The next tech frontier

The landscape for tech recruiters currently features more twists and turns than Twister, the 1996 epic disaster film. So this week, we look at what’s coming over the hill on the tech horizon, plus we speak to an employee branding master.

Podcast: The employer brand nerd

In this week’s Scaling Stories we spoke to James Ellis, a self-confessed “employer brand nerd” who’s developed countless brands on their journey from small startup to Fortune 1000 giant.

The words ‘performance’ and ‘profitability’ are on many leaders’ lips, and given that employer branding is one of the lowest cost, highest return investments that a business can make for their TA operations, who better to speak to than James – an employer branding expert.?

James lives and breathes all things brand, and was influenced by his mixed experiences at different firms – some with “great bosses, lots of freedom, lots of agency, opportunity and good benefits”, and others with “atrocious, micromanaging bosses”.

“From the outside they were the exact same movie. It’s like, are you walking into Star Wars or are you walking into the last Star Wars?”

James says part of his mission is to encourage companies to be “crystal clear about what they offer, what they reward”, meaning there is less chance of disappointment on both sides.

James has an instinctive understanding of the differences between traditional marketing and talent marketing. And it all comes down to choosing quality over quantity.

“What you want is two people to fall in love with this job. That’s all. You don’t need a million applicants. You don’t need a hundred applicants. You need two. So long as they’re great candidates and you pick two, ‘cos the hiring manager can make a choice and feel good about that. Otherwise, you really only need the one. That’s the difference.”

Equally, James believes that recruiters can learn lessons from consumer marketing, and in particular, connecting with the things that an audience really cares about.

“The problem is recruiters aren’t good marketers. They’re great salespeople, but they're not marketers.”

“What branding is trying to say is it’s not just about money. Money’s great, everybody likes money, but if you’re being paid fairly, wouldn’t you rather be in a place where you get more of whatever that thing is you care about?”

So, how do you know if your employer brand strategy is working? James has a simple mantra: “Everything you say must be specific, attractive, different and real.”?

Here are some examples of what that means:

• Specific. Rather than say “we care about women”, James says it’s more powerful to cite actual specifics like 26 days paid parental leave, for example, or a dedicated mother’s room.
• Attractive. James underlines the importance of “understanding your audience and giving them something they care about because it’s attractive”. For example, pro-parent policies are attractive to some candidates, but pretty irrelevant to others.
• Different. “Be crystal clear about what you’re about.”
• Real. What you say about your brand “has to be real. It has to be something true”.

It was great to catch up with James. On our blog page you can read more on the topic of employer branding, or you can check out our Scaling Stories podcasts in full.

Talking to machines – the next tech frontier

Tech leaders have determined that “deep-learning networks are the next frontier of the commercial internet”, according to this fascinating Atlantic article on the rise of the chatbots.

It seems that tomorrow’s horse whisperers will instead be found chatting to robots. As the piece explains, learning how to ‘prompt’ an AI system is set to become a sought-after skill.

“A cottage industry has already sprung up around those who can speak to the machines”, writes Charlie Warzel, and relays his discussion with Imagineer – a prompt writer.

The Essential Tech Stack report

ICONIQ Capital have released The Essential Tech Stack report, which takes a comprehensive look at the fastest-growing productivity tools. ICONIQ are no ordinary venture capital firm, having invested in some of the most, well, iconic companies of our time, including Airbnb, Uber and Airtable, so the report is well worth a look.

The Four Horsemen of the Tech Recession

We all know that the tech sector’s in trouble, but how did we get there? This Stratechery blog seeks to answer this question by citing four ‘apocalyptic’ events:

• The COVID hangover. “The problem for Amazon is that not only did they (inevitably) build inefficiently, but they almost certainly overbuilt, with the assumption that the surge in e-commerce unleashed by the pandemic would be permanent.”
• The hardware cycle. Namely, the “COVID-related slowdowns in iPhone production in China” that affected the likes of Apple.
• The end of zero interest rates. The SaaS model is vulnerable to interest rate hikes, since it “entails operating unprofitably up-front to acquire customers, with the assumption being that those customers will pay out subscription fees like an annuity”.
• The ATT (App Tracking Transparency) Recession. “Every company that relies on performance marketing, from Snap to YouTube to Meta to Shopify has seen its revenue growth crash from the moment ATT came into force in late 2021.”

“Increase talent density faster than complexity grows”

We’ve recently written plenty about OpenAI, creators of the ubiquitous ChatGPT – other chatbots are available – and one recurring theme has been the importance of ‘talent density’ in the teeny 350-employee company.

To understand how talent density benefits an organisation, look no further than the Netflix slides detailed in this Medium blog by Giorgos Vareloglou.

As Giorgos writes of Netflix: “They value impact and high performance more than loyalty. They see their teams not as a family but more like a Pro Sports team.”

“Misalignment is the root of all evil in recruiting.”

It’s worth reading this LinkedIn blog by John Vlastelica with the enticing headline: ‘How Electronic Arts Improved Diversity With Something That Looked Like Bureaucracy, But Wasn’t’. John is a former director of recruiting at Amazon, responsible for building the recruitment operations for the biggest period of corporate hiring in the company’s history.

John describes how EA embraced Alignment Meetings, which requires “every hiring manager to attend and present at, before any recruiting begins on a new or backfill role”.

Ultimately, these efforts worked – the gaming giant boosted underrepresented talent in its executive (VP+) roles by 46% in two years.

As John explains, getting to grips with misalignment was key.

Things you might have missed

• The Josh Bersin Company have released their HR Predictions for 2023 report. It covers everything from ageing workforces to leadership models in the hybrid age.
• What happens when you combine ChatGPT and 3D printing? Answer = a lot of anxious school teachers.
• UK businesses face an imperfect storm of having to cut hiring while paying record rates for talent, reports Bloomberg.

Recruiting fail

Always check the smallprint when using a jobs board.

Thanks for reading

Once again, it’s been a ball. Thanks for reading Intrro #51 and we’ll see you same time, same place, next week.