This Week, In Recruiting - Issue 69

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Open Kitchen: Catastrophic Failure

In tech, this is actually a technical term used to describe the unplanned interruption and subsequent failure of a critical service. In 6 years of writing Recruiting Brainfood it has never happened but this weekend - it very nearly did.

The above image is a screenshot of what I was seeing on newsletters.recruitingbrainfood.com on Saturday evening. The service I use to create Recruiting Brainfood - Revue - was down, as so were all newsletters created with it - some 30,000 newsletters that likely go to several million subscribers in total.

What was the problem? Revue did not know, or would not tell us

From service first being down, fully 24 hours elapsed before an update from the only account with which users could communicate - the relatively obscure Twitter handle, TwitterWrite. Twitter had acquired Revue two years ago and no doubt now have no idea what to do with it, other than perhaps fold it into a new product, which has bare bones support such as this Twitter handle. Note that there was no way to access dashboard, archive, subscriber data - nothing but an error screen and this one intermittently posting Twitter handle.

Thankfully, I know the founder of Revue and was able to track his personal social accounts and saw that at least there was awareness of a problem and that action was being taken to resolve. That said, it was fingers crossed and I went to bed on Saturday having made peace with the possibility that Issue 300 of Recruiting Brainfood would not now be sent.

That is how I got think about 'catastrophic failure' and what can be done about it, and so that is the topic of today's Open Kitchen.

1. Resiliency Gets No Props

Since Covid-19, we have talked a great deal about building 'anti-fragile' systems. The problem is anti-fragile means an exchange of efficiency for resilience, and there is no real case where we can observe this happening, or even of it making sense as the right thing to do. If we imagine organisations which were maximally prepared for pandemic induced disruption in 2019, it would be clear that they would have had to put into place mitigation strategies which would have incurred too great a price on business efficiency - they would've gone out of business long before Covid-19 made itself known to the world. The same rules in life itself - we do not find redundant features in the body which are there 'just in case'. The uncomfortable reality is that we need the catastrophe to actually occur before we are able to build or evolve a response to it.

2. Be Like Water, My Friend

In the case of Recruiting Brainfood, the DNS issue Revue had was indeed fixed in time (sometime Sunday AM) and the Issue 300 went out as usual yesterday morning. However, carrying on 'business as usual' feels unsatisfactory, especially having narrowly avoided catastrophe. The risk has been exposed and we can imagine how devastating it might have actually been.

Somehow I got thinking about Bruce Lee, one of whose many famous quotes may provide an alternative concept to dealing with catastrophe. To 'be like water' is not to be resilient in the sense of being able to resist the introduction of an external force but precisely the opposite - it is to immediately break but then rapidly reform. Now I believe Bruce was primarily thinking about one-to-one combat but the idea of rapid reformation and recovery resonated with me when it comes to Recruiting Brainfood.

3. De-couple The Core

What is the most critically important part of your business? Whatever it is, it should be de-coupled from the place where you deliver your service. For Recruiting Brainfood, the most critical part is you lot - the audience; the service, where Recruiting Brainfood is experienced is Revue.

This weekend's episode confirmed for me the value of consistently exporting subscribers and maintaining the data in safe place offline, ready for recovery in case of disaster. I know many others who did not do this, and stood to lose not only their archive, but also their entire audience had Revue not managed to recover service. The ability to decouple core from service must be built into your business. Inability to do this is actually the reason why doing a newsletter on LinkedIn is a bad idea - there is no way to core + service cannot be separated here. Hence, This Week, In Recruiting is a complimentary newsletter, not the primary one.

4. Diversify the Channels

It is a good idea to do a LinkedIn Newsletter though, if you already have a primary channel elsewhere. This is because diversifying the places where the audience can find you increases your ability to recover from disaster. Had Revue completely gone off line, it would be a huge problem for me, but with This Week, In Recruiting, Brainfood Online and Brainfood Live On Air, my chances of recovery are going to be better than not.

Is this like 'being like water'? Perhaps not precisely but the intentional disaggregation of Brainfood channels is not dissimilar to that of something which is inherently seperable. You can smash any one of these but they are all independent of each other. Interestingly, they have now also grown different audiences also.

5. Keep Adding Diversity

I've been thinking about Substack as alternative to Revue for a long time, but haven't made the switch mainly because the Recruiting Brainfood is a curated newsletter rather than original writing and so Revue is still a better product / market fit for that purpose. Having said that, I set up a Substack two years ago and now have the additional motivation to do yet another channel. Got an idea on what it might be - more report crunches from industry reports which seem to be popular posts I do on LinkedIn or show notes from Brainfood Live which I have got to get around to doing.

So, if you want to get access to this new service, freely subscribe to it here

Out of the kitchen, onto the lounge 👇

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What's in the News?

Social Talent acquires Careercake

One of the great stories to come out this summer, the acquisition of Careercake by SocialTalent sees the joining of some fantastic values driven entrepreneurs. Social Talent's Johnny Campbells view here, whilst Careercake CEO Aimee Bateman tells her side of the story 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?

Metaview - the interview intelligence platform - are offering 20% discount for the FIRST 15 people who request a demo of product and then go on to buy.

Metaview is a platform for improving interviews at ambitious companies. We empower interviewers with contextual insights, personalised feedback, and automated training flows to quickly and conveniently learn what good looks like and keep the bar high.

Cite "Brainfood" in the "How did you hear about us?" field. If you request a demo before July 25th, we’ll bump up the discount to 30% (!!). Here is the link!

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?

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep163 - Recruitment Marketing for Different Generations, 15th July, 2pm

Are you moving toward a multi-generational workplace? If you are, you need to know how to market and message to them, especially if they have different habits of media consumption. We're going to do a deep dive into this one, with Clair Bush, VP of Marketing (Adway), Josh Willows, Global Job Distribution & Performance Specialist (IBM) & Dave Hazlehurst, Founder (Ph.Creative) on how to talk to different generations. Register here

How to Build Organisational Resilience, 13 July, 1pm CEST

This looks like an interesting conversation to join. Claudia Langer, Global Mobility & Partnerships (Localyze) speaks with Behavioural Psychologist and Organisation Designer, Nora Dietrich on how to build a resilient organisation. TA / HR generally needs much greater input from these fields, so I'll be tuning into this one. You can too, so register here

IT Talent Talks, 21 July, 6pm, King's House 242 Pentonville Road N1 9JY

EvoTalents are putting together this evening get together with keynote speeches from Katrina Collier, Author (The Robot Proof Recruiter) and Anastasia Zavhorodnia, Sales Growth Lead (SetApp), moderated by the one and only Bill Boorman. Some interesting talks, great working and a super worthy cause. Buy a ticket here

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?

Tech Talent Partner(In-House) Remote, Join Talent, Remote Global

Talent Search Partner (Fully Remote InHouse), Join Talent, Remote Global

Talent Partner - UK, KANDIDATE, London, UK

Talent Acquisition Coordinator - On site, Cielo Talent, Thatcham, UK

Social Media Marketing Specialist, Cielo Talent, Remote UK

Talent Management Director, Cielo Talent, Remote EU

Associate Director of Recruiting - Digital & Analytics, McKinsey & Co, London, UK

Partner - Life Sciences, SE Asia, Horton International, Remote Global

Principal Consultant, Logistics - SE Asia, Horton International, Remote Global

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

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Who's Moving?

Helen Durkin joins Microsoft as Head of Recruitment Marketing - EMEA, leaving Indeed after 4 years leading their global employer branding efforts. We love Indeed, but Microsoft is an upgrade and this looks like a super exciting opportunity. Brainfood Live idea also....what do you do when you start a recruitment marketing job? Let me know what you think Helena.

Gui Lozano joins Elisa IndustrIQ as Talent Acquisition Lead having headed up the TA functions at Alvin and Upcloud. Really cool see you settling in to Helsinki, I recall we had a good conversation about this before you moved - so glad that you have this such a success.

Alexander Dötsch joins KAYAK as Interim Talent Acquisition Manager (Tech), having now built up an outstanding record with a host of Berlin based tech startups including Sastrify, DKB Code Factory, PubNative and more. I think I first connected with Alex in his first stint at KAYAK - no better sign of a great job than a boomerang return.

Fem Markslag joins Cryptio as Head of Talent Acquisition, having previously lead TA at Wyre and Boson Protocol. Fascinating vertical to specialise in, I suspect few people are now better networked in the new finance space after this period of hiring. Great move by Cryptio.

Becci Jones joins Protocol Labs as Recruiting Manager. I first met Becci what seems like decade ago when had a brief handover with Thought Machine. Great to see how things have worked out for you! Also, I am in Milan in September, let me know if you're free to catch up Becci

Nickou Farboudi joins Kraken Digital Exchange as Senior Technical Recruiter after having worked in Booking.com, Spotify and Wise. Going into a quality embedded recruitment firm like Elements must be one of the best career accelerators out there, what a trajectory. And great to see Kraken continue to build out the TA team.

Alastair Cartright joins 51Search as Director of Executive Search. One of the great contributors to the industry over the years, Alastair has been at the cutting edge of BD at recruitment tech in the UK. Congratulations Alastair - lets catch up soon.

Finally, a couple of promotions to celebrate - Peter Collins promoted to Director of Talent Acquisition at Vista and Kirsty Wigley-Smith promoted to Senior Manager, Talent Acquisition at LogicMonitor - congratulations both!

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?

Keith Mackenzie, Content Strategy Manager at Workable, is launching the 2022 Workplace survey. 15 minute commitment folks, get a copy of the report and a chance to win £100 Amazon gift card. Do the survey here

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

It's crazy hot week in the UK, so I can confirm that the summer is finally here. I predict that we will spend most of it complaining about the heat, then miss it terribly next week when the torrential rains inevitably follow up.

Anyways, I'm pretty settled now in London for the next 6 weeks, something which I am really grateful for. Recfest22 was a superb way to end the first half of the year, and now it time to get my work in order for the rest of the year and beyond.

Barring technical disaster, everything will continue as normal as possible 👊

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.