As you may being prep­ping for 2024 – yes, I know, it’s already almost the end of the year and you aren’t ready for Christ­mas, either – the Doc­tor has a few thoughts. In fact, I often have more than a few thoughts, but I will keep most of them to myself! But seri­ous­ly, the news over the past cou­ple of years is enough to make any busi­ness a bit ner­vous – wars, pre­dic­tions of reces­sion, lay­offs, AI and chaos in the biggest AI com­pa­ny, falling job post­ing num­bers, and (yes) elec­tions. Does one try to pre­pare for the com­ing months – or hide in a bunker?

Well, hav­ing been work­ing for a long time (sad to say, prob­a­bly longer than you, dear read­er), and hav­ing sur­vived not one, not two, but four reces­sions, I have some ideas for how you can go for­ward with per­haps a lit­tle less fear and a lit­tle more con­fi­dence. For every bit of wor­ry­ing news, there is also a cor­re­spond­ing bit of pos­i­tive news. But instead of star­ing blind­ly at your social feeds, check out the Doc­tor’s pre­scrip­tion for prep­ping for 2024:

• Econ­o­mists are wrong a lot of the time: Specif­i­cal­ly, at least 50–60% of the time, or more. So ignore pre­dic­tions of reces­sion as well as recov­ery. Instead, focus on your niche. The orga­ni­za­tions in it are the ones that mat­ter to you, right? How are they doing? What are the fac­tors affect­ing them? For exam­ple, if you’re in the infra­struc­ture sec­tor, there is a LOT of mon­ey that is flow­ing for the next sev­er­al years. Com­pa­nies doing this work will need more skilled work­ers than they have. What are you doing to help them? How can you get involved in train­ing, assess­ment, recruit­ing, and so on? React to your niche – not to the head­lines.
• Don’t do the same-old same-old: I don’t care if your grand­moth­er was sell­ing dura­tion-based posts when you were knee-high to a grasshop­per – it does­n’t mean that they nec­es­sar­i­ly meet your clients’ cur­rent needs. Be will­ing to test new approach­es and tech­nolo­gies. Remem­ber, your employ­ers pay you for the out­comes they want, not the spe­cif­ic meth­ods you offer. If dura­tion-based posts work, use them. If they don’t, test pro­gram­mat­ic. If that does­n’t, test some­thing else. Test any­thing and every­thing you can find. Pay atten­tion to what oth­er recruit­ment plat­forms are doing. If you find some­thing that works, use it. Don’t rely on what Grand­ma did.
• Be data-dri­ven: It’s hard mak­ing deci­sions based on data. Why? Because col­lect­ing data takes time, and data is often hard to col­lect or incom­plete. And once you have the data, you must put it into a ratio­nal deci­sion process. Politi­cians are often accused – right­ly – of using data to prove a point, despite oth­er data exist­ing that dis­proves that same point. Don’t be a politi­cian. Instead, prac­tice both the col­lec­tion of data and the even-hand­ed use of it in your deci­sions. This will pre­vent you from mak­ing emo­tion­al deci­sions – like spend­ing $44B on Twit­ter, for instance.
• Put your can­di­dates first: I real­ize that I talk about this – a lot. So? It’s true. If you don’t have can­di­dates, you won’t have employ­ers. That goes no mat­ter if you are a job board, a recruit­ment mar­ket­ing place, a sourc­ing tool, or any oth­er per­mu­ta­tion out there. The busi­ness is all about con­nect­ing can­di­dates and employ­ers, folks. Don’t lose sight of it!

If you keep the four points above in front of you dur­ing your prep­ping for 2024, you will be in good shape. Even if Sam Alt­man decides to leave Ope­nAI of his own voli­tion, you’ll be ok. And maybe your blood pres­sure will be a bit lower, too!

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