With the cricket season fast-approaching, I thought it would be a good time to wish Ethan, the player we sponsor, and Mexborough Cricket Club the very best for the upcoming games.

Earlier this year, Madeleine attended a LinkedIn event called ‘Future Ready’ that focused on AI and how it can drive business development in the recruitment industry. Poor Mads had been joking for ages that one day her job would be overtaken by ChatGPT, so it was good to see her looking relieved the next day! 😂 As much as we use AI regularly to speed up certain tasks and save time, the human element is still very much needed to get decent results. For Chat GPT (or any AI software) to be of any real use, the processes behind it need to be solid, consistent and applied properly. You wouldn’t hire an admin assistant without giving them some training and we think of AI in the same way. If you wanted to use it to write a job spec, for example, you’d need to use a prompt that specifies the correct tone of voice, then check the text for inaccuracies, dodgy spelling and any missing information. AI is never going to replace our team’s decision-making, intuition or judge of character, so they don’t need to worry about being replaced! But what it does do is improve productivity so we can spend more time interacting with people and doing what we’re good at. 

How many times have you felt like you’re surrounded by idiots? There might be a very good reason for this (unless they are certified idiots, then you’re screwed!). 🥴 At Harte, we frequently refer to Persona Profiling, which uses four colours (red, blue, yellow and green) to identify individual traits so we can develop a better understanding of ourselves and others. From a recruitment point of view, this helps to define a job seeker’s characteristics and assess whether they’d be suited to a role or fit in with a business’s culture. Someone who is a ‘fiery red’ for example, will be results-orientated, strong-willed, and driven to achieve, whereas a ‘cool blue’ personality will have a more conventional energy that thrives on analysis and asking questions before making a move. Knowing this sort of information makes finding the right ‘fit’ for a company a whole lot easier because we have a clear idea of the traits and behaviours that are aligned with the role. It also gives us an indication of when we need to take a step back and slow things down in interviews to really get to know the job-seeker properly. If you’re keen to find out more about the four personality types, have a read of (or listen to) this book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Surrounded-Idiots-Behavior-Effectively-Communicate/dp/1250179947 Do you know what energy colour you lead by?