more effort, same results
Hiii,
Hope you’re staying warm today, because the weather lowkey feels like a personal attack from Mother Nature right now! 🥶
Today’s theme is being busy vs being effective, which will probably be a relevant topic across your entire org for a while.
Recruiters are working harder, sourcing more, and using more tools…yet the most successful hires are still coming from the same place they always have, aka online applications. That is fascinating.
💔 Sending all the good vibes to the TA teams that are going through it right now.
We’ll break down what's happening, plus a spicy stat about almost half of execs being stuck in golden handcuffs right now.
Time to get informed and (hopefully) slightly entertained by the business-as-usual chaos!
🗞️ Here’s the Tea:Copy anchor linkCopied
🔍 Recruiters are doing more ‘legwork’ to find candidates, Glassdoor finds
The TL;DR: Recruiters are doing way more outbound sourcing than they were a few years ago, but online applications are still quietly doing the heavy lifting when it comes to actual interviews and offers. Recruiter-sourced candidates are up, referrals convert better when they happen, but neither has dethroned the humble “apply online” button. Meanwhile, recruiters are drowning in bigger applicant pools and leaning on AI just to keep up.
My POV: I feel like this data exposes a mismatch between where we’re spending energy and where hires are actually coming from.
We keep pushing recruiters to source harder and faster, but a lot of orgs still haven’t meaningfully fixed how candidates move through the funnel once they apply.
If HR doesn’t rebalance effort toward better screening processes and more realistic expectations, we’re just turning TA into a volume-management job instead of a decision-making one, and they’re already being stretched thin as it is!
🎙️ Mic Drop Moment:Copy anchor linkCopied
“We confuse being busy with being effective, and that mindset wastes an enormous amount of talent.”Copy anchor linkCopied
On the mic this week: Erin Grau is the co-founder of Charter, a future of work media and research company that was recently acquired by the San Francisco Standard. She’s spent two decades leading at the intersection of talent and operations, including executive roles at The New York Times and Away. She writes and speaks widely about gender equity, caregiving, organizational strategy, and the future of work, and also advises startups across culture, talent, DEIB, and HR tech.
Pin this:
- The motherhood tax does measurable, long-term economic damage, and it ends up being worse for women of color.
- Flexibility is more of a retention strategy and less of a perk, but being flexible doesn’t count if proximity bias runs your promotion decisions.
- Performance reviews often reward the performance of work instead of effectiveness, which punishes caregivers.
- Non-promotable work (culture glue, office housekeeping, “be the nice one”) is a slow career bleed. Rotate it, audit it, and stop praising it only in Slack.
My H*ly Sh*t Moment: The most unsettling part of this conversation is realizing that motherhood doesn’t derail careers by accident. It does it by design, through policies and norms we keep pretending are neutral and haven’t taken the time to change yet.
▶️ Press Play
📊 Data Is My Love Language:Copy anchor linkCopied
Stat: Nearly 40% of top execs say they weighed quitting in the past year
My spiral: First of all, this is an absolutely insane stat!
But also, this isn’t like execs are just getting bored and shopping around. A lot of them stay in their roles because they are trapped in golden handcuffs.
When a huge chunk of your most senior leaders are mentally checked out, expect the consequences to trickle down.
The same incentives we swear retain talent are often the exact things trapping people in roles they’re already burning out in, which is how you end up with leaders who stay on paper but leave in spirit.
So if your retention strategy starts and ends with money, you’re missing the very human stuff that even the people at the top are no longer willing to sacrifice!
🗣️ UNMUTE YOURSELF
Before you answer this, resist the urge to be the emotionally bulletproof leader you’re used to being.
Think about how much energy you spend translating chaos into calm so everyone else can function, then ask yourself:
“What would your team learn about you if you stopped pretending everything’s fine?”
🛠️ TRY THIS TOMORROW:
Offboarding interviews are almost never enjoyable, but they can also serve an important purpose for what can be improved for your existing teams.
In your next exit interview, try asking:
“What’s one thing we could fix for those still here?”
👂 OVERHEARD IN SAFE SPACE
WOOOF. I don't wish this upon anyone!!!
Please survive the day, document everything, and be extremely kind to yourself.
Read what members had to say here.
I hope you enjoyed this, please let me know what you think and what other topics you'd love for me to cover. I'm allll ears.
Reminder: Take care of yourself and know that I support you.
