Our guest on #WorkTrends today is Mr. Hung Lee, the co-founder and CEO of the recruiting firm Workshape.io. He’s also the founder of the mega-newsletter, Recruiting BrainFood. We discussed the global state of recruiting and the workplace, how the upheaval of Brexit will affect European and British tech firms and workers, and my new favorite subject — the passion economy.
Listen to the full conversation or read the recap below. And don’t forget to subscribe, so you never miss an episode.
[02:44] Brainfood is a once a week curated newsletter I send out to a global audience.
[03:29] It’s very clear that there are some universal challenges that all of us are facing.
[04:46] With Brexit, obviously it’s a hugely divisive issue, you know, people are losing friends, family, et cetera, as a result of all of this.
[09:56] A lot of the criticism that I’m seeing from recruiters about technology stems from an overestimation of the capability of the tech.
Today, we’re talking to Mr. Hung Lee about the global state of work. Hung Lee is the co-founder and CEO of the recruiting firm Workshape.io, but you may be more familiar with him as the founder of the weekly newsletter, Recruiting Brainfood.
Challenges in Global Recruiting
Hung wears a lot of hats at Workshape, from business ops to customer success and user support to making the tea. He’s definitely one to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty. But that’s also a reflection of his global, democratized perspective on the challenges we all face in HR. He’s based in London but says that given the fact that many organizations are global, we’re sharing the same issues — whether you’re in New York, Kiev, or Melbourne. People everywhere are struggling to interact with the highly skilled, he says. We’re talking about the in-demand talent, the ones who have digital skills, software skills, and data science types.
Realistic Expectations for Tech
Emerging tech in HR can cause controversy. We saw it recently in a story about HireVue, which has its own AI system that analyzes candidates’ facial expressions, word choices, etc. As Hung notes, “I think people are genuinely quite disturbed at automated decision making.” So, a lot of the criticism that I’m seeing from recruiters about technology stems really from an overestimation of the capability of the tech.” Setting realistic expectations will help in the acceptance of new HR tech, he believes.
The Impact of Brexit on Recruiting
The European Union and Britain are certainly at a crossroads, and Brexit has thrown everything off balance. Hung confirms that Brexit’s a hugely divisive issue: People are losing friends and family as a result, he says. It may also cut off recruiters in London from highly-skilled talent sources throughout the European Union. And this could have a crippling effect on a lot of tech firms in the UK.
The Explosion of the Passion Economy
I asked Hung to look into his crystal ball and give me his thoughts on the future of work. One of his predictions is the growth of the Passion Economy. “You’re going to see people that are very passionate about certain topics and produce some type of content, where their passion really is their competitive advantage and build a clear following doing it,” he says.
We’ve all seen it: those creating online communities around their particular passion. They’re everywhere — on YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn. Hung describes this as the Tim Ferris or Joe Rogan business model. And, he predicts, the Passion Economy is only going to keep growing.
I think you’ll find Hung’s take on the global state of work as interesting as I did.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Hung Lee on Linkedin and Twitter
Hung Lee’s Newsletter, Recruiting Brainfood
Photo by Natasha Connell on Unsplash
