Recruiting Brainfood - Issue 448
What CEO's are saying now, VC investment in Worktech H2, DIY candidate scanner with Google Sheets & Manus API, Stats from a dying web and who captures the value from all these efficiency gains...
This weeks brainfood is supported by our friends Greenhouse
Balancing AI innovation while navigating AI regulation and compliance
AI is transforming hiring — but is it the competitive edge your team needs or a risky balancing act? With the EU AI Act enforcing stricter rules, talent teams must walk a fine line between innovation and accountability. Join leaders from Thoughtworks, Arctic Shores and Greenhouse for a dynamic discussion on how TA teams can stay ahead — boosting efficiency with AI while staying compliant with EU regulations
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Friends,
Massive week ahead on webinars, so I am just going to list them out here, and have you all sign up to them.
Reimagining Recruitment in the Era of AI - Monday 12th, 6pm BST / 10am PT - it’s Hari Srinivasan, VP of Product at LinkedIn, demo-ing LinkedIn Hiring Assistance on Brainfood Live special. Must attend / replay - register here
How to Leverage Passive Candidates on Social Media - Wed 14th, 2pm BST. Can Social media advertising solve the high volume hiring crisis? Register here
Turning Inbound Overload in Talent Advantage - Wed 14th, 6pm BST. Featuring TA Leaders from Engine, Growth Therapy and Deel. Register here
How to Build Career Pages Which Actually Work - Thurs 15th, 2pm BST. What does Employer branding / Talent Attraction look like in the era of AI? Register here
Hiring Manager Self Serve: Past & Future of Recruitment? - Fri 16th, 2pm BST. AI is going to give us some new / old options as to who does what, especially when candidates want to hear directly from HM’s.. Register here
Brainfood Live full 2 month schedule out now too - here it is.
Thanks to: Eugène van den Hemel, Joey NK Koksal, Kevin Green, Dave Hazelhurst, Dan Craddock, Tony Restell, Juliana Park, James Burgess, Rob Walker, Adam Thurgood, Mark Harman, Jessica Moore, Andrew Gadomski, Gareth Flynn, Paul McCardle & Andrew Spence - your public endorsement of all things brainfood is essential for keeping this show on the road - cheers!
Can you help? Share this newsletter to your network on LinkedIn and have your recruiter friends sign up - thanks 🙏
What Do Brainfooders Think?
Good job we’re doing the demo with Hari tomorrow then 🤣. Thanks for voting folks, make sure you scroll to the bottom of the newsletter and vote for this week’s poll.
The Brainfood
1. KPMG AI Quarterly Pulse Survey: What Executives Are Saying Now
Pulse surveys of CEO’s are probably the most important contribution management consultancies are making right now - they give us a sense of CEO sentiment which inevitably manifests into policy. AI Agents are going to be all over your organisation sooner or later; what we have to do as a function is to Expand Scope (rather than ‘Consume Cope’) and start putting together a bullet proof argument for the human premium. H/T to brainfooder Bas van de Haterd for the share in the online community, PDF for download here
RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS
2. Large Language Models, Small Labour Effects
Well written research paper on the impact of AI on productivity and worker earnings. The spoiler alert is: ‘not much’, which could be explained by a number of factors, including excessive corporate capture of value vis a vis labour - the classic outcome of all previous technology revolutions, a point well made in this brilliant Ted Chiang essay. There is some practical stuff in there too, including interesting tidbits on the impact on training on AI, in reducing the gender gap in the use of AI. Academic paper but accessible for most people here - have a read.
SOCIETY
3. How I Built a Smart Candidate Scanner Inside Google Sheets
Lets bring it back down to some practical stuff recruiters can do with AI that help with immediate tasks, such as ‘recruiting people’. This set up is suitable for anyone who has a long list of candidates which needs prioritisation for outreach, but perhaps more important as a demo on what can be done with consumer grade tools most of us have already have access to. LinkedIn post plus video here and the blog post write up here.
SOURCING
4. Why LLM’s Have No Place In Hiring Decisions
Brainfooder Martyn Redstone has done some sterling work in highlighting the problems of using consumer grade tools too aggressively - most popular models are closed source, lack explainability - and more worryingly, often seem to prefer to provide plausible responses rather than true ones. TA / HR also have compliance risk - we talked about this in Brainfood Live a couple weeks ago - basically meaning that at some point, you’re going to have to pull the plug on whatever experiments you’re using, especially if you are working for enterprise, public sector or highly regulated. Good read
ASSESSMENT
5. New AI World
Who captures the value of technology innovation is one of the key questions of our time. If we are not alert, we indeed may fall into the techno-fuedalist dystopia outlined by Yanis Varoufakis, where a very small elite capture all the value from AI. The contest percolates down to our level in recruitment in how we translate productivity gains from AI into ‘higher value work’ - this will not magically happen, it needs to be articulated and fought for. Scott Galloway with a great essay on how much better it is for society if stakeholders shared the gain, rather than shareholders capturing it. That means supporting Open vs Closed sourced AI. H/T to brainfooder John Vlastelica for the share in the online community
SOCIETY
6. 2025 Q1 Global WorkTech VC Update
Brainfooder George Larocque is doing some sterling work in segmenting VC investment and picking out where we are in TA / HR tech. The chart above is basically the same shape as the hiring market in general - the happy boon post vaccine, leading to ‘peak recruiter’ before dropping down to much lower levels. Investment going into worktech can be expected though, as AI reshapes the investment opportunity. We’re bring George onto Brainfood Live to discuss this next month - register here now if you want in on the insight
RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS
7. AI is Reshaping the HR Operating Model: Here's What 15 Leading Companies Discovered
Interesting summary on how AI is changing how HR operates; particularly like the awareness of the multiple drivers to transformation - from top down in the effort to increase operational efficiency and via bottom up, from AI disintermediation of routine tasks. Quick takeaway available too in the form of the top 5 skills HR practitioners need today: these are AI & Machine Learning Literacy, Human-Centered Design, Digital Product Management, Data Science & Analytics and Ethical AI Governance. Going to do a Future Skills Needs show on Brainfood Live w/ brainfooder Johnny Campbell and friends - up now if you want to come along.
RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS
8. Stats from a Dying Web
Google’s AI overviews have resulted in declines of 70 to 80 percent in the click-through rates to the web pages from which they derive their information. That’s 70 to 80 percent fewer visits to web pages, and one of the primary web page-producing industries is shrinking accordingly: CNN, Vox Media, HuffPost, and NBC are among the publishers that have announced layoffs in 2025 so far.
One of theories which almost everyone agreed with was that GenAI would kill search - it’s the primary reason why the obvious leader of AI innovation - Google - sat on its model and allowed OpenAI to copy and launch it as ChatGPT. What does this mean for us when information retrieval requests are satisfied by GenAI summaries rather than pages of blue links to the underlying web? Lots to think about re: sourcing, employer branding etc. Adjacent to us, but important and relevant read.
H/T brainfooder Steven Rothberg for the share in the online community.
EMPLOYER BRANDING
9. How To Create Meaningful Connections By Asking Great Questions
The human premium must be found in human connections, and perhaps, human judgement (see Jonny Ive interview below). We’ve become obsessed by being ‘data driven’ but this can lead to simply doing the things which are more easily quantified. Interesting post on how to ask great questions - we recruiters probably can segue between these personas to get a better sense of the candidate.
ASSESSMENT
10. Global Energy Review 2025
Energy transition is going to be one of the main redistributors of human employment so it make sense for us to take a look at this annual report from the IEA on how the earth is actually producing and consuming energy. Oil demand will peak (not helped by Trump’s drill baby drill commitment, which will simply reduce price), so work will redistribute to the future - nuclear, solar, wind, batteries - and all the secondary industries that come making this transition. We need to do a Brainfood Live on this - anyone doing recruiting in the energy space? Get in touch…
FUTURE OF WORK
The Podcasts
11. A Conversation with Jonny Ive
There probably has been a product designer who has had more impact on tech than Jonny Ive. It might be a coincidence but Apple’s dazzling product innovation hasn’t been the same since he left in 2019. Here he is with Stripe’s Patrick Collison, in a fascinating conversation - relevant for anyone who is thinking about what the human offers in a world dominated by AI…
CULTURE
12. i built an AI tool to spot RED FLAGS in anyone...
As some of you know, I’ll be interviewing Steven Bartlett for Gem’s Talent Summit (May 20th - register here, so I was intrigued to see this update from the Diary of A CEO podcast host - a tool which can spot red flags at interview! Have a watch folks and let me know what you think - and let me know what questions you think I should be asking Steven, cheers
ASSESSMENT
13. Building a System of Record for the AI Era
Love to hate Workday but there’s a reason why they are the default system for HR for many of the largest enterprises and public bodies around (they recently got the no bid gig to revamp the Office of Personnel Management). Here is CEO Carl Eschenbach on creating a system of record in the era of AI - well worth a listen, especially on how to triangulate the interests between employers, workers and the AI Agents. H/T to Bas van de Haterd for the share.
RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS
End Note
Brainfood Live idea: livestream a training course with an industry leading practitioner on some skill or other - would this be of interest, and if so, what skill do you want met to try and get an expert in? Vote in the poll below!
That’s it - thanks for reading
Have a great week everybody
Hung
Truly wished that there was more insights on the "AI is Reshaping the HR Operating Model: Here's What 15 Leading Companies Discovered." How was it conducted? What did they analyse? How did they go about it? What kind of tools did people use?