, what should they be doing and what pitfalls do they need to avoid. We’re on Friday 5th May, at 2pm BST / 9am EDT. Register here

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The Brainfood

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1. Why Big Tech Layoffs Haven’t Made Your Tech Hiring (Much) Easier

Succinct explainer which is broadly correct: a) tech vacancy volume remains higher than pre-pandemic, b) most of those laid off from Big Tech companies weren’t actually engineers and c) those that were engineers still have justifiably low anxiety in a job market where their skills remain in high demand. Anyone want evidence of this, check out the attitude of my dev mates in Brainfood Live Ep199 - From the Developers POV

ECONOMY

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2. A New Kind of Startup is Coming

Another factor has to be the entrepreneurial opportunities opened up for those very same engineers; productivity gains offered by Generative AI means that more will indeed be done with less, and that will reduce the size and change the shape of new tech companies starting up today. Outstanding essay sketching what this near future might look like.

SOCIETY

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3. The 12 Part Beginners Guide to Using ChatGPT for Recruitment

Design around 12 use cases (with examples), this type of how-to is an invaluable document for anyone struggling to get started with ChatGPT (or similar GPT’s) or has indeed started and stopped. The more you use it, the more uses for it will emerge. Accessible essay from brainfooder Andy Headworth.

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

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4. AI in Hiring and Evaluating Workers: What Americans Think

PEW Research with a survey of US workers on what role AI should play in hiring and performance assessment. No surprises here - workers are anxious about ‘AI management’ and I suspect would broadly welcome the legislative path being made by New York City Council . H/T to brainfooder Martyn Redstone for the share in the online community

ASSESSMENT

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5. Greener Pastures: Why Do New Hires Get Paid More?

Now this is fascinating research; we all kind of know that new hires get paid a premium as employers compete for the hard-to-hire with aggressive compensation offers, but not for every job category and not to the same degree. For front line workers, tenure remains correlated with highest comp. Interesting nuance on what might otherwise be understood as settled debate.

CULTURE

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6. Generative AI at Work

5000 customer support agents were measured by the number of closed tickets per hour. AI increased productivity across the board but intriguingly helped those least skilled the most, to the extent that AI-assisted workers operated within 2 months to the standard of non-AI assisted at 6 months. Positive implications for onboarding, though as with everything AI, not without concern. What happens when AI becomes the great equaliser for job performance? Will it reduce motivation to become highly skilled? It should. This will probably become one of the most cited papers on AI impact on worker productivity, so you had better download it here.

AI

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7. Pepperoni Hug Spot

Every element of this video advert was made with GPT’s. It’s crude, has an ‘80’s feel to it and won’t make anyone hungry for pizza, but it is an artefact from the future of content generation which is already here. Exciting, portentous - we should be familiar with the emotional journey of AI revelations by now. H/T to brainfooder Rob Dromgoole for the share in the online community

RECRUITMENT MARKETING

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8. CEOs and Firm Performance

CEOs play an increasingly important role in modern organizations, yet the nature of their activity and the mechanisms through which they may be able to affect firm performance often escape rigorous empirical investigation.

…so great to see at least an attempt at a corrective in this piece of research by NBER. Would should see more of it, as CEO as a role comes under threat of AI CEO’s who should outperform them. Accessible read.

ASSESSMENT

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9. The Employment Lessons from the Tucker Carlson Termination

You can trust brainfooder Tim Sackett to consistently come with new angles to examine already covered ground. Carlson’s unexpected exit from Fox News briefly became the dominant story in Western media last week and it can provide some salient lessons for employers and employees alike, especially on the need to avoid invitations for gossip. Always smart, always readable - do it here.

CULTURE

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10. Final Part - Talent Acquisition & Marketing Strategy: An Integrated Blueprint with Technology Options

Well done brainfooder Ben Phillips for making it to the end of this superb series on TA and EB. It’s not easy to produce content at a consistent rate and at this level of quality. Entire series is well worth a review (check out Part 1, 2 and 3) and this final part completes a guide which will be useful for anyone setting up a talent attraction approach for the first time, or for the first customer / employer.

EMPLOYER BRANDING

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The Podcasts

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11. Concerning AI Ethics

Interesting panel discussion which does take a little while to get going, but once we’re into the debate, there are some valuable framing there which will help us think about where we are at with AI. It’s probably all moot though, GAI is like Covid-19 - once it’s out in the wild, it’s out in the wild and no one is in control. Have a listen. H/T to brainfooder Bas van de Haterd for the share

AI

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12. The Consulting Industry has Infantilised Government

Rare to see a public figure of the stature of economist Mariana Mazzucato go for an entire industry sector like this, but I got to say, I’m kind of enjoying it 🤣. Not just invective though, Mazzucato has genuine concerns as to how professional consultancies have provided government officials with an opportunity to delegate authority or abdicate on responsibility.

CULTURE

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13. Beer and Podcasting in Las Vegas

Unleashed America by all accounts was a triumph last week. Congratulations to Marc Coleman and team for pulling it out. I wasn’t there, so have had to live vicariously through the reportage of two reprobates, brainfooders Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman. Have a listen here.

COMMUNITY

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End Note

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One of the features of Substack is that you can see when members tend to read it. We’re about 40% on Sunday, 40% on Monday and then we have a few more Tues / Weds before bottoming out on Thursday-to-Saturday.

It got me thinking - is there is space to do something on Thursday? If I were to send out something midweek, would you be interested and if so, what would you like to see?

This the question for this week’s poll folks - vote below and comment below with any additional thoughts you have!

Looks like the sun is finally out in the UK - lets see if we can get into the spring in good mental and physical shape.

Have a great week everybody - thanks for reading

Hung