In this issue:

What do candidates remember most about your hiring process?

It’s not the job ad.
Not the interview questions.
It’s the ending—the offer, the rejection, the first day on the job.

The brain is wired to hold onto peak moments and final impressions. So if your process ends in silence, cold rejection, or a chaotic onboarding... that’s what sticks.

In the series finale of - Your Brain on Recruiting, I dive into how endings shape memory, trust, and employer brand—for better or worse.

Read it, and rethink how you close the loop.

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The HR Blotter

Mercer’s 2024–25 Global Talent Trends calls out four brutal truths: if you’re not plugging AI into human-first productivity, anchoring your culture on trust and fairness, hardening resilience, and embracing a full digital mindset, you're falling behind. Execs are cautiously optimistic about growth but know skimping on reskilling, equity, and solid people management will blow it—this isn’t optional, it’s the survival playbook for tomorrow’s workforce.

Hiring in 2025 isn’t old-school anymore. Companies are pushing flex schedules, AI-powered resume blitzes, and proactive talent pipelines just to stay in the game. Ditch the reactive scramble and embrace data, diversity, employer brand, and AI, or you’ll be watching your best hires walk into rivals’ offices.

Amazon’s Andy Jassy just sent a memo that reads like a warning flare. AI’s going gangbusters across the company, and that means fewer corporate jobs on the chopping block. He’s preaching efficiency gains and adaptability, but let’s be real: if you’re not learning to work with bots, you’re staring at a pink slip.

In case you know somebody looking, Vogue is hiring.

If you want loyal customers, start with fulfilled employees, because nobody delivers great service while quietly dying inside. Shep Hyken flips Maslow’s pyramid into a workplace blueprint: paycheck first, then purpose, growth, uniqueness, and finally, real fulfillment; the kind that makes people stay, fight for the brand, and mean it.

Neuroinclusion isn’t a feel-good checkbox, it’s a full-system overhaul. If your workplace still punishes different brains with rigid rules, noisy offices, and one-size-fits-all expectations, you’re not inclusive, you’re bleeding talent and calling it culture.

Nikhil Kamath and the WEF say four‑year degrees are going the way of the dodo. Adaptability and nonstop learning are the new survival skills as AI gobbles up routine roles. Think lifelong skilling or be left behind: as tech, green, and care jobs boom, clerical and admin roles slide into extinction in a decade‑long talent death spiral.

2025’s college grads are in a tough catch-22. Unemployment for degree-holders aged 22‑27 has surged to its highest in over a decade (5.8%), while AI gobbles up entry-level roles in tech, finance, and law, and hiring freezes lock them out. And don’t even start about experience. It’s gone from requirement to a mythical unicorn, so grads are stuck in a silent trap: can't get hired without experience, can't get experience without the job.

Jerome Powell dropped a bomb in front of Congress—AI isn’t just sci‑fi fluff, it’s about to wreck the labor market and flip the economic script in ways we’re not ready for. He admitted the Fed doesn’t have the tools to deal with the fallout, meaning this AI upheaval could hit harder and faster than anyone expected. Yikes!

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Your Brain on Recruiting (Part 4): The Peak-End Rule

The Neuroscience of Candidate Experience

Imagine you're a candidate who just finished a job interview.

You're asked, "How was it?"

What happens in your brain at that moment?

You don't actually remember most of the interview. Instead, your brain performs a quick calculation based on two data points:

1. The emotional peak (the most intense moment, good or bad)

2. The ending

This is the Peak-End Rule, a cognitive bias discovered by Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman. It explains why our memories of experiences are dominated by their most intense point and how they finish, rather than the sum or average of every moment.

Why Your Brain Ignores Most of the Experience

Your brain isn't designed to store every detail of every experience. That would be overwhelming.

Instead, it takes shortcuts, and the Peak-End Rule is one of the most powerful. When a candidate reflects on their interview experience, their brain automatically weighs the emotional high/low point and the final moments much more heavily than everything else.

This happens because:

1. Uncertainty creates stress. The brain releases cortisol when faced with ambiguity, and job interviews are filled with uncertainty.

2. Social rejection activates the same brain regions as physical pain. The anterior cingulate cortex lights up whether you're experiencing a broken bone or a broken connection.

3. Our primitive brains are wired for tribal belonging. Being evaluated for group acceptance triggers deep survival instincts.

4. The brain's reward system responds strongly to early wins. Dopamine is released when we experience or anticipate positive outcomes.

The Practical Implications for Recruiters

Understanding the Peak-End Rule gives recruiters a powerful framework for designing better candidate experiences:

1. Manage the Emotional Peaks

The most intense moments of the candidate journey will disproportionately color their memory of the entire experience. This could be:

• The moment they realize they're talking to the wrong interviewer

• When they're asked a question they can't answer

• The relief when an interviewer puts them at ease after a tough question

Identify potential emotional peaks in your process and design them intentionally.

2. End Strong

The final moments of any candidate interaction will be weighted heavily in their memory:

• How does the interview conclude?

• What's the last thing candidates hear before they leave?

• How do you communicate rejections?

Even if the outcome is negative, the way you end the interaction has outsized importance.

3. Reduce Uncertainty

The brain craves certainty. When candidates don't know what's happening next, their stress response activates, creating negative emotional peaks:

• Clearly communicate next steps

• Set expectations about timelines

• Provide closure, even when the news isn't positive

4. Create Moments of Connection

Remember that social pain is processed similarly to physical pain in the brain. Small moments of genuine human connection can create positive emotional peaks:

• Use the candidate's name

• Reference something specific from their background

• Show authentic interest in their questions

The Fairness Factor

We've already covered how the brain lights up at fair treatment (“Your Brain on Recruiting Part 1,” go read it if you haven't). But here's the application-specific angle:

If your process feels rigged, or biased, or built for insiders only?

If there's no transparency about who gets screened in or out?

If it takes 45 minutes and you ghost them anyway?

That registers as unfair, and fairness isn't a soft skill. It's hard-coded into the brain (ventromedial prefrontal cortex + insular cortex, for those keeping score).

When candidates sense injustice, they're not just annoyed. Their brain is literally telling them to walk away.

That's the neuroscience of bad employer branding.

Designing a Peak-End Optimized Process

Here's how to apply the Peak-End Rule to your recruiting process:

1. Map the emotional journey. Identify the potential peaks (positive and negative) in your current process.

2. Create intentional positive peaks. Design moments of surprise, delight, or human connection.

3. Eliminate unnecessary negative peaks. Look for pain points that can be removed or softened.

4. Design better endings for every stage. Even rejections can leave candidates with positive impressions if handled well.

5. Measure what matters. Don't just track time-to-fill. Measure the emotional experience at key touchpoints.

The Peak-End Rule isn't just interesting neuroscience—it's a practical framework for designing recruiting processes that leave candidates feeling respected, whether they get the job or not.

And in a world where talent is scarce and employer brand matters more than ever, that's a competitive advantage worth having.…

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The Fine Print

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One more thing before I go…

Over the past four articles, I unpacked what the hiring process does to the human brain from the moment a candidate sees your job post to the second they step into onboarding. We explored how stress, uncertainty, and fairness shape behavior at every stage and how small shifts can flip threat into trust, and doubt into motivation. If you’ve been following the neuroscience series, you now know how to make every step of the candidate journey not just efficient, but unforgettable.

Next issue? Whole new tangent.

Want a clue about what it’ll be?
Tough. I’m not saying.

Just know this—it’s worth the wait.

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