Hello friends!
This is Last Week in Talent, where yours truly runs down all the most interesting, important and intriguing talent and recruiting-related information from the last week in recruiting and hiring.
In case you missed it, Entelo (yes, us!) announced our Series C round last week (ps, we're hiring), Amazon announced they are buying Whole Foods (for the estimated equivalent of 3.7 billion bottles of Kumbucha), Careerbuilder just got bought, Wordpress is closing their super nice SF (office because no one actually uses it), McDonalds is using Snapchat to recruit, Facebook is teaching machines to negotiate with humans, Slack is raising a $500M megaround and Culture Amp announced that they had raised a $20M Series C.
Podcast of the Week: How Google Does Staffing (Google Partners)
Data of the Week: Reducing Gender Pay Gap Could Add 5.8 Trillion to the Global Economy (SIA)
As usual, you’ll find more links and capsules below. Have a great week and happy hunting!!
Links
Surfing the 4th Industrial Revolution: Artificial Intelligence and the Liberal Arts (Brookings): “According to McKinsey & Company, half of all existing work activities could be automated by currently existing technologies, saving some $16 trillion in wages. Forecasts indicate that revenues from AI will expand from the current $8 billion to more than $47 billion by 2020. Industries attracting the most investment include automated customer service, quality management and recommendation, medical diagnosis and treatment, and fraud analysis and investigation.”
Why Amazon Bought Whole Foods (The Atlantic): “First, this is about food as a delivery service. Amazon understands that the most important value in American retail today is what’s is technically known as “consumer convenience” and what is commonly observed as “human sloth.” E-commerce is soaring and food-delivery businesses are taking off because human beings are fundamentally lazy and they don’t want to leave the couch to buy stuff.”
The Company Behind Wordpress is Closing its Gorgeous SF Office Because its Employees Never Show Up (Quartz): “Automattic has always given its 550 employees the choice of working remotely; the San Francisco space was an optional co-working space, spokesman Mark Armstrong said. The company maintains similar offices in Cape Town, South Africa, and outside Portland, Maine, and gives employees a $250-a-month stipend if they want to use commercial co-working offices elsewhere. And if they’d rather work at Starbucks, Automattic will pay for their coffee.”
McDonald’s is Using a New Method to Recruit Young Employees--Snapchat (Fortune): "We thought Snaplications was a great way to allow us to meet job seekers where they are—their phones,” said Jez Langhorn, senior director in human resources, McDonald’s USA, in a statement.”
Slack is raising another $500 million — and has attracted interest from a range of big buyers like Amazon (Recode): “Slack, the popular business communications company, is in the midst of raising $500 million at a $5 billion post-money valuation, an effort that has attracted several potential buyers interested in taking out the company ahead of the funding.”
Culture Amp announces new funding to empower companies everywhere to put culture first (PR Newswire): “Culture Amp announced yesterday that it has raised a Series C round of $20 Million led by Sapphire Ventures. Previous investors, including Index Ventures, Felicis Ventures and Blackbird Ventures, also participated.”
AI Can Comb Through Your Data to Create More Compelling Customer Experiences (HBR): “Organizations need to create easy and elegant customer experiences; how can they overcome their data challenges to satisfy increasingly fickle customers?”
In a Candidate Driven Market, Candidate Experience Matters (ERE): “Candidates favor companies with strong employer brands and strong company culture. Candidates want to feel inspired, motivated, and they want opportunities to learn. In today’s competitive job market, candidates are looking for more than just salary. They are looking for a company where they can learn new things, feel that their work is meaningful and are happy.”
Canvas is a Startup That Wants All Your Job Interviews to Begin via Text Message (Quartz): “But here’s what Canvas does offer: It’s fun. Once you get past the social anxiety of texting recruits, it’s easy to see how the platform would be useful during initial outreach for an open position. Via text, conversations also lose some of the formality that comes with email, which is nice if you’re a company that prefers to judge people on their chillest selves.”
Facebook Teaches Machines to Negotiate with Humans (Techcrunch): “Facebook’s team smashed game theory together with deep learning to equip machines to negotiate with humans. By applying rollout techniques more commonly used in game-playing AIs to a dialog scenario, Facebook was able to create machines capable of complex bargaining.”
Tegna And Tribune Media Sell Down Stakes In CareerBuilder (Chicago Tribune): “Tribune Media and its media partners are selling their majority interest in the job site CareerBuilder to an investor group headed by Apollo Global Management.”