Recruiting Brainfood - Issue 401

On-premise meetings are more gender inclusive, The Flex Index report on remote work, 4D's on Job Automation and the future of work with Sakana, the Mo-Cap Actress...

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Friends,

More great events happening this week, so best of luck to The Recruitment Network on their summer retreat in Windsor and for the lucky folks going to Stockholm for the Future Talent Summit. Classic case of falling in between two stools as I was meant to go to both and now am not going to either!

Fortunately, the Euro 2024 have started so I am consoling myself with a footie fest for the next 4 weeks. Group stage is going to be hardest - 3 games per day, which is 6 hours I now have to account for when doing this newsletter, TWIR, Brainfood Live and everything else - going to hectic 🤣

Thanks to: Samantha-Leigh Hayward, Joey NK Koksal, Eugène van den Hemel, Gordon Dudley, Ravnoor Kaur, Bas van de Haterd, Nikki Remkes, Jonathan Trillwood, Paul Daley, Josh Willows, Jodi Jefferson, Juliana Park, Rob Walker and Alexander Chukovski for your public endorsement of all things brainfood last week - critically important 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 recruitment or HR and have them subscribe. Cheers!

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What Do Brainfooders Think?

I had no expectations on this poll but I have to admit I was hoping that the highest voted would at least 1 if not more. Great to see that it is 2!

Thanks to everyone who voted - aside from newsletter stats like OR I don’t get much feedback on what people want from this. Make sure you scroll to the bottom of the newsletter and vote on this week’s topic 👊

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Founders Focus - Ep45 - Up close and personal with Barb Hyman, CEO of Sapia.ai, Weds 19th June, 12pm BST

What do you think of the weekly rhythm for Founder’s Focus? I’m enjoying these 1-2-1 interviews with recruitment tech founders - its a big shift to start your own tech company and there are some great lessons to learn from those who have done it / are doing it. Barb Hyman, CEO of Sapia, next on the hot seat. It’s going to be blast - Weds 19th Jun, 12pm BST - register here

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Brainfood Live On Air - Ep261 - How to Select & Implement Your New ATS: A Masterclass, Friday 21st Friday, 1pm BST

The Masterclass idea seems to be popular - instead of panel format, we select 1 x expert who is going to give expert guidance on narrowly specific topic. This week, it’s Dutch recruitment legend Patrick Boonstra, who has specialised in major TA / HRIS implementations for the past decade. How to choose the right ATS? How to make sure to implement it successfully? Everyone should watch this - one hour free consultancy - on Friday 21st June, 1pm BST - register here

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The Brainfood

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1. A New Future of Work: The Race to Deploy AI and Raise Skills in Europe and Beyond

To ensure that the right talent is on hand to sustain the company strategy during all transformation phases, leaders could consider strengthening their capabilities to identify, attract, and recruit future AI and gen AI leaders in a tight market.

This is where we might find a happy space to play in for a while - supporting C-level toward company wide AI-enablement by doing ‘countervailing recruitment’ - hiring the AI-fluent whilst we’re firing the AI-exposed. Of course we have to make sure we are the former ourselves, rather than the latter. McKinsey with an easy-to-read interactive review.

FUTURE OF WORK

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2. The Flex Report Q2 2024

Where are we with Remote Working / Hybrid / RTO? The paragraph on the closing remarks page of this excellent report from The Flex Index rings true to me: to paraphrase, Metro’s with high concentrations of Tech, Finance, Media and Professional Services have highest rates of workplace flexibility. Flexible working is strongly correlated with the ‘superstar’ cities in the before times. Annoyingly on Canva, so no PDF but free to view. H/T to brainfooder Randy Bailey for the share in the online community.

REMOTE WORKING

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3. When Online Content Disappears

The reason why downloadable reports in this newsletter are all hosted on Dropbox is because of this reason - link rot on the Internet is a real phenomenon, as this report from Pew Research confirms. There are implications for sourcing here, as well on employer branding, SEO, AI training data and the rest. We might well end up in a place where AI is trained on data we can no longer independently validate…

AI

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4. Using Your Head: Neuroscience is Fast Becoming Football’s Gamechanger

Elite sports is one of those domains where we find the most forward thinking talent assessment innovations - they have the funding, the incentive and the commitment to science. Fascinating article on the use of neurological assessments to test for a player’s information processing speed - the final frontier now that physical optimums have already been achieved. Great read - will we see such tests in the corporate environment? H/T to brainfooder Bas van de Haterd for the share in the online community.

ASSESSMENT

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5. In-person Meetings Are More Inclusive, and I've Got the Receipts

Fascinating study on the impact of remote working on meeting participation rate - turns out racial identity does not impact MPR, but gender certainly did. We don’t know why - and OP refreshingly offers no theories - but it is something to ponder if we care about maximising and equalising engagement. We also need to consider whether MPR is a good thing or not, though for issues like promotion etc, speaking more definitely does move you up. Lots to think about - H/T to brainfooder Dave Williams for the share.

REMOTE WORKING

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6. Starter Guide to India

This type of exercise reminds of the “How To Hire” series I ran on here a few years ago - a guide book for outsiders on what it takes to successfully hire in a certain country. If the theory that the search for productivity will accelerate job dispersal is correct, then we may well have need of it. This Start Guide for India is kind of what I am talking about - would a global library of country’s be a useful resource? H/T to brainfooder Mitasha Singh for the share

ECONOMY

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7. World Economic Forum - Global Gender Gap Report 2024

Every year, the WEF produces the Global Gender Gap Report, the consistency of which allows for comparison over time. It’s absolutely massive report - all 385 pages of it - but most of it are country specific breakdowns, so you can zoom to the country most interesting to you. Download it here

D&I

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8. Four Ways Jobs Will Respond to Automation

Nice alliteration by Sloan MIT - Deconstructed, Displaced, Durable or Disrupted. The categories aren’t cleanly separated but sometimes we need mnemonics like this to help us think about complex problems. Social capital (network value), access to collective intelligence, high collaboration intensity, human-to-human service delivery and novel configurations…these things to build on, areas to play in to be AI-insulated. Have a read here.

AI

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9. Sakana, the Mo-Cap Actress

One for the techno-optimists who believe that innovation will always produce new work opportunities, how about this example of Sakana, the motion capture actress? With video game production technology and techniques moving into every kind of media production, we might see a small niche develop for physically well coordinated people who can communicate meaning through motion. Going to be a small niche, but I think it’s there 🤣

FUTURE OF WORK

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10. Declining Business Dynamism in Europe: The Role of Shocks, Market Power, and Responsiveness

Some new terms to learn: Business Dynamism - refers to the rate of new company formation / destruction, with the presumption that highly dynamic is generally good as it should mean lots of new jobs being both created and destroyed, which further means that workers re flowing across companies. Anyways, European business dynamism is in decline, almost all due to low growth / high cost of doing business.

ECONOMY

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The Podcasts

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11. Medieval Jobs That Don't Exist Anymore

Fun historical view of previous eras of job disruption. Jobs have always been created and destroyed, and it’s worth reminding ourselves of historical examples such as these: obviously the ‘Gong Farmer’ was the worst….

FUTURE OF WORK

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12. Responsible AI: Corporate Strategy, Data & Cloud ft Rob & Deniz, PwC

Brainfooder Sam Berthoud is a natural interviewer and I am backing this podcast to become one of the best in the industry in time. This time, we have a thrilling and educational conversation with Rob McCargow and Deniz Konak Ozturk of PwC, on the topic of Responsible AI. Must watch folks.

AI

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13. Monetization at Indeed

Really enjoyed the Brainfood Live last week on the Future of Job Boards and Job Advertising. It was inspired in large part by this investor update from Indeed earlier in the year, particularly Chris Hyam’s speech on Monetization. It’s 11 minute watch - really interesting to see the direction of travel - Indeed growing toward the staffing market, rather than the job board market. H/T to brainfooder Gavin Audagnotti for the share

RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING

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End Note

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I’ve been thinking a lot about assessment recently, especially as employers are switching focus from headcount growth to increasing talent density. There are lots of ways we can try and assess for quality but do we really know that much about these assessments? I know I don’t, so I am asking the community what you think of assessment types, and which do you think are most valid for hiring. Vote on the poll below and let me know in comments why you think this!

NB: I know there are many more assessment types - if one is not featured above, which do you prefer?

Thanks for reading everyone

Have a great week

Hung