This Week, In Recruiting - Issue 44

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Open Kitchen: What Style of Newsletter?

I think last week's post on have inspired a few of you to start writing your own LinkedIn Newsletters 🤣.

If that is the case, then I'm delighted. As far as I am concerned, the more the better. Everyone has a voice and if you can and want to use it, then you should. Pay no attention to those who say there are already too many - we are each responsible for our own 'information diet' and shouldn't be asking others to limit their voice just because we cannot say 'no' to a subscription invitation. Say your piece and the market will decide whether your effort, is worth the effort.

This might be a good time then to share some thoughts on what style of newsletter you should write. I'm going pretty hard for the 'behind-the-scenes' style, which is what this segment 'Open Kitchen' is. Here are 5 reasons why this style might also work for you.

1. It Solves the 'Content Crisis'

Most people don't do content because they fear the challenge of consistently coming up with great content ideas. Turns out this is actually accurate analysis! It is extremely hard to come up with ideas for content - I would go as far as to say if you were not a specialist creator, the chances of you successfully doing it alongside your daily work is really quite low. Taking the BTS or 'Open Kitchen' approach solves this problem because you are never actually creating content ideas - you are just disclosing what you are doing, as you are doing it.

Look at some of the most popular TikTokers out there at the moment - a great many of them are just recording their daily, mundane, operation activities, and maybe providing a little commentary over it. 'The Pool Guy' in the video above basically shoots 60 second videos of him cleaning swimming pools. It's his job, he does it every day, he records every job and posts it. Number of followers? 12 million.

He's not trying to be 'thought leader'. Nor is he experimenting with some revolutionary new approach to cleaning swimming pools. He is not even trying to give you advice to solve your problems. All he is doing is showing you what he does in his job. So if you have a job, then you can do this too. In fact, if you don't have a job, you can also still do this i.e. publicise what you're doing in your job search. It's a cheat code for creating 'idea free' content.

2. It Can't Help but be Original

BTS material also benefits from being truly original for the simple reason that you are a unique individual, in a unique circumstance. By openly sharing your work as the engine for your content, it guarantees that you're never going to plagiarise anybody. Furthermore, don't underestimate how creative you might have been in solving problems. What might seem obvious to you, may in fact be a genius innovation that the other people have never thought to do. The ancient Maya built one of the greatest pre-Colombian Empires which spanned millions of kilometres ...and yet never invented the wheel. We each approach problems with our own solutions, and so many times we have different ways to achieve the same or similar ends.

3. It's Always Topical

Disclosing what you are doing generally makes your content inherently topical.

If you're a recruiter, you're probably trying to deal with candidate shortage, elevated applicant demands, under resourced TA teams and so on. All of these operational pressures are a microcosm of wider industry challenges, one shared by many others in the sector. So BTS-ing your own challenges and your own attempted solutions (whether they are success or failure, embryonic or complete) emerges as topical content from a practitioner in the field. You will never have to manage a 'content calendar' again - the stuff you are currently doing right now, is likely to be the most relevant content to the rest of the community.

4. It Defaults to Authentic

Image: Indiehackers, 2022

Lets face it - we have all lost trust - and interest - in corporate messaging.

Ever since Big Brother burst onto our screens, we've increasingly shifted our attention away from polished, mediated, 'cleaned-up' output, and towards content which is raw, shoot-from-the-hip, unscripted. We can debate whether this is a net gain or loss for society at large, but we've crossed the Rubicon on this and there is no going back.

It's super relevant for us in the jobs business; candidates much prefer Employee Generated Content - than any other form of media from employers. It can only be because we trust the truth of it more when it is not tightly controlled.

BTS is 'default authentic' - you don't have to check 🤣. If you were simply showing your work as you do it, it cannot be anything other than authentic. There is some risk that you may end up performing for the audience, but most of the time you're just going to forget the audience is there and just get it out there.

5. It's No Extra Work

Image: Ronald Coase, Bloomberg

Finally, and most importantly, especially for busy people with other stuff to do - BTS approach is the most cost-efficient way to produce content. If you do it right, you won't be doing much at all - look again at The Pool Guy. Zero prep, zero post production, minimal edits - he's too busy cleaning swimming pools to be worried about the video! You can guesstimate that for each TikTok he makes, it might cost him 5 minutes to do the whole thing - record, edit, distribute. And not 5 minutes focused work either - 5 minutes whilst he is doing his real job.

Minimising effort is one of the most important reasons to do BTS - because you have other things to do, and you are not a professionally compensated for this type of content. It has to be cheap, otherwise you are going to end up with a time / labour version of a money pit - a black hole which sucks down all your spare time (therefore money) for little return.

I go back to our friend Ronald Coase. You have to be ruthless with your time, because you have a finite amount of it.

Final Thoughts

It's not the only way to write a newsletter. You can curate content - like I do with Recruiting Brainfood on Sundays. Or you can do original writing, if you really enjoy writing. Or maybe some other style which I have thought of. But Behind-the-Scenes - operating the 'Open Kitchen' - is generally going to be the most cost effective way to get started.

So what are you waiting for?

Now out of the kitchen, onto the lounge 👇

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What's in the News?

SeekOut raise $115 million Series C

Who said sourcing was dead? Taking advantage of a market where candidate shortage is the most widely reported recruiting challenge, SeekOut raise an enormous round to build out their position in the market as the must-have sourcing tool. Much more to come from this platform, expect internal talent marketplace to be a big part of the future here. Read the blog post here

US Supreme Court Blocks Employer Vaccine Mandate

The politicisation of pandemic suppression strategies is perhaps one of the most unexpected and unpleasant outcomes of Covid-19. Last week, the US Supreme Court overturns President Biden's mandate for large employers (over 100) to vaccinate employees, leaving HR with an impossible situation to manage. The shift to remote can only be accelerated through the inability of government to implement policy. Read the report from Al Jaz here

WorkStep raise $25 million

Blue collar workers have never been adequately served by a professional social network; and yet hiring for front-line workers has been one of the most acute challenges in our industry for the past 2 years. WorkStep are one of the players trying to plug this gap - read the PR here

If you are a recruitment service provider or technology business and have any news to share, comment below, this is your application to get into next week's addition of This Week, In Recruiting. Make sure to @ mention me so that I see it

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What's On Offer?

It's VideoMyJob again repeating their offer from last week. Here's the deal - 20 employers are going to get to use this Employee Generated Content video manager for FREE for 90 days. CEO David Macciocca and Global VP of Growth David Cevelli launching the pilot with you on Weds 26th January (5pm GMT / 9am PT / 12pm ET)

Try the Career Site Widget for FREE for the first 90 days. It's a no brainer folks - register here

If you are a recruitment service provider or recruitment technology vendor have any exclusive offer for the community, comment below with your offer in order to be included in next week's edition of This Week, In Recruiting. Make sure to @ mention me so that I see it.

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What's Going On?

Skill Building in the New Future of Work, Wed 19 Jan, 9.30am GMT

How to ensure your organisation has the skills required to deal with the new future of work? A critically important question, especially as the persistent candidate shortage means the requirement to redeploy existing staff into new roles. With some smart folks including Colin Donnery (Group CEO, FRS Network), Darren Connolly (Head of Sales, UKI Staffing, LinkedIn), Kerrie Fleming (Associate Dean, Ashridge Executive Education & Associate Faculty IMI), Justine Conroy (Sales Performance Consultant, LinkedIn) and Donal O’Donoghue (ERF President/MD, Sanderson). Register here.

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep140 - Setting Salaries for Remote Teams, Friday 21 Jan, 2pm GMT

One of the most obvious challenges to the shift to remote is how to set pay scales and compensation for team mates who might be located anywhere in the world. Do we go with universally standardised pay or location adjusted? And if adjusted, how much by? Questions of global inequality collide with operational HR in this unique episode of Brainfood Live On Air with Rachel Gibbs, Global Compensation & Benefits Advisor (Independent), Megan O'Malley, Senior Director Global Recruitment, (International Rescue Committee) & Andrew Gadomski, Founder (Aspen Analytics). Register here

Sonic Branding for Recruitment Marketing and Employer Branding, Wed 16 Feb, 2.30pm

Kind of re-upping this, as I think it's going to be a banger. We are beginning to understand the power of audio, one of the channels of communication which have less distractions that visual, where we are bombarded by notifications and distractions all the time. Need to know the line up to this, but I'm for sure going to check this out. Martyn Redstone hosting. Register here

RecFest, Thurs 7 July, Knebworth, UK

Already getting enquiries from international friends about tickets to this - and I don't even work here 🤣. That said, if there is one in-person event I will unfailing support it is Recfest, for my money the No1 event in our industry. It's all about the vibe folks - getting together with industry peers in an outdoor, festival environment. You want to accelerate your relationship building in one day, then this is the event to go to. No brainer at the price - super early bird £99 + VAT. Get on the waitlist, because I guarantee you this will sell out (even at 3000 person capacity). Tickets here, go get them

If you have an event, webinar or podcast going on next week and want it featured on next week's newsletter, comment below with the link and event details. Don't forget to @ mention me so that I see it

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Who's Hiring?

Technical Recruiter, Deepgram, Remote USA

Senior Recruiter, Minted, Remote USA

Sourcing Specialist, On Deck, Remote Global

Corporate Recruiter, On Deck, Remote Global

Tech Recruiter, On Deck, Remote Global

Executive Recruiter, On Deck, Remote Global

Senior Tech Recruiter, MesssageBird, Remote EU

Senior Product Recruiter, MessageBird, Remote EU

Commercial Recruiter, MesssageBird, Remote EU

Senior Technical Recruiter, Spokeo, Remote USA

Director - Human Resources, Lime, London, UK

Talent Acquisition Partner (Manager), GWI, London, UK

Technical Recruiter (Remote), Brad's Deals, Chicago, Remote USA

If you want to get your job featured, post jobs on the Brainfood Jobs Job Board here

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Who's Moving?

Mark Tortorici joins Meta as Sourcing Manager, after spending last year leading the sourcing division of BNY Mellon. Anyone who approaches the recruiting industry from a sourcing point of view will know who Mark is; tremendous hire for Meta, and one with strong benefits to TA EB.

George Lees joins Re:work as Talent Partner after spending time with RGF in Japan and Pertemps in the UK. Few better places to be right now than in a top class Rec2Rec business, hiring recruiters for TA teams in Tech startup / scale up - rock solid move.

Stacey Slater joins Oyster as Global Talent Acquisition Operations Manager after spending time with MessageBird, Onfido, Wunderkind and Nexmo - a veritable herd of unicorns. Great move to join one of the potential winners of the new normal - look forward to seeing what you get up to there Stacey

Tush Wijeratne joins GroupM as Head of EMEA for Talent Acquisition after spending 4 years in leadership roles at Publicis Sapient. Interesting times in the media industry, especially with the evolving conversation around ad models and data privacy.

Pauline Powell joins Binance as Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist - EMEA Leadership Hiring, after spending the past 4 years in lead TA positions with Zendesk. Corporate (or in-house) exec hiring is such an interesting niche, love to know more about how to get good at this. Maybe a Brainfood Live on this, if Pauline is up for it.

Finally, some significant upward moves: Farida Charania moves into the top role as CEO of Empauwer, the onboarding and engagement platform, after serving as advisor to the business for the past 2 years, my good buddy Tim Oliver Pröhm moves to VP to lead the KellyX Digital Innovation Lab, Tatjana Momcilovic gets promoted to Director, Talent Acquisition EMEA at VMWare and finally Noura Dadzie moves up to Senior VP Sales at Talent.com. Congratulations everybody

If you have made a senior exec appointment to your business, and feel the wider community needs to know about it, comment below with the details and see it featured in next weeks issue. Don't forget to @ mention me in it so that I see it

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What Are You Doing?

There's going to be load of survey requests coming up in the next few weeks - we have Cronofy, iCIMS, Gem and several other recruitment tech businesses running industry surveys which I'm going to ask you to take part in.

If you have any other personal 'off-platform' initiatives you want to talk about - new book, new podcast, charity initiative, personal project of any kind, let me know if comment below.

If you are doing something new, comment below with what it is and share a link to where you want people to go. Don't forget to @ mention me in it so that I see it

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End Notes

So I bought a smartwatch the other day, in a 'all the gear, no idea' power move.

What do you know? It is indeed having an impact on my activity levels. I'm one of these that habitually 'over optimises' for efficiency and so try and not do unnecessary trips. However, in so doing has led to my life becoming much more sedentary than is ideal, and so the watch the heart and O2 monitor is helping to raise my awareness of my own sloth.

Now I need to go and do 10,000 steps, or take an extra trip to the grocers or just go for walk. You do what you measure I guess. We all know this is the case, so I'm now thinking....what else am I not measuring, and therefore, not doing?

More next week, on this

Hung

Hung Lee is the curator of Recruiting Brainfood, and now This Week In Recruiting. Subscribe to both if you are into recruiting or HR or just interested in world of work.