Hung Lee: Social Anthropology to Recruitment Industry Voice & Founder of Brainfood

Did you ever coast in a job just because you could?

My next guest did exactly that, until he realized he’d disrespected the very person sitting across from him. And that just didn’t sit right.

So, he resigned that very day.

With no plan or job in sight.

That was Hung Lee, founder of Recruiting Brainfood, and my latest guest on Clocking Out.

Born in the Netherlands to Chinese parents and raised across three countries, Hung grew up as a third culture kid.

Never fully belonging anywhere.

He dreamed of being a zoologist, majored in anthropology, then went through a brutal series of job rejections until…

A serious car accident left him bedridden for over 18 months.

In the ‘forced isolation’ of his recovery room, Hung realized that applying remotely for jobs was a failing strategy. He needed to relocate to a city with a higher density of opportunity!

So he moved to London, giving himself a deadline of 3 days to land a job.

He succeeded.

By the early 2000s, Hung was a top-performing recruitment agent in London’s high-pressure ‘party city’.

One day, he found himself nursing a hangover during a candidate screening call. He realized that he’d become so good at his job, he could take a ‘micro-nap’ while the candidate answered his questions!

He was mortified.

And resigned that very day with no backup plan.

Thereafter, Hung went through years of failed businesses before working for tech startups (that eventually failed too).

But out of that failure came a newsletter that has since evolved into today’s “Recruiting Brainfood”, where he serves "nourishing educational content" that helps people cut through the internet noise.

Personally, I’m in awe of the way Hung treats failure: There is no Plan B for him.

Only Plan A.

If Plan A failed, he’d just build another Plan A.

Quite the mindset for us to consider adopting too?

Listen to Hung’s full episode here: