Hiring software company Greenhouse announced a new feature last week that allows job seekers to identify and signal that a job opening is their top choice.

Dream Job, the feature Greenhouse announced last Thursday, gives applicants the ability to select one job per month as their “dream job” and the platform will share that information with the employer, offering a new data point for recruiters to consider when looking to fill open roles.

“Everybody's falling into an AI doom loop, where, for really logical reasons and sensible things, each person’s optimizing locally, and it’s creating a really bad thing,” Greenhouse cofounder and president Jon Stross told HR Brew, pointing to AI assists with writing job descriptions, candidates optimizing cover letters and resumes with AI, and the AI tools recruiters use to match and grade those applications. “It just feels like noise…The whole system kind of breaks down for everyone.”

Many recruiters are addressing these current top-of-funnel issues by relying more on referrals and outbound recruiting, according to Stross, because recruiters are looking to different signals in order to help organize their workflow amid all the noise.

For more on how this new feature could shape the hiring process, keep reading here.—AD

Economists’ expectations for the monthly jobs report couldn’t be any lower these days.

Despite that, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ newest employment data for May once again exceeded dour presumptions, even as the labor market continued to slow down from its feverish churn a few years back.

Employers added 139,000 jobs in May, beating economists’ forecasts of 120,000, but declining from the 147,000 job gain reported in April. At the same time, employment growth stats for March and April were revised down by 95,000. March payroll growth shrank from 185,000 jobs added, as originally estimated, to 120,000 jobs added, and April contracted from 177,000 job gains to 147,000.

The unemployment rate remained unchanged in May at 4.2%, and has hovered between a range of 4% and 4.2% since May 2024. Meanwhile, average hourly earnings rose by 15 cents to $36.24 in May, a 0.4% increase. Despite this broader cooldown, the stronger-than-expected jobs data indicates that the labor market continues to be resilient.

For more on the May job report and what it means for employers, keep reading here.—PM

Beyonce told us that girls run the world, but it’s clear that women don’t quite run workplaces yet, and some countries are further behind than others on their journey to gender equality.

Where in the world? Women in Nigeria and Kenya are struggling to climb the corporate ranks, according to a new report from McKinsey, in partnership with LeanIn. Both countries show that when women have low representation in the private sector early in their careers, it follows them and creates additional barriers to advancement.

In Nigeria, women make up just one-in-three entry workers, and approximately 29% of C-suite positions.

“When recruiting, there are some roles that I wouldn’t be inclined to give to women, especially in engineering and technical services, because they are male-dominated,” an HR professional in Nigeria said in the report.

Women in Kenya have a steep dropoff of representation the higher up you go.

For more on how gender diversity and equity challenges remain a global issue, keep reading here.—KP