New China-focused research finds widespread agreement that employer branding should support business strategy. But limited executive ownership, cautious budgets and communication-led measurement suggest a sizeable gap between ambition and execution.
Oracle, Omnicom and KPMG are all cutting jobs this week without blaming AI, even as Uber's own staff say it's already doing their work. Add a Barclays office revolt and fresh evidence that older workers and graduates are both being filtered out of hiring, and the pattern holds all week.
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Younger workers are struggling to get the experience employers want, while experienced candidates increasingly find that years in the workforce count against them. Is hiring becoming biased towards a narrowing middle?
One employee says his AI bonus scheme is really proof he's not needed anymore. Meanwhile UK data centres will create a quarter of the jobs they promised, managers are being cut and reinstated depending on the company, and this week's reckonings over who pays land three different ways.
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Candidates now research employers inside AI tools, not on your careers site. An academically referenced guide to Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO): the platforms that shape what candidates see, how to communicate your EVP so AI cites it accurately, and how to measure your AI presence.
Uber, Volkswagen and WPP all cut deeper this week, while Germany and consulting firms asked the people who stayed for more hours or more work, not more pay. The data on what keeps people says none of it is the right lever.
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Employer branding is supposed to help the right people choose an organisation. Too often, it offers polished claims that could belong to almost anyone, leaving candidates to look elsewhere for something more useful.
Fei Zhaojun's boss asked if AI could replace coders. Two weeks later, he and 160 colleagues were laid off. But a new HBR analysis, citing Goldman Sachs, argues most layoffs blamed on AI aren't actually AI's doing at all.
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A year inside one North Korean hiring cell shows 22 interviews in a week, seven identities, and nine jobs won. Eighteen months after EBN first covered AI fakers, the verification burden has quietly moved from security to talent acquisition.
Diageo, Starbucks, Sanofi and KPMG all cut jobs this week, three calling it a turnaround and one unable to even manage the euphemism. A 7,704-person study also found remote staff happier and less likely to quit than colleagues back at their desks.
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A year inside one North Korean hiring cell shows 22 interviews in a week, seven identities, and nine jobs won. Eighteen months after EBN first covered AI fakers, the verification burden has quietly moved from security to talent acquisition.
Diageo, Starbucks, Sanofi and KPMG all cut jobs this week, three calling it a turnaround and one unable to even manage the euphemism. A 7,704-person study also found remote staff happier and less likely to quit than colleagues back at their desks.
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McKinsey Quarterly has published the most detailed employer-side plan yet for rebuilding the apprenticeship that AI is eroding. EBN checked the studies underneath it, the manager capacity it assumes, and the hiring data it leaves out.
TikTok is mandating a five-day return to the office. Dropbox is going the other way entirely. This week: the whiplash mandate, AI layoffs that keep missing their own logic, hiring data that cannot agree with itself, and who gets blamed when the work does not get done.
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California launched the first state tool tracking AI-related job loss. The headline says no statewide surge. The detail says claims are climbing for college-educated workers in exposed jobs. Here is how talent and employer brand teams should read it.