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Wonderful post by brainfooder Erin Mathew, lamenting this years absence of the in-person conference. The emerging themes from Erin’s post and the conversation it stimulated was this: in person conference provide the ultimate immersive experience. Have a read here - and roll on 2021!

FirstRound routinely produce some of the best content relevant to the brainfood community - sourced from an unparalleled network of founders and C-suite leaders in the startup / scale up space. This post on ‘how to manage up’ is a must read for anyone that has a boss and wants a better relationship with that boss.

Developer reports sometimes have the advantage of being built by developers themselves. The State of CSS is one of those and has been a regular annual for a few years and each time it demonstrates with its UX as much as it shows with its data. Superb report on the state of CSS, and just a wonderful web experience to explore. Do it here

Significant changes on FB/ Instagram this week, as messaging features become disabled - some for rebuilding in compliance with regulation, some others likely to disappear for good. As national governments increasingly legislate against globalised big tech, regulatory divergence will force platform providers to either localise service offerings or potentially withdraw them altogether. Important especially for anyone how manages employer fb pages. H/T to brainfooder Martyn Redstone for the share in the fb group.

Short but (bitter)sweet excerpt from LinkedIn Global Talent Report on the state of the recruiting budget. Going to decrease obviously, as employers play a cautious game and TA, turns inward. Worth a scan, but do compare with the Firm’s members survey below, which strikes a more optimistic note.

Li Jin has done more than anyone to describe a new category of work - the ‘creator economy’ is essentially the Youtuber model - where an individual acquires audience which can then be monetised via direct subscriptions or sponsorship (brainfood is the latter in case you hadn’t noticed) or maybe both.

However, what makes some creators successful is also what makes most fail - the amplification power of the platforms. Li Jin’s 10 recommendations on how to expand the creator class here - well worth a read if you want to join Jin’s activism or understand what challenges are going to be in your way if you want to start a business model like this.

The Firm was one of the first and maybe still is the professional network for in-house recruitment managers. The annual members report is one of the essential ones to read. UK data but I think of interest to everyone working in house. Have a read here. H/T to brainfooder and Firm MD, Emma Mirrington for the share

One of the under rated and under reported aspects of the shift to remote is the digitisation of businesses processes which were previously analogue. This means a data boom with risk and opportunity in equal measure. ‘Recruitment meta data’ is going to be a thing in 2021 folks. Have a read

Aggregated and indexed all the public data on Github from 2011 to 2020. Some obvious search / sourcing application here. Tech sourcers / recruiters need to take a look.

So this is an insane post which uses probability theory to make the case that hiring always means tradeoffs. The evidentialising (made up word, let me know if you think you know what I think I mean) is kind of overwhelming but there’s truth here - we don’t weight values accurately, therefore have poorer grasp of rational trade offs which might make us more competitive employers of highly skilled in demand talent. See how far you get ;-)

Fascinating research on the impact on immigration / emigration in one of the world’s most iconic cities - New York. Most interesting is who is leaving (150K pa) and who is coming in (<90K pa). 12 months ago we were talking about the megacity being the future of societal organisation - the reversal of this trend may be the most important impact Covid-19 will have.

Great essay detailing the impact of industrialisation on the bootmakers of 19th century England. Tech unemployment was real then, and whilst it did lead to new job opportunities, those new jobs were often in a different location to the old ones displaced, necessitating relocation. Rare to see this type of quantification of previous eras of tech disruption. Must read

1000 brainfooders now registered on the Hall of Fame. This is a searchable talent directory for members who want to find each other - for work, collaboration, side projects and the rest. Free to use here, so get to it.

So I am going to put myself to the task of making sure each of these podcasts is still alive and going; I suspect many aren’t so expect a cleaned up list in the new year when we push this out to the community again. If you want to add a podcast to this list, access the google sheet here and add to the bottom of the spreadsheet (permissions have to be reset so anyone should now be able to do this)

Smart questions and smarter answers in this podcast from brainfooder Graham Thornton. How do you know when someone is ‘hire ready?’ Maybe the main challenge in hiring the highly skilled, in-demand. H/Y brainfooder Bas van de Haterd for the share in the fb.

I actually talk about Bruce Lee in this, whose combat philosophy is totally relevant to the challenges of recruiting and HR in 2021. Thanks to brainfooder Keith MacKenzie for inviting me to freewheel on the future of TA. Have a watch, here

Hard to get Mitch Sullivan on the podcast. It’s usually worth it when someone manages it. H/T brainfooder Marcus Edwardes on this excellent interview with the man himself - on copy writing and securing consistent engagement on your LinkedIn posts.