Apr 24, 2022

Recruiting Brainfood for the week ahead - Issue #289

Hung Lee

Brainfood Jobs: McKinsey & Co back in with a couple of management roles in their Amsterdam office, along with roles from Cielo Talent, Sequence, Tender Foods, WeAreKeen and more. Check out the up to date board here. Hiring recruiters? Post jobs here

Brainfood Live, Ep151: Career Path Towards Chief People Officer. Been wanting to do this show for a long time - how to actually get to CPO? We’re talking with 4 members of the community who have recently made this step up, and we’re going to be finding out exactly what they did to get there. Don’t miss this one folks if you have ambition to head to the top. Friday 29th April, 2pm BST - register here

Special thanks this week to: Kevin Green, John Bersentes, Oonagh Clarke, Jon Hull, Tim Sanchez, Marlies Farrill, Heather Kitto, Colin Donnery, Eugène van den Hemel, Romuald Restout, Alison Birch, Jo McCatty, Johannes Sundlo, Matthias Wolf, Bao Le, Charlotte Steggall, Garry Turner, Richard Bradley, Alyssa Breetwor, Luke Davis, Dani Tamati, Ez Kahn, Jo McCatty and Steven Davis for your amazing public support of all things brainfood last week - scores updated on the Brainfood Hall of Fame😉

Can you help? Simply share this link recruitingbrainfood.com on a LinkedIn status update and recommend it to your network - it’s the best way to keep the growing the brainfood community.

Cheers!

Hung

Sponsors

HackerRank

This week’s brainfood is supported by our buddies HackerRank.

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SPONSORS

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The Brainfood

2021 Letter to Shareholders

The first Letter to Shareholders from an Amazon CEO that isn’t Jeff Bezos, Andy Jassy’s 2021 Letter turns out to be a stunner, especially on the 3rd act where he outlines hiring and organisational practices which he believes helps Amazon be the extraordinary business they are. Well worth a read in its entirety but especially that 7 point list in the last third of the letter. H/T brainfooder Garry Turner for the share.

CULTURE

www.aboutamazon.com

Advancing Recruitings Value Through Uncertain Times

Are traditional recruiting processes becoming unviable? For those of us slaving away on job ads, sourcing and cold outreach it may seem increasingly to be the case. Powerful call to action here from Gartner for HR, which pulls no punches: i.e hiring managers need to go. Essential read.

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

www.dropbox.com

Comment Search, Improved Search Results Relevance, Updated Search Design

Reddit’s massively popular yet ramshackle website has long needed improved search functionality, so this update last week is hugely promising for anyone who might be interested in using comment search to identify candidates. No excuse for sourcers to avoid Reddit anymore - check out the update here. H/T to brainfooder Dezso Papp for the share in the fb group.

SOURCING

www.redditinc.com

How To Transform Your Culture? Have Two Days with No Meetings

I suspect that a very large majority of readers of this newsletter would agree with the premise of this headline - the curiosity is why too many meetings continue to happen, and what our contribution is to the phenomenon. ‘Over collaboration’ I think is an underlying cause, we need to promote more ‘atomic’ work rather than contingent work. Easy reading, with great references to original research and commentary.

CULTURE

makeworkbetter.substack.com

Introducing Discussions: Real Human Answers in Search Results

Another new sourcing related innovation - Brave is providing a different type of results from search - not just blue links to other sites, but also links to human discussions on the topic. Exciting mashup of traditional search + commentary. Some obvious implications for candidate sourcing. Update here

SOURCING

brave.com

The Great Return: Survey of Managers Reveals Return to Office Battle in 2022

The hard reality is that managers have no role to play in a truly distributed working culture, where self directed, autonomous workers organise and collaborate without a human overseer. That’s my take on it anyway, others have a different view.

REMOTE WORKING

www.goodhire.com

Speaking Out of Turn: How Video Conferencing Reduces Vocal Synchrony and Collective Intelligence

Two new concepts to learn:

‘Vocal Synchrony’ - how people in groups synchronise their speech to facilitate collaboration, which results in greater ‘Collective Intelligence’ as ideas are exchange fluidly between synchronised group members.

It’s basically saying remote work is bad for both of these things, which is probably true. Bit technical but well worth a read.

PS: my solution to all this is to atomise work and reduce the requirement to collaborate. Because lets face it, we won’t leave remote

REMOTE WORKING

journals.plos.org

Intuition: When is it Right to Trust Your Gut Instincts?

Fascinating defence of intuition as potentially superior to analytical reasoning when making decisions. The caveat is experience; if you have it then, overthinking is counter productive, but if you’re a noob then your gut instinct is poor because you have not fed it with enough data from prior experience. Lots of things to think about here, especially as we are keen to de-bias everything and eliminate intuition from recruitment decision making. Excellent post again, from BBC Worklife

ASSESSMENT

www.bbc.com

Curators All the Way Down

Been meaning to feature this post for a long time, as I think it describes a great deal of what brainfood does - essentially parsing a lot of noise into some bits of interesting signal. More or less agree with everyone OP says in this piece. Interesting read for anyone interested in the creator economy.

CREATOR ECONOMY

gaby.mirror.xyz

11 Promises From a Manager

Twitter threading at its best, a series of insightful and practical recommendations on how to be a better manager. Example: ‘I will not schedule a meeting without an agenda’. Simple rules for better management.

CULTURE

twitter.com

Persuasion and the Prestige Paradox: Are High Status People More Likely to Lie?

Fascinating essay on the role of status on how we are persuaded by arguments. Key takeaway: high status individuals have greater ‘social status loss aversion’ and will adhere to prestige views even if they are flawed or flat out incorrect. Relevant on how we think about candidate assessment methods. Have a read here

ASSESSMENT

quillette.com

Mourning Loss of a Team Member as a Remote Team

Trigger warnings on this one folks. A tough circumstance but one which we may well have to get used to as more of us continue to work remote first organisations. No expertise attempted or offered in this account, it is simply a description of what happened to this team and what they did afterward.

CULTURE

www.sofuckingagile.com

The Purpose of “Purpose”

What is your purpose? It’s a question that goes much further than just EB, but to the core of the your businesses reason for being. At root though, most companies are here to make a profit, so an interesting challenge for those who either want to reject this core driver or mask it with PR & self indoctrination. One of the choices you got to make. Have a read here

EMPLOYER BRANDING

www.strategy-business.com

Conference Demographics Changed by Virtual Platforms

I have been to 4 in-person events in the past month and I have to say, have enjoyed them all immensely - the engagement, immersion and relationship fortification is on a different level compared to the online experience. We must not be too hasty in disposing of the virtual events though, as this extensive post on the DEIB ramifications of moving to virtual show. Excellent read and food for plenty of thought and ethical reasoning.

D&I

www.nature.com

Who's Talking?

McKinsey Recruiting: Marie on How to Succeed in McKinsey’s Recruiting Process

Always interesting to hear from the insiders view on what famed employers look for in candidates. Step-by-step review from a candidate turned recruiter McKinsey & Co. Worth a listen to anyone who wants to apply to the company of course but also relevant to anyone who wants to understand how a consistent hiring process works. Have a listen here

RECRUITMENT OPERATIONS

open.spotify.com

Power to the People Finders

Great discussion between two friends of brainfood - Neil Armstrong, CEO of Tribepad and Sven Elbert of Fosway, discuss DEIB. 15 minute watch / listen here.

D&I

www.youtube.com

Perfecting The Candidate Experience

Matt Alder continues racking up the quality conversations are an incredible pace - twice weekly 1-2-1’s with practitioners and thought leaders in the recruiting industry. One of the must listen podcasts, this one with Carlos Fernandez on healthcare, is an exemplar.

CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE

recruitingfuture.com

End notes

So I am completing this newsletter at Melbourne Tullamarine Airport, waiting to board the return flight to the UK, after 3 and half amazing weeks Down Under. What can I say - other than THANK YOU for all the Aussies who showed up to Talent Palooza in Melbourne, Recruiting Trends events in Sydney and Brisbane and in all the places in between.

It has been a long time since I have been on a trip like this and it reminds me of the how important it is to connect with people in person even more so now we have decisively shifted to a digital first age. Especial thanks due to Andrea Kirby for the hospitality, care and invitation to fly out in the first place, Liz van Zyl for being the absolute babe that she is and sorting out the incredible mid trip Easter break in Manly, Karin Bowness for arranging the Sydney and Brisbane events, Jo McCatty for the send off cookies, David Macciocca for the lift to the airport and last and most certainly not least, Bas van de Haterd for being an awesome traveling companion, friend and Rum drinking partner for the entirety of the trip. Cheers!

I’ll be back to Oz, maybe sooner than maybe you think. Always available on DM on twitter or Instagram or TikTok if want to talk about how to do it…

Have a great week everybody.

Hung

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Hung Lee @hunglee

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