Latest edition / 28 August 2026

Writing for people
who hire

Independent articles on the full employee lifecycle for HR professionals on both sides of the Atlantic.
No vendor pitches.

LATEST ARTICLE

Moving identity verification to the top of the hiring funnel
10 min readBrendan J.Hiring process

Moving identity verification to the top of the hiring funnel

Remote interview fraud is costing talent acquisition teams thousands of hours. HR leaders must redesign the hiring process to verify candidate identities immediately after the application stage, navigating strict biometric privacy laws in Illinois and the European Union.

Configuring enterprise systems to meet right to disconnect legislation
11 min readBrendan J.HR compliance

Configuring enterprise systems to meet right to disconnect legislation

Ontario and California are enforcing boundaries on digital availability through laws like AB 2751. HR leaders must move beyond written policies. The next phase of compliance requires configuring Slack and Microsoft Teams to prevent after hours contact.

Structuring career site data for language model ingestion
11 min readBrendan J.Employer brand

Structuring career site data for language model ingestion

Candidates bypass traditional career sites. They ask Claude or Perplexity about your engineering culture. HR leaders must transition employer brand assets into structured data formats that language models can accurately retrieve and summarize.

Ending informal internal mobility to meet incoming career progression regulations
10 min readPaul B.Internal mobility

Ending informal internal mobility to meet incoming career progression regulations

The era of informal internal transfers is ending. Incoming European mandates and state laws in the US require organizations to document objective criteria behind every internal move. HR leaders must deploy new internal mobility audit systems before 2026 to avoid severe compliance penalties.

Removing passive telemetry from performance reviews ahead of regulatory deadlines
11 min readPaul B.Performance and development

Removing passive telemetry from performance reviews ahead of regulatory deadlines

Automated productivity tracking is facing strict legislative limits across Europe and North America. HR leaders must overhaul performance management systems within the next eighteen months to decouple passive telemetry from formal evaluation and development plans, requiring new audit trails and manager training.

Proactive interview feedback delivery to preempt data subject access requests
10 min readPaul B.Candidate experience

Proactive interview feedback delivery to preempt data subject access requests

Candidates increasingly use Article 15 of the GDPR and the California Privacy Rights Act to demand interview records within mandatory 30 and 45 day response windows. Releasing structured data from systems like Workday directly to applicants satisfies mandates and reduces compliance costs.

  • Candidate experience

    How applying to a company feels from the outside, and the small operational choices that decide it.

  • Compensation and benefits

    Pay bands, equity, benefits design and the conversations that come with them.

  • Employer brand

    What candidates learn about you before they apply, on both sides of the Atlantic, and what to do about it.

  • Hiring process

    Structuring interviews, scorecards and decisions so the process holds up under pressure.

  • HR compliance

    Hiring law, pay transparency and data protection in day-to-day recruitment, in Europe and North America.

  • Internal mobility

    Promotions, lateral moves and building a talent market inside the company.

  • Offboarding

    Exits, redundancies, alumni networks and leaving people with their dignity intact.

  • Onboarding

    The first ninety days: ramp plans, buddy systems, paperwork and the handover from recruiting to the manager.

  • Performance and development

    Reviews, feedback, career frameworks and the training budget nobody spends well.

  • Retention and engagement

    Why people stay, why they quit, and what surveys will and will not tell you.

  • Sourcing

    Finding and approaching candidates who are not reading job boards.

  • Workforce planning

    Headcount, org design and forecasting: deciding what roles a company actually needs before anyone opens a req.

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