3.5% fewer corporate jobs in 2025

HR is lonely. But it doesn’t have to be.

The best HR advice comes from those in the trenches. That’s what this is: real-world HR insights delivered in a newsletter from Hebba Youssef, a Chief People Officer who’s been there. Practical, real strategies with a dash of humor. Because HR shouldn’t be thankless—and you shouldn’t be alone in it.

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Career Resources

• Find our job board, a referral link to Zapier, and more here.

• I’ve started adding an additional directive to my prompts when using AI Assistants and it’s made a huge difference. I now include guidance like “be brutally honest” and “be highly discerning and critical, I am looking for a 10/10 match”. This has really helped with getting more honest and actionable feedback.

• Found this great list of job boards focused on VC-funded startups!

In the News

• It’s not in your head. Companies are shrinking, and that’s what’s behind the “white collar recession”. Corporate America has shrunk by 3.5% in the last 3 years - that adds up to millions of people left without opportunities in their field. And HR, Sales, and Support have seen decreases of 5%+.
  My advice here: you need to be at the top of your game and be able to differentiate yourself with strong apps and exceptional skillsets to land offers; don’t be afraid to consider other industries as well - healthcare, non-profits, education, construction, manufacturing - these are all areas that need corporate skills as well.

• The New York Times wrote this article about the the use of AI in job applications and the dramatic increase in apps being submitted on LinkedIn. Companies are inundated with low quality, AI-generated apps, as well as apps that seem to be too good to be true - and are because they are fraudulent.
  My advice here: companies are going to continue to hold a higher and higher bar here, and be more risk averse as we encounter more fraud. I personally use AI for just about everything so I totally encourage you to use AI, but if it’s not edited, humanized, and aligned to what’s on your resume and LinkedIn. Otherwise, given the high app volume, it’s not worth digging into an application that raises flags.

🙋Answering Your Questions🙋

Each week, I’ll answer one (or more!) of your questions in this section. You can submit your questions here.

The point of including data and metrics is to show your impact, give insights into the scale at which you operated, and whether you’re someone who meets/exceeds your goals - and there are lots of ways to do that!

1. Start tracking now. Even if your employer doesn’t set clear quantifiable goals for you, you can still track and communicate your results. So if you’re currently employed, consider some of the data points you currently discuss or monitor and set targets around this. If you have a target of 98% accuracy for example, you can note that you hit your accuracy targets 11/12 months, or that you maintained 98.5% accuracy, or that you exceeded your target by .5%.

2. Consider processes you improved. If you trimmed a 6 step process down to 4 steps, you increased efficiency by 33%. If a process used to take 10 days and you implemented adjustments that took that down to 8 days, that’s a 20% improvement.

3. Consider metrics that show the scale or the impact of your role. For example, the kind of volume you managed in your role, the number of stakeholders you worked with, even insights into company size. So you could note that you filled 87 roles last year, or that you conducted 20+ interviews every week, or that you were the lead hiring partner for an org with 3000 employees, or that you managed a $900k budget.

4. Highlight big achievements or wins. Maybe you can’t highlight your impact on the bottom line, but showing promotions or awards are a great way to show that you were viewed as a high performer. You could note that you received an “exceeding expectations” rating, that you were ranked in the top 10% of people in your role, etc.

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