Recruiting Brainfood - Issue 348

VC funding, Apple Vision Pro, 'fluid vs crystallised cognition' and a mea culpa for last week's Brainfood Live

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Friends,

Firstly, apologies for all of those who registered for Brainfood Live last Friday; we weren’t able to go live as planned - first time ever! - due to a platform issue which meant that we had to attempt on air migration which didn’t come off. We did end up spinning up an impromptu event but I was not able to tell enough people about it so we only had 100 people attend. Thanks to all those who did - we’re going to re-run the show with Irina as soon as we can 👊

Secondly, how’s the market been treating you? I’ve been continuing my conversations with recruiters, Heads of TA, recruiting tech founders on the general state of the industry. It’s obviously sober times for a lot of us and I suspect we’re in it for the long haul. Good news is we are doing something about it:

1. Brainfood Talent Collective - now 300+ actively looking recruiters + HR people. Join this if you are looking for work and brainfood approved employers who are hiring will be able to see and contact you. Employers looking to post jobs or search DB? Sign up here and use coupon: BTCFREE for 100% free access

2. What Do Recruiters Want 2023 - tell us what you want folks. We’re getting great responses so for and I encourage all subscribers to take part. Will take 10 minutes and the results will give us the data we can share with the rest of the community on how we’re thinking and feeling right now! Do it here

3. Big List of Events in to attend in 2023 - people are much more likely to do a you favour if they have met you in person. This is the bottom line purpose of networking. If you’re looking for work as a recruiter, one of the best things you can do with your time is to physically show up to some of these events.

4. Brainfood Tribune - going to profile a community member once per week. It’s open for anyone who is prepared to answer 20 questions. Help the community get to know you better; friends who’ve done have reported massive surges of profile views and inbound contact. Anyone up for it? Comment below, let me know!

5. Brainfood Online Community - get connected friends. 5.5K community members in this group, which share resources, makes connections and has great, friendly and valuable conversations - get on it!

Thanks to: Eugène van den Hemel, Garry Turner, Clair Mohamed, Kevin Green, Ross Clennett, Kevin Lowe, Cornel Muller, Ádám Faragó, Justin Sleep, Dexter Cousins, Darren Bush, Rob Walker, Bob Pulver, Andreea Lungulescu, Bianca Lopes, Eugene Garla, Iona Ferguson, Tim Sanchez and Carlo Pezzuto for your public support of all things brainfood last week - vital to keep this show on the road. Scores updated on the Brainfood Hall of Fame 👊

Can you help? Share this newsletter with a friend in need!

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What Do Brainfooders Think?

So it looks like an even spread of what the community is thinking about, in case of worse case. I was a little surprised that ‘setting up on your own’ wasn’t more popular, I think this will be avenue quite a few of us will go down over the next year or so. What does this mean? More mini-RPO’s I think, who can work flexibly as agency supply or more add value if the customer requires.

That’s my guess, anyways. Thanks as ever, for everyone who voted. These polls are a popular feature of this newsletter, make sure you make your voice heard this week at the end of this issue.

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Brainfood Live On Air - Ep210 - How TA Leaders Are Using ChatGPT and GAI

Another show where we’re over the 500 seat limit - I have extended to to 750, so fill your boots whilst you can. So far, it seems that use of Generative AI has been on individual initiative, primarily at individual contributor level. Have any recruitment leaders been doing anything to operationalise AI in TA? We’re going to find out, this this week Friday 16th June, 2pm BST - register here

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The Brainfood

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1. State of European Tech 2023

In what has become one of the annual classics, Atomico’s State of European Tech report provides context to the Big Tech Winter - capital investment in tech startup has dropped from post pandemic all time highs to what looks like a permanent reset at a much more conservative, much lower level. Summary of Angel / Seed funding from Gergely Orosz confirms the overall trend. Less funding, smaller companies, less need for recruiters - its not rocket science. Read Atomico’s report here, download the PDF here, Gergely’s post linked above.

ECONOMY

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2. Will the Class of ‘23 Have a Soft Landing?

Another population segment we need to care about is the graduating class of 2023. What does the early entry talent marketplace look like? There is a theory that the advent of Generative AI will spur the increase of hiring for potential, as AI can help inexperienced workers most, but perhaps we have yet to see this percolate up to overall recruitment strategy. This is US data only but some fascinating nuggets to take away - overall job ad volume for entry level looks to have collapsed, public sector looks more promising than private in terms of vacancy volume and there seems to be an overrepresentation of STEM skill supply vs demand.

ECONOMY

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3. DEEP Dive into Deep Learning Sourcing

Brainfooder Alexey Geht and his team at AddedValue have been producing some excellent material recently. Here Shiri Horn-Brezel writes about her experiences and learnings from a recent sourcing project for Deep Learning engineers. This is what I mean about ‘open kitchen’ - share what you are doing, share what you are thinking. It makes the best, and most useful content.

SOURCING

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4. Some Blogging Myths

Follow up on this, is a new post from perhaps the best example of ‘showing what you know’. Julia Evans is an infrequent but superb communicator of tech culture and working practices. Here, she skewers some myths about blogging which stop people from doing it. It’s all absolutely correct

CONTENT MARKETING

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5. Graphic Designer Reacts to Photoshop Generative AI

So Adobe launched their killer update to Photoshop and it has caused a sensation amongst graphic design community. This TikTok is an example of a new genre of graphic designers reactions to Photoshop Generative AI. It’s humourous and portentous. Technological innovation can be described as a process of deskilling and these videos show you why. PS industries don’t die immediately though, as this research from Stock Performer attempts to show

AI

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6. “Do Ads Even Work on Devs?”

Counterintuitively, it seems that they do. Interesting insight from a marketing director of a tech services firm (whose audience are other devs) on how the business pivoted from a community only approach, to add in adverts in the right channel (Youtube) and in the right way (as recommended video rather than video autoplay..). Lessons for recruiters of devs I would say…

RECRUITMENT MARKETING

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7. Top Talent, Elite Colleges, and Migration

The conspicuous success of tech leaders of India origin has rightly been a source of pride and celebration in home country and in the diaspora. However, it can also be seen as a damaging brain drain for the local economy. This academic paper analyses the historical academic performance of graduates from leading Indian Universities and uses LinkedIn to find where they have ended up. Amongst the top 1000 scorers, 36% took their talent outside of India; of the top 100, 68% of them left home to pursue opportunities abroad. Freedom of movement, or another form of colonial extraction? Brainfood for sure…

SOCIETY

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8. Greying Economies Also Innovate Less

Another twist to the demographic crisis - it’s not only that ‘dependency ratio’ irreversibly declines, but also that the people who are left in work seem to be less innovative. This is because younger people have more ‘fluid intelligence’ compared to older people with more ‘crystallised intelligence’, a thesis which has strong evidence from neurobiology, yet one which has difficult implications for TA / HR. Have a read of this, and see if we can oscillate between fluidity and rigidity of thinking.

D&I

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9. Job Taxi

Getting picked up from the airport is somehow one of the nicest experiences you can have - it just takes the hassle out of negotiating the transportation infrastructure of a place you might be unfamiliar with. Employers in Zug, Switzerland can take advantage of this idea for job candidates, where the local government is seeking to support employers by making it physically easy for candidates to interview in person. Pretty cool initiative eh? H/T to brainfooder Rosie Robson for the share.

EMPLOYER BRANDING

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10. Apple Vision

Apple announced their much anticipated AR / VR device at WWDC last week, and by some enthusiastic accounts, it’s an IPod like game changer for wearables. The main innovation seems to be use of high fidelity cameras to create mini screens directly in from of your eyes, giving the wearer the illusion of seeing through the goggles. This is actually paradigm shift from augmented reality, which we had previously assumed would rely on a transparent screen which would overly digital information on top of what we actually see. Its fascinating stuff…and this post is as good and accessible summary as you’ll find. Recruitment use cases? I can imagine ad placement-in-apple-reality would be pretty mind blowing

AR / VR

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The Podcasts

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11. Isabella Weber on the Big Inflation Rethink

With the cost of living crisis hitting people where we feel it most - food / energy - at the same time as many corporations report record profit margins, Isabella Weber’s idea of ‘sellers inflation’ has its moment. It’s all about effective oligopolies folks. Worth 48 minutes of your time, and Weber is an economist to keep your eye on.

ECONOMY

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12. Mark Zuckerberg: Future of AI at Meta, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp

With Apple rolling out it’s vision for the Metaverse - now rebranded as Spatial Computing - its timely for us to hear from Mark Zuckerberg again on the Lex Fridman podcost with an other 2 hour + deep dive into the future of still the most significant company in the social web. Essential listening.

AR / VR

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13. Will Young Americans Want to Work in Semiconductors Manufacturing?

The return to state intervention has been the one of the signatures of US economic policy under the Biden presidency, but forcing TSMC to set up a factory in Arizona might not solve one of the hardest problems of doing Semiconductor manufacturing - the job, and associated career, simply might not be that attractive. Outstanding analysis from one of the best Youtube channels out there. Have a watch

CULTURE

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End Notes

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Just as the sun comes out in the UK, I end up leaving the UK to even sunnier climes, in Barcelona. Got to be honest, I think I will probably fry up over there so I am hoping that the weather will gentle with us at Hired!BCN. Look forward to seeing you all there - come up and say hello.

This week’s poll is all about Apple’s Vision Pro. AR / VR has been struggling as a category but some are saying that this is the ‘Iphone’ moment for the sector. I’d be interested to know where the community currently is on wearable tech like this - vote on the poll below and let me know 👊

FYI I have an old Occulus, use it only for watching YouTube and maybe playing Beat Sabre.

Have a great week everybody

Hung