Rough news + The Hour of HR + Great Transition webinar + Going remote forever + Uncubed acquisition + All-you-need RTW resource

TLDR: Some rough personal news., The Hour of HR, Great Transition webinar, New approach for hiring companies, COVID Boomers, Uncubed acquires Finalist.io, The all-you-need RTW resource, Going remote (forever, Antibodies

It’s been a rough week. The new abnormal just got quite real with me.

One of my closest friends — the person I moved to NYC with in ’06, lived and worked with for years (I still live just blocks from him to this day), supported Liverpool with, had play dates with (we both have little girls), and much more — is leaving NYC for good. With work going remote and trying to raise kids, NYC is making less and less sense for people (read this NY Times piece on just how big the impact will be. Related: even David Chang is permanently closing restaurants.)

In addition to that blow, news just landed that all permits for soccer in NYC are cancelled until September 1st at the earliest.

Soccer is a big part of my life, as many of you know. Back in 2010, I began a small soccer league that has grown to include almost 10,000 players today. Balance is such an important part of my mental wellness and soccer (the league, in particular) provides that needed balance in my life. Or it did.

I realize these events are quite trivial when compared to the more important absences in the lives of millions right now. But it’s real and I’m sharing the pain.

And because we have to manage our own difficulties, it can hard to tap that empathy muscle for others. But some of us have to…

As HR professionals, you may be entering the biggest professional challenge of your lives. It’s up to you to be mindful of your own mental health and pay damn close attention to the mental wellness of your team. All whilst having the lingering fear that you may actually be affected by an upcoming RIF if this economy doesn’t catch a gust of wind in the near future.

Summon the strength to punch through it. It’s your hour. I’m rooting for you and I’ll be here to cheer you on.

In less negative town news, I learned this week that Quaker rice cakes are far and away the best on the market. Untouchable really (even against Lundberg).

WEBINAR (STARTING SHORTLY: If you want to jump on our GREAT TRANSITION (FKA GREAT RETURN) webinar that starts at 4pm EST, you can quickly register here.

UNCUBED NEWS: I mentioned it here a few weeks ago, but we just publicly announced that we acquired the curated talent network, Finalist.io.

One of our first moves was to open the network to folks affected by layoffs. Please point anyone affected here.

ARE YOU HIRING (A NEW APPROACH)? Last week we held one of the best received events we’ve hosted – a curated talent event exclusively for 1010data (see the no-office-visit-needed video we made for them). If you give them a shout, they’ll tell you it was a branding & placement success, with over half of the attendees moving on to advanced interviews.

If you’d be interested in setting one up for your company, just hit reply or email [email protected]

VIDEO (EMPLOYER BRANDING MEETS MARKETING): Kudos to Walmart for this inspiring video of store employees impressively belting out “Lean on Me.” (H/T Jeremiah from Bentonville. Move over Jeremiah…I’d wager lots of NYers may start fishing for that remote work life in your neck of the woods).

NON-HR, BUT FUN THROWBACK NEWS: In silver lining news, the COVID impact has inspired one of my closest friends to finally open his own agency. He’s an extraordinarily talented and conscious creative, having been the brainchild behind this gun violence project and most recently (like last week), inspired Blockbuster to use human intelligence to provide movie recommendations with this fun throwback campaign. Give them a call…

RTW (ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW): This may be the most thorough RTW asset on the web.

You should read that…but here’s my advice: if you don’t need to have people in the office, then push to convert to a remote-first organization. Certainly don’t start whipping out the antibody tests and thermometers, unless it’s absolutely necessary (we’ll see how Apple fares).

Then build team-outings, meetings, gatherings, etc. on top of it. It’s the future and now’s the time to get ahead of it (though by now you may be behind it…).

In terms of talent acquisition, I’d be concerned for any company that remains 100% fully co-located.

WHAT’S NEXT? I got my antibody test results back. I have the antibodies (whatever that means).

Punch through. Bye for now,

Tarek

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