🧑‍🎓ChatGPT Passes MBA Exam, 📈 BuzzFeed announces AI Content, 🧬Impact of Blockchain on HR and Talent Industry

Hello, and welcome to this week’s edition! 👋

Here’s some of this week’s top news and interesting reads you can get your head around in the next 10 minutes.

🧑‍🎓 ChatGPT Passes MBA Exam

A professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School has given a theoretical B-grade pass to ChatGPT after marking the answers it generated for a final exam in a typical MBA course. The professor said ChatGPT does an "amazing job" at basic operations management and process analysis questions, providing correct answers with excellent explanations though still makes "surprising mistakes" in simple calculations and can't handle more advanced process analysis questions yet. He also found ChatGPT was able to make clever and humorous questions, but also introduced subtle flaws in some questions that made them impossible to answer. 

Check out also “Would Chat GPT Get a Wharton MBA?” a research paper by another professor trying to analyse this phenomenon.

🧬 Using Blockchain to Transform the Market for Skills, Talent and Training

Recently, I’ve had the honor to talk with Andy Spence, the #1 Future of Work voice on the web (and writer, speaker, coach, and activist).

Specifically, I wanted to pick his brain on the 2018 paper he wrote for the Blockchain Research Institute, full of super interesting context and predictions on how this technology could transform pretty much every aspect of the HR function and the job/skill market for candidates.

Here’s just a few of my favorites:

Reducing Transaction Costs - Currently, almost 10% of salary can be lost in transaction costs. Blockchain could have the power to reduce this (maybe not to zero, but close enough)

Increased Security - Career and skill credentials confirmed by tamper-proof ledger. We discussed this in several articles (i.e. Employee Recognition on the Blockchain) and how it could finally wipe out the use of the CV, a 500 year old format (another topic covered on Delete your CV and join a DAO)

Recruitment Agencies will need to find new space - Andy argues that with the rise of blockchain-based, and talent owned marketplaces (think of Braintrust for example), recruitment agencies could get cut-out of the picture.

Moving from Jobs to ‘Work Packages’ and Skills to ‘Tasks’ - Another of my favorites - unbundling work and careers into more atomic elements that can be more flexible, dynamic and resilient to ‘Black Swan’ events and the ever-changing job market (think of tenure being reduced to almost two years on average..)

He’s made it available for download at this page, so make sure to check it out:

📈 BuzzFeed says it will use AI to help create content, stock jumps 320%

Buzzfeed is partnering with OpenAI to use artificial intelligence to create content for its audience. The technology will be used to create quizzes, help with brainstorming, and assist in personalizing content to its audience. Buzzfeed will not use AI to help write news stories. The CEO of Buzzfeed sees AI as a way to harness creativity in new ways with endless opportunities and applications for good. The news sent Buzzfeed's stock skyrocketing more than 150% in trading (now reaching over 300% in 5 days). Other publishers have also taken similar steps, like CNET using an AI tool to help write stories, but the process did not go smoothly and the Associated Press has also been using AI to automate news stories for nearly a decade.

✍️ Can ChatGPT write good Job Posts?

A study by Textio on ChatGPT's job posts found that while the generic posts were mostly bias-free, specific prompts led to increased bias, particularly in regards to race and age. The study highlights the importance of being mindful of language used in job posts as well-written posts may not necessarily be effective in a hiring process.

💰 Companies are seeing +25% salary requests after massive ‘Big-tech’ Layoffs

With the recent layoffs at big tech companies such as Amazon, Google, Meta and Salesforce, there has been an increase in the number of former big tech employees flooding the job market. This has caused employers to face salary asks that are significantly higher than their usual pay bands Many of these candidates have also been asking for compensation packages similar to what they had at big tech companies, which can be very difficult for most companies to meet. This will prove to be a big challenge, conisdering that the average projected increases are averaging at 3% worldwide. More in this article.

📕Other Resources

Culture Building Workshop Template - This is a great Miro template if you’re looking to build/rebuild company culture. A good excercise / checklist to run through that covers all the ingredients in what is going to be even more fundamental element of success for retaining talent.

European Tech Salary Report 2022 - Talent.io has covered a good summary of tech salaries in 2022 for Europe - which I found particularly useful as often this research is US-only. No major shockers here, but good reference for talent and recruiters alike.