This Week, In Recruiting - Issue No8

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Open Kitchen: Why Asking Questions In Public Is Better

For the new folks here, this is the segment where I share what I'm thinking, as I'm thinking it. It's part of a commitment to transparency on how 'Recruiting Brainfood' operates. I hope it will be interesting to those who are doing content, cultivating a community, growing an audience, or otherwise trying to operate a one person business.

How To Better Ask Questions

If you've asked me a question before in the past, the chance are you will have received (I hope) a reasonable response from me but one which also contains a message like this:

"Have you also considered asking exactly this question in public rather than private?"

Usually I explain my motives directly to the questioner, but I am opening up these motives here because I believe public questions almost always produce better answers than private ones. Here are a few reasons why public is better.

1. Minimise Sample Bias

Private questions necessarily mean pre-selection by you of who you want to answer those questions. As human beings, driven as much by System 1 as we are by System 2 thinking, our innate attraction to the preferred response types means that the value of answers to questions asked privately is degraded by the inherent sample bias.

image source: corporate finance institute

Worst case scenario? Producing erroneous validation for what might be a mediocre idea.

2. Improve Data Quality

There are many definitions of what 'data quality' means so I am going with the one that defines it as 'a measure of accuracy in describing the real world construct that the question is about'.

In this situation, getting more perspectives to the question improves your chances of getting a more complete picture you are trying to construct. Quantity is itself a quality in this case. It is also the parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant, a lesson about data quality we knew about at least thousand years ago!

3. Quicker to Actionable Insight

Public questions are also logistically more efficient. This leads to better cycling as you get to action much more quickly. As recruiters we really should know this - private questions are effectively 1-2-1 interviews with people who all have calendars to manage. And as we are only one person it means that we cannot parallel process and can only do it sequentially. If we take the parable of the 8 blind men (or was it 6? accounts vary ??) again, imagine having them individually come in to touch up the elephant - how long is that going to take before you realise none of them know what they are talking about?? Get the question out in public and you'll get more answers, in shorter time, with less effort.

4. Minimise Information Decay

Logistical inefficiency of private asking also means that the distance between your question and your confidence in taking the next step is usually significantly longer than it needs to be. And information, like everything else, is subject to decay, that is the value of the answer will degrade over time as circumstances change, environment evolves or your own position alters in light of new information. Take too long in attempting to reduce sample bias and you might end up needing to ask the first blind man again as his previous answer might no longer be valid, rendering the entire exercise a closed loop which never ends.

5. Bonus Pre-marketing

Finally, if there is some sort of output to the question / answer exercise - a product, a service, an event - chances are you are eventually going to want people to know about it. The question I have for us all is why 'eventually'? The sooner people know about this project - however incomplete it is - usually the better. In Startup land where budgets are perennially tight, this is well known as 'pre-marketing' - talking (publicly) about what you are going to do / want to do - well in advance of actually being able to do it.

source: my kitchen. Also 'stealth mode' is bunkum

For new ideas, public asking is great for producing anchoring effects, which may be a precursor to staking territory in the industry mindscape as a thought leader in the topic - great positioning which might be described as the entire purpose of marketing. Public asking is also great ideological preparation for the market you eventually plan to sell to, effectively a mass warming up of what otherwise dead cold leads. After all, the plan is to sell something eventually, isn't it?

Time to leave the kitchen. Lets get on with it - to the lounge.??

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What's In The News?

Firstbase raises $13 million Series A round, led by by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from B Capital Group and Alpaca VC. This may be a story about stories as CEO Chris Herd's incredible twitter threading evangelism of remote work no doubt helped position the company in the conversation for the future of work.

InterviewAI secures $2 million seed round for their Interview analytics and training product. Exciting category emerging here, with the shift to remote producing more opportunities for products to built around recruitment metadata. Read all about it here

HRZone are launching a new award - the Culture Pioneers Awards 2021. Entries now open for HR teams who have demonstrated the achievement in reshaping company culture. I can think you can nominate your own team, so have at it here

The Global Recruiter Awards 2021 are also open for entry. Multiple categories covering all parts of the recruitment process and eco-system. This may return as in-person event (fingers crossed with vaccination and case rates in the UK). Check out the categories and nominate you or your team here

Greenhouse introduce Welcome, integrated onboarding platform for users of the core ATS product. Customised welcome flow, dedicated portal for new hire orientation and automated tasks and reminders to ramp up new hire to new team member integration. Press release 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?

Talking Mental Health at Work – A Guide for Recruitment Leaders, 11 May, 10am BST

As the pandemic slowly abates, the coming 'return to normality' is proving to be a significant mental health challenge. Might this be especially so in recruiting / staffing businesses, notorious for high energy / high pressure on-premise environments? Neil Carberry, CEO of Recruitment and Employers Confederation is joined by Hazel Craig, Senior Data Analytics and Wellbeing Consultant, Howden Employee Benefits & Wellbeing and Michelle Flynn, CBT Practitioner & Certified Health Coach to discuss. Register here folks

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep108 - LinkedIn Updated In Q2, 14 May, 10am EDT / 3pm BST

There is only ever one person who is the solo guest on Brainfood Live, and that person is Andy Foote. The reason for this is quite simply he is an essential conduit of information on the most important platform we use in our business - LinkedIn. Andy is going to bring it, with latest updates on LinkedIn Audio, Creator mode, LinkedIn Live and yes, maybe even LinkedIn Newsletters. Can't miss this one folks - register here

H.U.G Digital - Your Virtual HR Experience, 18-19 May, 10.00am BST

6000+ attendees expected for this 2 day event from our buddies at Personio - I think this could be the big one as far as European HR events go this summer. Check out the agenda here, and some innovative mechanisms to increase delegate interaction. I'll be there, so see you there. Register 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?

Principal Recruiter - Executive Hiring, N26, Berlin, Germany

Senior Recruiting Business Partner - Business, N26, Berlin, Germany

Talent Sourcer - Tech & Product, N26, Berlin, Germany

Tech Recruiting Partner, N26, Berlin, Germany or Barcelona, Spain

Tech Recruiting Support - Internship, N26, Berlin, Germany

Recruiting Business Partner - US, N26, New York City, NY/NJ, USA

Director, Go To Market Recruiting, Roku, New York City, NY/NJ, USA

Talent Acquisition Manager - Business (m/f/d) (German speaking), Personio, Munich, Germany

Senior Talent Acquisition Manager (m/f/d) (German speaking), Personio, Munich, Germany

Talent Sourcer (m/f/d) (German speaking), Personio, Munich or Remote Germany

Talent Acquisition Manager - Product & Analytics (m/f/d), Personio, Munich or Remote Germany

Talent Acquisition Manager Engineering (m/f/d), Personio - Munich or Remote Germany

Human Resource Coordinator, Article, Vancouver, Canada

Human Resources Coordinator (Bilingual English-Spanish), Article, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Jr. Recruiter (Warehouse & Fulfillment), Article, Jersey City, NY/NJ, USA

Jr. Recruiter (Warehouse & Fulfillment), Article, Houston, TX, USA

People & Culture Business Partner, Article, Vancouver, Canada

Talent Acquisition Manager -Fulfillment, Article, Houston, TX, USA

Talent Acquisition Manager -Fulfillment, Article, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Technical Recruiter - Contract, Article, Vancouver, Canada

Global Talent Sourcing Lead, Spendesk, Paris, France

(Senior) Talent Acquisition Specialist for Russia (m/f/d), BASF, Berlin or Remote Germany

Talent Acquisition Management Consultant, RecPro, Stockholm or Remote Sweden

Senior Talent Partner, Aula Education, Full Remote

If you want your job freely promoted in this newsletter next week, comment below with the link to the job. No third party jobs or links to third party sites. Don't forget to @ mention me so that I see it

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Who's Available?

Alex Her, Global Employer Brand Manager, is looking for his next opportunity. Board member at Talent Brand Alliance, Alex has previously headed up EB efforts at Acoustic, Informatica and Cox Enterprises. Based Austin, Texas or Remote USA. Connect with Alex directly, here

If you are on the market or available for extra work, comment below with the ideal type of job you are looking for (job title, type of company, contract type, location). Don't forget to @ mention me in it so that I see it

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Who's Moving?

Vic Okezie, after 2 years with GE as Senior Manager Talent Acquisition, joins Amazon Web Services (AWS) as Recruitment Manager, EMEA WW Operations

Sofia Isendor, Senior Marketing Exec at iCIMS, taking a big step and career change into UX design. It's been great working with Sofia - marketing's loss is UX's gain. Good luck in the career move Sofia!

Finally, the awesome Dawn Burke, joins Kinetix as VP of Talent Consulting with a specific focus on leading the talent marketing team in employer branding, recruitment marketing, and social campaigns for Kinetix customers. It's a big score for Kinetix

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?

Tracey Parsons and Allyn Bailey launch the Talent Rebel Alliance (on the 4th May ??), a podcast & community on HR / TA, with a specific focus towards helping women help each other. Interested and qualifying parties, register here

Jim Berrisford, CCO at Rezoomo, is also Business Ambassador for Ambitious about Autism, and is raising funds to support the campaign to help families with autistic children who have been disproportionately impacted by the reduction of services since Covid-19. Any amount you can spare will make a difference - donate here

Kevin Green takes non-exec position with staffing firm RedHolt. Few in the business have a wider perspective on the agency market place than Kevin - big score for RedHolt.

Finally, my old boss and curator extraordinaire of the incredible Exponential View newsletter and community - Azeem Azhar - condenses his thinking into a single tome - Exponential: How to Bridge the Gap Between Technology and Society - available for pre-order now. Pretty certain it is going to be worth the ￡20 - get it 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

That's it for another This Week, In Recruiting.

Remember, if you have any news relevant to the recruiting / HR community, comment below in order to request inclusion into next week's edition. This could be recruiter / HR / recruitment tech vendor jobs you're hiring for, your availability for work, an event you need registrations for, a survey you want to get more responses to - whatever it is, if it is relevant to the industry, it has got a chance of going in.

Til next week folks

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.