Recruiting Brainfood - Issue 345

Future of Jobs 2023, Candidate Experience report, End of Journalism (yay?), AI message composer and one very cool Loom how-to

This week’s brainfood is supported by our friends 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,

We are up to a massive 630 completed responses on the 2023 What Do Recruiters Want? Survey - that is incredible after only 2 weeks of being live! We’re well on course to hit 2500 by end of the month. If you haven’t given your input so far, please take 10 minutes today and give it shot - real time results are available immediately upon completion and I aim to report on the final results in 4 weeks time. Give it a shot folks here (and make sure to get your team to do it too!)

We’re getting jobs back on the Brainfood Jobs Job Board. If you’re hiring for recruiters or HR folks, BTCFREE coupon code to post jobs and search the active candidate db for zero cost. Get on it!

Thanks to Joey NK Koksal, Kevin Green, Colin Donnery, Katrin Homer, Ed Han, Eugène van den Hemel, Paul Daley, Bas van de Haterd, Christopher Platts, Madalina Dragoescu, Juliette Rocquet, Christian Quast, Bartlomiej Ciniewski, Craig Wood, Mark Deubels, Rob Walker, Ben Philips, Simon Sypula and Stephen O’Donnell for your support on all things Brainfood - essential to keep this show on the road. Check out your scores updated on the Brainfood Hall of Fame

Can you help? Share this newsletter with a friend in recruiting who needs to read it - thanks!

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What Do Brainfooders Think?

Interesting results from last week’s poll on the value of in-person events, looks like networking is the by far the most significant. I think we collectively underestimate the value of profile, it is kind of cheat code to opportunity - I’ve become hyper aware of this since Brainfood became a thing.

I’m keen to help community members increase profile, especially if you are looking for work atm. Brainfood Tribune is one of the ways to do it - stories get amplified via This Week, In Recruiting and stay up on the brainfood homepage for ever. Leave a comment if you want to be involved in 20 Questions.

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Brainfood Live On Air - Ep207 - Life and Times of a Recruiter in Venture Capital

Being a ‘recruiter in residence’ for the VC is a different kind of recruiting than most of us have experience in doing. In-house but working across a portfolio of different companies, brands and cultures. We’re bringing together a crew of recruiters in VC for this one folks - we’re on Friday 26th May, 2pm BST - register here

PS: you can livestream the show from your own LinkedIn using this link. Free to do and I think is going to be a big deal in EB / TA - give it a shot.

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The Brainfood

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1. WEF Future of Jobs Report 2023

Primary value of this WEF Future of Jobs report is the cross country, cross sector comparisons, pulled together from 3rd party sources and presented in a way which makes generalisations easy to make. Two points really drew my attention - the regional variance in employment Global North (not enough candidates), vs Global South (not enough jobs) and overall decline in real wages for everybody due to cost of living crisis. A great deal of the data is drawn from 2018-2022, so some of feels already dated in the post-ChatGPT era, but this report is worth a scan in any case. Download it here.

SOCIETY

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2. Google AI Search Will Change the Internet

Google AI Search is a bigger deal than most people realise, so I am going to share this excellent post on how and why it might devastate web traffic volume, force wholesale revision of marketing strategies and do as yet unknown things to ads. Bottom line is Google’s generated content will soon dominate on screen real estate, relegating links to end destination to an afterthought. We’re doing a Brainfood Live on this, so recruitment marketers and EB people should sign up to this now. H/T to brainfooder William Geldart for the share

RECRUITMENT MARKETING

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3. Automate Hiring Process with Zapier AI

Brilliant demonstration of the power of hooking apps together, now supercharged by AI which can understand and accept natural language. Brainfooder Euan Cameron shows us how to automate personalised replies to job advert response, whilst setting off triggers to hiring managers based on candidate behaviour. It’s a 5 minutes work replacing what might’ve previously taken 10 hours. Game is changing, we had better change with it. Have a watch.

AI

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4. Helping Recruiters Save Time and Increase Candidate Engagement with AI

Not to be left out of the AI enablement game, LinkedIn are planning to roll out the inevitable AI generated message composer for subscribers of their Recruiter product. We’re obviously going to use this and I suspect it will improve engagement rates, whilst at the same time eroding trust in the platform with every message generated and sent. It would be interesting to compare human vs AI-enabled messaging in terms of efficacy over time - anyone running this experiment? H/T to brainfooder Marcel van der Meer for the share.

ENGAGEMENT

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5. The Rise of Fractional Executives

If you conduct a search for the phrase ‘Fractional’ on LinkedIn you see an increasing number of senior execs - CMO’s, CTO’s, CFO’s - styling themselves this way. I like the term, basically it effectively describes splitting of time between multiple employers, and is a distinct form of operating model compared to your classic consultant or freelancer. The person is operating fully in role, just not sitting there 40 hours a week. I already know some of you are doing this - worth a Brainfood Live on the topic at some point? Let me know if you wanna…

FUTURE OF WORK

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6. Mercer 2023 Global Talent Trends Report

13,000 CEO’s, HR leaders and Managers surveyed in this Mercer 2023 report, again data collected from 2022, so again it feels already a little dated. It’s useful for project ideas though, as it matches its analysis with recommendations for action, supported by plenty of visually appealing diagrams, as above. Worth a browse - download it here.

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

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7. How Generational Differences Affect Consumer Attitudes Towards Ads

One of those posts which is so interesting that you wish it were longer; Meta collab with CrowdDNA to observe the lack of compartmentalisation of on vs online for Gen Z, and their greater tolerance of data sharing as an acceptable exchange for free services online. It’s generational stereotyping for sure, but one which I’ve got time for - it matters if you knew the world before the Internet.

RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING

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8. Inside Candidate Experience Research 2023

Final report this week, this time from our friends at PeopleScout. Some interesting findings, especially on the dissonance between where candidates do their research (social media) and how often employers post on those channels (less than once per week). Some no brainer stuff here, the problem has never been that we didn’t know what to do, we just don’t have the capacity or resourcing to do it efficiently. Perhaps AI can help. H/T to brainfooder Charlotte Spivack for the share.

CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE

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9. Judgment Day Has Arrived for the Journalism Business

Buzzfeed, Vox, Upworthy…once upon a not so long ago, these were the brands which were set to become the dominant players in the Web 2.0 media landscape. In 2023, they are in full retreat or have fully closed down, and this excoriating essay explains not only why, but why they deserve it. Read as an example of industry disruption (mournful lament here), but also relate back to the work we do as recruiters. Chasing the clicks was short term fix for this publications; will the story be the same for recruiters chasing engagement? See 5. earlier in this newsletter. Worth pondering folks.

ENGAGEMENT

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10. We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Moat

Saving the best til last, this is one of the most readable, and insightful posts on the astonishingly pace of innovation on generative AI. Steve Yegge is a legendary computer programmer whose writing has the unique quality of including the lay person, whilst making no compromise at all to their (our) relative lack of tech literacy. This is on the accelerating cycle of innovation in AI, why no one can control it, why we should be excited, and why of course we are right to be worried. Must read.

AI

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The Podcasts

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11. Meet Your New AI Intern (Will It Take Your Job?)

Is it about time to hear from some pro-human thinkers when it comes to AI? Seeing as we’ve been hammering journalism this week, lets hear from the founding editor of Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly. He doesn’t convince me, but maybe he will you?

AI

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12. CareerBuilder Fire Sale

Enjoying this era of Chad and Cheese, I think having our two favourite sh1ttalkers on different continents is a fundamentally a good idea. Some smart conversation on WFH, as well as the latest news on events and industry, from two guys who have their fingers on too many pulses. Have a listen.

COMMUNITY

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13. Singapore’s Filial Support Laws

Asianometry is an incredible YouTube channel, made by one guy, who interesting angles on tech, industry and society to do 20 minute in depth investigations on. This week, it’s Singapore’s solution to the pension crisis - tax the kids to pay for the parents. Not as crazy as you might think.

SOCIETY

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End Note

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‘AI’ today is becoming what ‘digital’ was 15 years ago - no longer a thing separate from process, but an integral part of that process. I think this will be true for personal life as well as for professional, as it manifestly provides value and becomes increasingly (see ChatGPT iOS app) accessible.

Job seekers are going to use it too of course, and I suspect we recruiters might have already seen an influx of AI assisted job applications. Lets have a view from the community as to how prevalent this currently might be - have a vote on the poll and leave a comment below explaining why you think the application had this AI support!

That’s it.

Have a great week everybody, and thanks for reading 🙏

Hung