Quick-to-read HR news & insights
From recruiting and retention to company culture and the latest in HR tech, HR Brew delivers up-to-date industry news and tips to help HR pros stay nimble in today’s fast-changing business environment.
On Wednesdays, we schedule our weekly 1:1 with HR Brew’s readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.
This week’s Coworking spotlights Aman Kidwai, HR Brew’s new senior reporter. Prior to his career in journalism, he worked in consulting. Feel free to say hello as he gets settled.
What are you most interested in exploring as you begin reporting on the HR industry? I’m very interested in the field’s evolution, which has been ongoing but was really accelerated by the pandemic. The value of being good at attracting, hiring, and retaining quality people is growing. That represents an opportunity for every single business leader, who can improve their talent levels and business outcomes by running their teams with a bit more thought and care.
What’s the most interesting interaction you’ve had with an HR person? In my pre-journalism career, our department’s HRBP told me that they had never heard of any conflict existing between sales and product teams...[stares directly into camera]. I thought that response was funny because it was either an outright lie or a sign of otherworldly ignorance. I’ll always wonder...It definitely shaped how I view HR today.
What emerging HR trend or technology are you excited about? I’m excited to see more accountability from the function, and to rigorously chronicle how it responds to the mandate to do better on many fronts, including workforce planning, recruiting, diversity, inclusion, and L&D. I’m also interested to see if new companies emerge as the “best” or favorites to work for because of something truly unique in their people operations or culture.
What’s the best book you’ve read in the past year? Silicon Values by Jillian York, who works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. York’s book clearly lays out how much power tech platforms have built for themselves and how the reach of that power has impacted free speech and socioeconomic stability across the globe.
What’s something you want readers to know about your life outside being a reporter? I was not always a journalist! In fact, I’m a very unlikely one. I never wrote for the school newspaper or took any writing or journalism classes. My professional career started with four years in B2B sales, another four years in data analysis and consulting (mostly for HR clients), and one year of freelancing before starting in business reporting full-time.
Because my presence here is so unlikely (for a variety of reasons), working in media as a reporter is a source of pride. I relish the privilege of getting to speak with the business world’s foremost strategists and then writing about it!
Want to be featured in an upcoming edition of Coworking? Click here to introduce yourself.