Recruiting Brainfood - Issue 367
Time-to-Alignment, Labour market trends, Generative AI Legal Explainer, cool stuff on LATAM and ethical dilemma of whiter teeth...
This weeks brainfood is supported by our friends at BrightHire
Introducing a framework for strategic interviews from leaders at LinkedIn, UKG, Zapier, Zoom, and more
Building a strategic interview process is vital for recruiting success. If you want to create a world-class process, you need to check out the new Interview Maturity Model from my friends at BrightHire.
It’s a free, comprehensive framework for assessing where your interview process is today and identifying the ways you can transform it into a strategic process.
The model is developed in partnership with recruiting leaders who have led teams at LinkedIn, Paypal, Zoom, UKG, Zapier, T Mobile, and Yahoo!, to name a few.
Download the Interview Maturity Model.
P.S. On Nov. 1, BrightHire and I are bringing together a panel of recruiting leaders to discuss practical ways to apply AI to your hiring process. Save your spot.
SPONSORS
Friends,
As most of you know, I do a video livestream every week called Brainfood Live On Air where we discuss the contents of this newsletter, and have a discussion on a topic which the community has show an interest in. This is multi-streamed across a number of platforms and I know many of you watch on LinkedIn, in the online community or even on my Twitter feed.
However, livestreaming is a chaotic business and when you’re trying to stitch 3 different systems together, things can wrong 🤣. As such, I encourage those of you who watch the show, to also follow my channel on Crowdcast if you have not already done so. This way you get notified whenever I go live and also can watch on the host channel should any of the destination channels flake out. All historical shows are there also, so you can catch up on those there. Free to access, naturally.
Thanks to Eugène van den Hemel, Afric Nickson, Kevin Green, Jamie Dillon, Oonagh Clarke, Lyndsey Taylor, Rick Girard, Giuliano Di Leo, Fraser Tait, Victoria Rayel, Torin Ellis, Bob Pulver, Rosie Sherry, Joey NK Koksal, Paul Daley and Piret Luts - your public endorsements of all things brainfood really make a difference - thank you!
Can you help? Share this link on your social network and have your recruiter network subscribe 👊
What Do Brainfooders Think?
So I’ve been banging the drum for in-person events all week and remain keen that you all bookmark and share the Big List of Recruiting / HR Events to Attend in 2023/2024.
A bit of fun on last week’s poll - all of the below events are fantastic - but we have a winner from the sample who voted…
Thank you all for voting. Remember, I poll the community every week in work related topics. Scroll to the end of the newsletter and cast your opinion.
Brainfood Live On Air - Ep229 - Recruiter Use Cases for ChatGPT, Part 4, Friday 27th October, 2pm GMT
It’s been 6 months since the last episode of this series, so obviously a lot has happened since then in the world of Generative AI. Do we have some new use cases which can be applied to recruiting? We’re bringing in some experts who say there are. Must attend folks so register here
The Brainfood
1. The Most Important Recruiting Metric You’ve Never Heard Of: Time to Alignment
Brainfooder John Vlastelica is one of the smartest thinker-doers in the business today. I hope he continues to produce and publish observations like this - always makes you think about the hidden or under discussed problems with recruitment. Are you measuring Time-To-Alignmnet (TTA)? Maybe we should.
RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS
2. Appcast’s Global Labor Markets Dashboard
Recruitonomics, the data analytics spin off from programmatic advertiser Appcast, have produced an excellent overview of the labour market supply / demand conditions in US, UK and Germany. The labour market remains ‘tight’ in US and Germany where vacancies outstrip available (or willing) labour to fill them. Hence interest rate hikes.
ECONOMY
3. Talent Sourcing Strategy Template
Useful looking template from brainfooder Ivan Harrison. Most of us have likely never seen something like this, but a quick scan tells us immediately how it might be valuable in ensuring we cover all the significant aspects at the start of a recruiting project. Access it here
SOURCING
4. People LATAM Report 2023
With Talent Acquisition Summit in Bogota less than 12 days, this report on the state of TA / HR in LATAM is a timely read. Learn about how employers are thinking about remote work, 4 day week, AI & RPA and the rest. H/T to brainfooder Caio Torres for the share. NB: special midweek ‘How To Hire in LATAM’ on Weds 1st Nov from Bogota - register here.
ECONOMY
5. Generative AI Legal Explainer
Legislation governing how Artificial Intelligence can be used is percolating throughout jurisdictions across the world. As we discussed in Brainfood Live last Friday, nobody is really on top of it, but the clock is ticking for us to understand what the compliance obligations are going to look like. This is one of the most useful looking resources I have seen to date - an updating database of legal cases, organised via core compliance concepts. Must read
AI
6. The Future of How We Work at Roblox
Another week, another prestige digital company calls its employees back to the office. Here is David Bazsuki, CEO, Roblox announcement, which I felt was well argued and communicated and perhaps a useful template on how to do it if you’re going to do it. Meanwhile, dating app Grindr, who had a rather more brusque approach earlier this summer, now see attrition due to RTO as an opportunity to hire.
REMOTE WORKING
7. Three Approaches to Location based Pay
These approaches are: Fully localised, Location tiered and Location agnostic. Useful post by compensation tech firm Ravio, who present the pros and cons of each case, none of which btw fully solve the problem of peripatetic employees who move across locations.
CULTURE
8. The Babble Hypothesis Shows Key Factor to Becoming a Leader
Reminded of a really important talk by brainfooder Glen Cathey at Recfest USA - on the ‘extravert’ advantage, especially when it comes to career progression. Seems like there is some decent science behind it, which would be amusing if it wasn’t so unjust. Introducing the ‘Babble Hypothesis’ of leadership - turns out we are simply hard wired to follow those who dominate the chat. Implications for recruiting? Plenty.
D&I
9. There’s Surprisingly Little Evidence That EVs Will Require Fewer Workers
The argument is this: NEV’s are much simpler vehicles to make, with far less components compared to ICE vehicles. Coupled with lower maintenance / upgrade costs, this should mean less workers per car made. This post suggests that the opposite effect may occur, if you take into account all the activities required to make a battery. Strangely thrilling read.
SOCIETY
10. Smooth Skin, White Teeth…
Google Meet finally roll out ‘touch up’ tech in their video app, including smoothening of the skin and whitening of the teeth. I’m sure a lot of us will toggle this to ‘on’ and make ourselves look better for others on camera, especially as we know that how your video appears to others can shape others first impression. But I remain disquieted by this direction of travel - is it a good thing that we look good all the time? What happens when reality inevitably disappoints? Might become a D&I issue; it is already an assessment issue.
ASSESSMENT
The Podcasts
11. Are We Becoming Afraid of Speaking on the Phone?
Confession: I’ve actually been ‘afraid’ of this for some time, which sound strange for a guy whose had multi-decade experience working in recruiting 🤣. There’s no question we are trending away from the phone, especially younger generations entering the workforce. SMS / WhatsApp becoming the default method of interaction, before jumping into synch video or in-person. Fun podcast from BBC Woman’s Hour.
ENGAGEMENT
12. The Complexity of Talent Acquisition
Wonderful interview with brainfooder Lisa Scales, who described the challenges of hiring for one of the unique institutions in the UK, the Royal Mail. This is the sort of in-depth, insightful exchange which makes The Recruiting Future Podcast one of the best in the business. Have a listen here
CULTURE
13. Are Two CEO’s Better Than One?
Of 2000+ public companies, only 92 had the Co-CEO format. Why is this and…should we have more? Fascinating conversation debating the pros and cons of CEO-pair structure, using the analogy of the family - and the model of the family business - to make the case. Includes fascinating interview with one half of perhaps the most famous Co-CEO pair, Jim Balsillie at Research In Motion. There is of course also the ‘No-CEO’ model, perhaps that will win in the end…
FUTURE OF WORK
End Notes
So we’re heading into Q4 and before you know it is going to be end of the year. I’m going to be putting together two series to complete 2023 - a year in review, and the also a forecast for the year ahead. It’s going to be a ton of work and I might need to lean on you for some of it, but I feel that somebody should summarise what the hell has been happening in TA / HR this year because it’s impossible to keep track of otherwise 🤣.
In the meantime, I can’t stop thinking about the ethical dilemma of ‘touch up’ tech. It’s trivial now but I wonder what happens when we are all perfect online - will reality become a jarring disappointment? Lets see what you think on this one…
That’s it - thanks for reading
Have a great week everybody
Hung
I am so torn about touch-up technology. On one hand, it's very helpful in enhancing our appearance and possibly reducing beauty bias. However, I worry about the potential impact on our collective mental health when we start altering our appearances to unrealistic levels.
If we continue pushing the boundaries of touch-up technology, where will it stop? Will some individuals eventually withdraw from the real world because they become self-conscious about their natural appearance?
So perhaps the technology isn’t really working! Here’s a thought - what if the technology only touched up your appearance for your view, but broadcast an unadulterated version to everyone else! That would satisfy our vanity and eliminate the image-reality gap. Hey Zoom, Teams, Google, Crowdcast and everyone else in this space - give it some thought!