Start­ing the final sprint of the fall con­fer­ence sea­son, I caught up with famil­iar faces at the sec­ond annu­al RecFest USA fes­ti­val. And because Human Resources and Tal­ent Acqui­si­tion con­fer­ences are nev­er-end­ing, I’ll be reunit­ing with more new and old…err..mature faces next week in Las Vegas at HR Tech 2024.

Despite some rain and wind, the RecFest team man­aged to pull off their sec­ond out­door HR fes­ti­val in the US. The much chiller ver­sion of the UK-based event excelled in con­tent, net­work­ing, and com­mu­ni­ty. The RL 100 offi­cial­ly launched in the US dur­ing a Day Zero ses­sion, in which I was hum­bled to par­tic­i­pate.

No rest for the TA and HR pros though, because there’s always some­thing brew­ing.

U.S. Fed­er­al Reserve Expect­ed to Cut Inter­est Rates

The US labor mar­ket added 142,000 jobs in August, out­per­form­ing July’s num­bers, while unem­ploy­ment dropped from 4.3% to 4.2%. Depend­ing on your news source, the sky is either *not* falling, or it *total­ly* is.

Regard­less, we are all wait­ing with bat­ed breath for the expect­ed US Fed­er­al Reserve inter­est rate cut this week. This is the first expect­ed rate cut since March 2020. The burn­ing ques­tion is whether it will be a 0.25 or 0.50 rate cut—and what addi­tion­al cuts might be in store through the end of the year.

The Fed’s oft cau­tious leader has guid­ed the Unit­ed States to what most would con­sid­er a soft landing—though it may be a lit­tle *too* soft for the labor mar­ket.

In case you won­dered, this Job Board Doc­tor is plac­ing a Vegas bet on a 0.25% cut.

Career­Builder + Mon­ster Merg­er

In pos­si­bly the year’s most *riv­et­ing* press release, Mon­ster and Career­Builder announced their merg­er in now com­plete. Now known as “Career­Builder + Mon­ster” as the com­bined com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to kick the rebrand can down the road. The announce­ment fol­lowed the final reg­u­la­to­ry clear­ance of the merg­er.

Jeff Fur­man, CEO of the com­bined com­pa­ny, said: “I could­n’t be more excit­ed to unite these two cel­e­brat­ed brands. We’re lever­ag­ing the best solu­tions, capa­bil­i­ties, and exper­tise from both com­pa­nies to bet­ter serve our can­di­dates and employ­ers in the evolv­ing tal­ent mar­ket­place.”

Mean­while, the com­pa­ny is on the hunt for a new sales chief, and a LinkedIn post revealed more than 100 can­di­dates have already thrown their hats into the ring.

Inter­est­ed? You can apply here or here or here.

App­cast Lay­offs

App­cast con­duct­ed anoth­er round of lay­offs on Sep­tem­ber 16 affect­ing 18 more employ­ees across a vari­ety of roles, includ­ing mar­ket­ing, cus­tomer ser­vice, and sales. Unlike pre­vi­ous lay­offs, these cuts did not seem to tar­get Bayard lega­cy employ­ees. In a case of bad optics and even worse human-ing, one employ­ee received the news while on pater­ni­ty leave. Should we expect a reorg? Seems like­ly.

Recruit Hold­ings to Reorg Recruit­ment Busi­ness­es Glob­al­ly

Recruit Hold­ings will com­bine recruit­ment busi­ness­es under its HR Tech Strate­gic Busi­ness Unit (SBU). The SBU will include both Indeed and Glass­door along with oth­er recruit­ment busi­ness­es pri­mar­i­ly ser­vic­ing the Japan­ese mar­ket.

11x.ai Rais­es Addi­tion­al $24M for AI Dig­i­tal Work­ers

11x.ai, a com­pa­ny build­ing AI bots for process automa­tion, has raised over $26 mil­lion since launch­ing in Lon­don in 2022. Now based in San Fran­cis­co, the com­pa­ny focus­es on go-to-mar­ket teams and affec­tion­ate­ly refers to its bots as “auto­mat­ed dig­i­tal work­ers.“Alice, an AI sales rep, and Jor­dan, an AI phone rep, are already live, with two more bots rolling out soon. More details on TechCrunch.

That’s all for this week. See you at HR Tech!

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