Rise Maple: 📓 sir, this is a Wendy's

Hebba Youssef

May 6th, 2026

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Hiii,

We made it to hump day. Just a few dozen shots of espresso and a heck of a lot of emails to go until the weekend.

I should probably remind everybody that May is Women's Health Month, too. 👀

So shoutout to the women holding entire orgs together. Take care of yourself, because you can’t pour from an empty cup, and you deserve to actually enjoy your regular day-today.

Okay, before I get all sappy, we have some fun stuff to talk about this week!

For starters, recruiters are abandoning LinkedIn to find candidates at bars and grocery stores… and honestly, same energy as everything else happening in HR right now.

We've also got Ayanna Kelly saying things about work-life balance that are going to hit a little too close to home, and a stat about workplace abuse that is genuinely hard to sit with.

Let's get into it!

🗞️ Here's the Tea:

🍸 Recruiters say AI resume flood has them sourcing at bars, parties

The TL;DR: AI-generated applications have gotten SO out of control that recruiters are now sourcing candidates at bars, grocery stores, and yes…dating apps. You read that right!!

Over half of hiring managers surveyed said they've already gone off-platform to find talent, and 84% said those casual encounters produced better candidates than formal channels. The AI resume flood broke the application process and sent recruiters back out into the wild.

My POV: Is this the time when we all admit that ATS-optimized, keyword-stuffed, AI-assisted application pipeline we've all been navigating has made recruiting EVEN harder??

Candidates spray and pray, recruiters drown in resumes, and somehow the best hire gets made at a house party?!

It's a sign that skills like communication and presence (the stuff you can't fake with ChatGPT) are becoming the actual differentiator again.

This also means the conversation about what you're screening for matters more than ever right now. Get those hiring details ON LOCK.

🎙️Mic Drop Moment:

“We shouldn’t have to wait until we retire to be able to do the things that bring us joy.”

On the mic this week: Ayanna Kelly is a director of culture and someone who actually understands what it means to redesign work for humans, instead of just companies. As an Afro Latina disabled veteran, she brings lived experience, empathy, and trauma-informed practices into every space she leads. Across government, tech, and nonprofit work, she’s focused on helping people thrive without burning themselves out in the process.

Pin this:

Generally, fulfillment doesn’t come from titles or compensation. It comes from living your values and having a life outside of work.
Work can’t be your only outlet for meaning, especially when systems limit your ability to create real change.
Community is how you process and stay grounded. Seek out your people!
Boundaries feel risky because organizations still don’t consistently back them, even when they say they care about well-being.

My H*ly Sh*t Moment: At some point, we all grieve the version of ourselves that believed work alone could give our lives meaning, and realize we have to build that meaning somewhere else.

▶️ Press Play

📊 Data Is My Love Language:

Stat: 8 in 10 workers have experienced abuse or violence in the past year

My spiral: 8 and 10 is a lot. And somewhat hire to wrap my head around. The survey was around 5,000 employees with 84% of respondents being frontline workers.

The part that should stop you cold is that half of them said it's happening at least WEEKLY. 🤯 WEEKLY??

The gap between the culture decks and what people are actually living through at work has never looked wider.

Employers should be thinking about how they can prevent the harassment of their employees and training all employees on how to handle that type of situation.

🛠️ In Your Toolkit

Performance reviews shouldn't feel like a jump scare, and yet….BOO! 👻

That's exactly what I’ll be discussing for this month’s HR Therapy!

Feedback Across the Ages will be going down on May 20th, because feedback should never be a twice-a-year ambush, and managing five generations with five completely different expectations around it requires more than vibes and a rubric from 2019.

So come get practical with me!

🗣️ UNMUTE YOURSELF

I highly doubt you got into HR because you wanted to process paperwork and sit in endless meetings about meetings!

There was something that made you say yes to this work, and somewhere in that answer is a clue worth revisiting. So tell me:

“When was the last time work felt genuinely joyful, and what made it feel that way?”

🛠️ TRY THIS TOMORROW:

Most of us think we're better listeners than we actually are.

That gap between what we think we're doing and what we're actually doing shows up in every 1:1 and every moment someone needed to be heard and wasn't.

So give this a try tomorrow:

“Let someone finish their thought without jumping in. Time yourself!”