Recruiting Brainfood - Issue 454
Human Agent Scale, New Metrics for the AI Era, Influencer Marketing in Recruiting, cool tool on Credential Valuation and the Accumulation of Cognitive Debt through overuse and dependence on AI...
This week’s brainfood is supported by our friends Ashby
There’s no shortage of AI in recruiting. The hard part is finding what’s actually useful. Ashby’s one of the few building practical tools that make recruiters’ lives better.
Their latest Ashby One release shows what thoughtful AI looks like:
AI Notetaker that automatically captures transcripts, summaries, and feedback prompts
AI‑Assisted Report Builder uses plain English to ask questions of your data
AI Candidate Assistant to help you understand candidate histories and next steps at a glance
Plus AI‑Generated Feedback Tokens that let you send polished rejection or update emails in seconds
No AI for AI’s sake. Just practical tools that reduce busywork and help teams move faster.
Not on Ashby yet? Get a demo today.
Friends,
I have landed in Brazil and about to travel to Rio for a week, for fans of bad body composition, you will be able to witness the absolute state of my belly on Instagram 🤣. Will be back in Sao Paolo, aiming for a meet up with local crew on Tuesday 1st July - let me know if you not already in the WhatsApp group and I will add you!
Meanwhile, massive week ahead on webinars:
Brainfood On Tour - How to Hire in Brazil in 2025 & Beyond - Wed 25th June, 2pm BRT / 6pm BST. We are with local recruiters & HR professionals Juliana Park, Patrick Gouy, Monaly Malucelli, Karina Fiod, Davi Bufalo & more - make sure you sign up if you are in Brazil or hire in Brazil! Register here
Recruiter Skills Profile: How AI Changes the Game - Friday 27th June, 2pm BST. Follow up from last week, where we talked about TA expansion of scope, now we follow up with the Recruiter Skills Profile of the future with none other than Tom Sayer, Director Global Recruiting Strategy at Accenture. Register here
Candidate Fraud: It’s a Recruitment Emergency! - Friday 27th June, 10am PT / 1pm ET. To close off the triple header, we have a Brainfood Live special on Candidate Fraud featuring Ryan Coulthorp, Senior Director of Workforce Planning & Recruiting Operations (Okta), Glenn Lindley, Founder (TalentIP) & Timothy Khoo-Jones, Head of Talent (ex-Block, Spotify) with Jason Zoltak, CEO of (Tofu) in the co-pilot seat. Register here
Thanks to: Garry Turner, Joey NK Koksal, Kevin Green, Bobby Nunn, Dave Hazelhurst, Rob Walker, Claire Bush, Bas van de Haterd, Martyn Redstone, Manjuri Sinha, Sarah Lane, Michelle Sumrall, Grant Clough, Johnny Campbell, Melissa Amy Carrington, John Paul McCaffrey, Sammi Abdoh, Carrie Brophy, Jeremy Russon, Johannes Sundlo, Neil Carberry, Paul McCardle and Koos Wurzer - thanks for your public endorsement of all things brainfood - keeping this show on the road my friends 🥂
Can you help? Share this newsletter with a friend in industry who needs a boost.
What Do Brainfooders Think?
Most of the prominent stories we are hearing have been about AI First companies, but these seem to be in the minority, at least from our audience. Lets see how this debate continues to evolve! Incidentally, Brainfood Live is happening on this topic next month - register here
1. The Future of Work with AI Agents — Insights from a Stanford Study
Stanford’s study introduced us to the ‘Human Agency Scale’ which this blog post usefully condenses for us. Multiple reasons to like this post - it contains three main ideas which can be useful pillars for us when thinking about AI. Firstly, the HAS scale is damn useful framework (see above), the degree of AI Agenticism can help us critique vendor claims, whilst the combination of automation risks vs market value points to a societal world shift on how we allocate status. Intriguing, useful, important stuff. H/T to brainfooder Michael Blakely for the share
AI
2. How AI is Rewriting the Playbook for Talent in European Tech Startups
Real leaders have real jobs to do so often don’t get the chance to do ‘thought leadership’. Hence, its always a treat when one conducts an experiment and shares their findings. Brainfooder Anna Ott writes a post to share her thinking on the impact of AI on job positions win the HV Capital portfolio of companies. Main takeaway: the jobs which ‘make AI’ are most secure and actually will rise in demand, whilst business operations looks like it will continue to shrink. H/T to brainfooder Carly Poulson in the online community.
CULTURE
3. Message from CEO Andy Jassy: Some Thoughts on Generative AI
As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs. It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company
If corporate HQ’s are the brains of the organisation, then it makes sense the corporate HQ jobs are most vulnerable to AI disintermediation. Important note from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy to the employee base, publicly announcing for the first time that the mass roll out of AI agents will net out to a smaller company in terms of payroll.
RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS
4. New Metrics of the AI Era
I’m not sure I fully understand this post from brainfooder Steve Levy but I include it anyway because its quite possible my brain is not working well after a long haul flight but also because Steve brings to attention an under discussed point: how AI impacts how we measure hiring success. Not sure if anyone has regraded what good looks like if TA becomes AI enabled, or whether new metrics have emerged which now should be included in how we measure. Probably need to do a Brainfood Live on this…let me know if you wanna
RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS
5. The Credential Value Index Navigator
Credentialism is generally a bad as an indicator of job performance, but it does seem to have material benefit for the credential holder in terms of wage increase. Super interesting tool by Burning Glass which puts a $ value on those LinkedIn certifications you’ve been building up. H/T to brainfooder Tom Lakin for the share
ASSESSMENT
6. The First Interview is a Filter, Not a Test
The best content often comes from non-specialists talking about recruitment. This post from a SWE turned PM, is directed at coaching tech candidates on what the first interview really is. Hard to disagree with her core premise - it’s a quick assessment on your viability as a candidate not a measure of your quality as a candidate.
ASSESSEMENT
7. Are Referred Candidates More Likely to be Hired?
Ashby consistently come up with super interesting proprietary content. Here they are talking about source of hire and whether referred candidates validate the idea that they are more likely to be hired than candidates from other sources. The answer is ‘no’ but it turns out that this fact is only one of many which we in TA might be finding interesting. Have a read.
SOURCING
8. Russell Reynolds Global Leadership Monitor 2025 H1
Exec Search firms are a great source of C-suite sentiment data. Russell Reynolds conduct this simple data collection exercise twice a year from their candidate bank of execs and via the time series can pick out trends on how C-suite are thinking about the geo-political macro, trade tensions, talent availability, regulation and the rest. Somebody should put these tables into an AI and generate some line charts - would make for a cool blog. H/T Srini Gundelli for the share in the online community
9. Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt
Status is accruing to those who are most AI-enabled, so it was welcome to see this piece of research land last week - on the consequences to human cognition on over use of AI. An experiment involved tracking neural connectivity of different groups of participants separated by their exposure to AI. Turns out, critical thinking skills atrophy through over reliance on the easy answers provided by your friendly chat companion. There’s probably something in this but we’ve heard the story of The End of Thinking (Again) before.
SOCIETY
10. Why Influencer Recruitment is the Hiring Strategy You’re Overlooking
Influencer marketing has become standard in B2C sales, increasingly becoming common in B2B, so its a wonder why it has yet to become common in hiring. Great thinking about brainfooder Vanessa Raath on why we should explore this option more, especially if the influencer in question is someone already in your business. Anyone doing any influencer recruiting? Brainfood Live on this at some point…
RECRUITMENT MARKETING
The Podcasts
11. The Future of Recruiting: Glen Cathey on AI, Empathy, and the End of Sourcing As We Know It
Brainfooder Glen Cathey is one of the all time greats in our industry and this talk is a wonderful contextualisation of our current moment. Glen takes us all the way back to 2010, his first public talk and how insights from them come back to relevance today, Have a watch of this - thoughtful and thought provoking. H/T to brainfooder Debby Clement for the share in the online community
SOURCING
12. Andrej Karpathy: Software in the Era of AI
Andrej Karpathy is one of the known-by-name AI guru’s whose key distinction from the likes of Sam Altman et al is that he remains close to the code. Here he is talking about how software engineering is going to change now that we have AI copilots who can do a lot of the work for us. Accessible for non-techies, so educational for us, but also excellent nurture content you can send to your tech candidates.
AI
13. Saurabh Mukherjea on AI, Jobs, and Building Wealth in the new era
One of the best interviews I’ve watched recently on the impact of AI on the workforce. From the India perspective, this is refreshingly frank on scope and scale of the impact of AI in the workforce - I quote - ‘it’s obviously going to destroy many jobs’. We need to accelerate through it and position for what comes afterward. Essential viewing
FUTURE OF WORK
End Notes
A conversation on last week’s Brainfood Live gave me a brainwave - if TA needs to expand scope beyond TA, perhaps getting some increased business acumen would be a good idea, so hence the AMA for C-suite series is being created as we speak! Vote on the poll below folks - let me know which one of these we should get in first 👊
That’s it - thanks for reading
Have a great week everybody
Hung
Another great issue Hung, thank you!
Arnold Schwarzenegger is doing influencer recruitment for Zimmer Biomet - interesting model, check it out.
Awesome