Hello, Quartz at Work readers!
It’s a familiar feeling for anyone in the job market: You’re hunting for a new role. You’ve set red-alarm alerts on LinkedIn and Glassdoor and ZipRecruiter; you’ve signed up for job listservs and networking groups. A few times a week, you shuttle through the hiring pages of companies where you can picture yourself next, to no avail. None of the open roles match up with what you’re looking for. But blinking at the bottom of the page, consolation comes in a sentence. “Join our talent network!” it cries.
Most job-seekers know the line. Employers use it to collect application materials from willing and would-be candidates (say, a resume file and basic contact information) for no job in particular. Most invitations are stamped with a promise to contact the searcher with new positions that match their skills.
But do they ever actually pay off? Of course, there’s reason for skepticism. Expecting a company to pluck your name from a general-interest pile seems, obviously, a bit too good to be true. But when you’re eyeing a new job—like, say, half of US workers, according to one recent Gallup poll—and open roles are scarcer than expected, you might feel more inclined to give talent networks a try.
Liane Paonessa is a senior communications professional who’s been applying to new jobs for the past six months. She’s added her name to about 20 talent pools—though not because she believes they’ll lead to interviews.
“When you’re looking for work, it’s a full-time job, and when you haven’t had any interviews or networking calls that week, at least when you can apply [to a network], you feel like, ‘I’m doing something, I’m being productive, I’m trying,’” Paonessa says. But with so little to show for the effort, her optimism is short-lived. “The flip side of that is I’m never going to hear from these people.”
Believe it or not, some recruiters say they do tap their talent pools—and actually call up candidates for jobs from them. In Quartz, learn when the networks are worth it—and when to spend your time elsewhere.
FAKE IT ’TIL YOU BREAK IT
(At least) 1: Women speakers at an annual software conference who were discovered this week to be allegedly, well, made up by men.
Professional conferences—especially in the overwhelmingly male tech industry—have never exactly been bastions of gender equality. But one gathering made headlines this week for boosting its diversity numbers—by listing a lineup of fake female panelists.
At software conference DevTernity, observers noticed something amiss with its agenda: Multiple women speakers didn’t seem to exist. The fallout was swift. Executives from the likes of Microsoft and Amazon dropped out from speaking, and the conference has since been canceled.
Perhaps the DevTernity organizers would have benefited from this Quartz classic about what the best conferences do to improve gender equality. But you still can! Your next star turn onstage may depend on it.
HOOKED ON A FEELING
“I’m so often disappointed when I walk into a business that I want to love, but they’re missing the mark on so many things, like the music, the customer service, the cleanliness, the brand… It’s like how we keep our home. You want a certain level of flow and organization in your home because that’s gonna feel good—and the same is true of business.”
Alli Webb, founder of blowout-only salon service Drybar, has one tip for business owners: Prioritize how your product, your service, or your space makes people feel when they encounter it. (Leaders looking to make their teams excited about in-office work again might want to listen up, too.)
Hear the rest of Webb’s advice in conversation with Quartz executive editor Heather Landy.
A WEEKEND BRIEF INTERLUDE
Last week in The Memo, we covered a wild week in leadership at OpenAI—and the shortcomings of the company’s board, which was felled by being both small and inexperienced. Now, as Weekend Brief editor Samanth Subramanian writes, it’s on the company’s new board—made up of three white, wealthy men—to expand its scope.
“This new board is a first draft; its function, among others, is to find more members for itself,” Subramanian lays out. “[Chair Bret] Taylor, whom the tech journalist Kara Swisher described as ‘a very pleasant and anodyne fella,’ is well-connected in the Valley…But he’ll need the enforcer part of his character to install a proper board. One that isn’t too tiny or comprised of people with no financial stake in OpenAI, as the former board was. One that is able to weigh in with broader, deeper, and more diverse experience on the big decisions.”
🔎 Like to zoom out on the defining business story of the week? You can read more analysis like this in the Weekend Brief, our premium newsletter delivered every Saturday. You can get it by becoming a member—and take 20% off for the holidays.
ONE 💸 THING
New research from the European Central Bank (ECB) this week suggests that rather than replacing jobs, AI is giving some of them a boost.
In 16 European countries, the ECB found that sectors exposed to AI gained a bigger share of total employment. So far, computers aren’t coming for jobs. But the same can’t be said for pay. AI may have “neutral to slightly negative impacts” on how people are compensated for their work, the ECB adds.
It isn’t the first time experts have warned of a wage cliff in the age of AI. Quartz’s Ananya Bhattacharya digs into why the robots pose less of a threat to your job than they do to your paycheck.
QUARTZ AT WORK’S TOP STORIES
🚗 Tesla’s biggest labor union fight is happening in Europe
📕 What’s Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2023?
💸 AI poses less of a threat to jobs than it does to wages
💇♀️ Drybar co-founder Alli Webb’s advice to entrepreneurs
YOU GOT THE MEMO
Send questions, comments, and no talent network applications, please, to talk@qz.com. This edition of The Memo was written by Gabriela Riccardi.