Recruiting Brainfood - Issue 453
TA Tech Landscape, Culture Shock for Returning Diaspora, 457 page AI Index Report 2025, Race based bonus scandal at Lockheed Martin, and Piketty's Economic explanation for Global North vs Global South
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Friends,
Last week was another week of intense in-person events - RECLive 25, Cultivate 2025 and CIPD Festival of Work. Tough macro, arrival of Agentic (or at least Agent-like) AI, balanced with increasingly loud voices on the need for human centric organisations. Hugely stimulating to meet people in person to discuss stuff like this - make sure you do the same - Big List of Recruiting & HR Events to attend in 2025 - get yourself to some of these!
Big week ahead for me: I’m at the All In the AI Lab with SmartRecruiters at The Steel Yard this Wednesday 18th June. All day event, so come for any part of this you want - I’m on in the PM moderating a panel on AI First vs Human Centred. If you are there, make sure you come up and say hello 👊
Sao Paolo & Rio de Janeiro - I’m flying out to Brazil immediately after Brainfood Live this Friday, where I’m going to learning about hiring in the largest country in Latin America. Brainfood On Tour already set up - register for this if you are in Brazil or care about hiring in Brazil! Further, if you are in Sao Paolo or Rio from 21st to July 1st, let me know if you want to meet up!
Thanks to: Martyn Redstone, Joey NK Koksal, Alexey Geht, Amira Harb, Balazs Paroczay, Avril Lyn Thum, Lindsey Stone, Andreea Mascoveschi, Rob Walker, Juliana Park, George Larocque, Jane Hatton, James Whitelock, Koos Wurzer, Kristjan Kristjansson, Johann Bragi Fjalldal, Kristi Helga Magnusdottir, Morgan Lobb, Katherine Turner, Jamie Leonard, Jon Brooks, Teresa Wykes, Neil Carberry OBE(!), Kate Shoesmith and Jason Cerrato - thank you for your public support, invites and endorsements this past week - keeping this show on the road, cheers 🥂!
Can you help? Share this newsletter with your friends in TA / HR who need some brainfood
What Do Brainfooders Think?
This, along with the proprietary research from BrightHire (see below), tells me that we’re not particularly ‘AI First’ atm. An opportunity for those to reach first mover advantage, or wise caution not to jump on the latest bandwagon? Thanks for all who voted, make sure you vote on this week’s poll below 👊
Brainfood Live On Air - Ep313 - Beyond Talent Acquisition: Skills Needed To Expand Scope, Friday 20th June, 2pm BST
You know transformation is for real when marginal ideas become mainstream. The Overton Window has shifted on the future of Talent Acquisition, especially as persistent external instability, high cost of employment and the promise of AI has meant organisational demand for permanent headcount is in decline. How do TA expand scope? What skills are needed to do this? Expert panel on this conversation, lead by none of than industry legend and long time brainfooder Johnny Campbell, CEO of Social Talent. Must attend folks. Register here
The Brainfood
1. AI Index Report Stanford 2025
Every year Stanford University comes out with AI Index Report. It’s probably the most comprehensive annual paper on the ‘State of AI’ that you can get hold of, especially on how AI is interacting on industry. It’s a 457 page monster so its going to be beyond all of us to read line-by-line so download it, stick it i NotebookLLM and listen to it in your sleep…
AI
2. 5 Mindset Shifts to Supercharge Business Growth
Another annual report, this time IBM’s CEO survey for 2025. Lots of interesting tidbits in here, especially on CEO increase appetite for tech investment, even though they don’t always precisely know the value it brings to organisation. I have to sympathy with this - sometimes the tools can change the culture. Read this alongside the PwC and Deloitte Insights surveys, get into the head of the C-suite.
CULTURE
3. Jobs Outlook June 2025
US jobs data for June with Revelio Labs analysing BLS data. Main lowlight is Trump’s DOGE policies, which can be directly attributed to the collapse of public sector job postings - down 80% in some segments. For out-of-work public sector workers this is a secondary crisis - not only laid off but now with no obvious alternative opportunities to pursue. Time to relocate? I know more than a few who have…
ECONOMY
4. LLM Reality Check - What Really Happens When Commercial LLM’s Screen Your Candidates
Brainfooder Martyn Redstone is carving out a niche as an AI compliance type, which is a welcome development as our sector absolutely needs 3rd party guidance on how to stay on the right side of legislation when it comes to using AI. One of the earliest and still one of the most obvious use cases is have AI review masses of CV’s and rank them. What can possibly be the problem?
ASSESSMENT
5. Are Companies Asking About Candidates AI Experience?
Some counter intuitive data from today’s sponsor BrightHire, who mined interview data to figure out how many times candidates are being asked about AI. Turns out - it’s not very often. Candidates for marketing roles are asked most with Recruiters / HR candidates being asked about AI only 4% of the time. It’s fascinating stuff
ASSESSMENT
6. GenAI Application Engineers
There is no field where AI has changed the nature of the work more dramatically than software engineering. Andrew Ng with a thoughtful piece on what the future software engineer will be doing - and what they might be most correctly called. Of relevance to any recruiter hiring these skills, positioning for a future vertical or perhaps anyone interested in knowing how s/w engineers think about their future job design.
FUTURE OF WORK
7. TATech Landscape 4
I credit brainfooder Glenn Lindley for the herculean task of mapping the TATech landscape. It’s a futile effort as rate of product innovation has never been faster but you have to salute the man for the effort!! Main takeaway here is that the TATech landscape is dizzyingly complex and we’re going to need help to navigate it. For vendors, the battle for mindshare is brutal, they all got to up game on the media side.
RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS
8. Lockheed Martin Awarded Bonuses Based on Race
When you lead with ‘diversity’ rather than ‘inclusion’ then you’re going to get unfair treatment. Ugly looking case emerging from leading US arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin, which seems to have been caught adjusting bonus awards to align with diversity rather than performance metrics.
D&I
9. Colonial Extraction & Unequal Exchange Have Shaped Two Centuries of North-South Inequality
Protests against in California in support of the immigrant workforce upon which so many sectors of the US economy depends is a local manifestation of a deeper, longer term structure of the global economy - a de facto continuance of colonial extraction from the Global North of the Global South. Thomas Piketty with a belated discovery, with a working paper you can download here. Helps to know how the world works…
ECONOMY
10. I Wasn’t Ready for this…Indian Returns after 10 years in the US
…which is something maybe this fellow could have done more with. Interesting story surfaced up by brainfooder Achyut Menon of an Indian national returning to country after spending past 10 years in the United States and experiencing the sort of culture shock only 3rd country people can probably appreciate. His working framework of company culture stereotypes was humourous and the survival hacks, useful!
CULTURE
The Podcasts
11. Being Intentionally Unintentional Meant Avoiding an Office Job
Few people in our industry are more interesting to speak with than brainfooder Cliff Jurkiewcz, mainly because he is a great conversationalist. He runs a great podcast, which I had the pleasure of appearing in last week. It’s a personal one folks, so my journey from youth to now, and what I think is true about recruitment today. Have a watch / listen.
CULTURE
12. Apple DROPS AI BOMBSHELL: LLMS CANNOT Reason
Humourous yet credible breakdown of the debate of the week in AI, when Apple dropped a paper purporting to prove that LLM’s cannot reason. The paper is likely to become canonical and this video presents the argument and critique with a fairly even hand. Easy listening, definitely educational, maybe important.
AI
13. Why 99% of Small Businesses in Japan Could Be Wiped Out
…even if they are profitable! Fascinating documentary on the second order impact of decades long fertility crisis, which Japan - like everyone else - seems no closer to solving. Thousands of profitable companies soon to close forever, because they are family businesses, with no longer any family to take it over.
SOCIETY
End Note
Two philosophies seem to be emerging in our we think about the relationship between AI and Human Workers. I’m keen to better understand these, so will be exploring them in conversations throughout the year, in the meantime I want to ask the community where your business is at with these philosophical underpinnings.
Let me know where you’re at!
That’s it - thanks for reading everybody
Have a great week
Hung
Excited to hear the results of the chat about Brazil. Will you provide any summary post event?
Human centered and AI supported