Talent Acquisition leaders flock to Amsterdam for the second annual European event, here’s why!

Hiring Success EU returns, this time in Amsterdam. Over 350 attendees will join SmartRecruiters to define the future of recruiting September 10-11, 2019 canal-side at the Compagnietheater.

During two days of interactive sessions and networking, conference-goers will explore topical issues in recruiting with 80 expert speakers from top tier brands like Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and Twitter. With three stages and 30 sessions, attendees are sure to find the content they need to achieve hiring success.

“Hiring Success is a superb event series. It’s so good, it’s become a movement,” says Hung Lee, CEO at WorkShape.io and Curator of Recruiting Brainfood. “Think: hiring best practice, cool product updates, a clear theme of diversity and inclusion, and a great community of Talent Acquisition folks. I don’t exaggerate – it’s a life-affirming event.”

But don’t just take Hung’s word for it, here are 8 of the best reasons why HSEU is the must-attend recruiting event this year.

Check out the full agenda here and make sure to take advantage of early bird pricing until June 14th!

1. Exceptional Speakers

The Hiring Success Conference is all about the amazing speakers who inspire and inform. Last year, Hiring Success EU – Berlin was lucky enough to welcome leading practitioners like James Purvis (Head of HR, CERN), Sanam Moayedi-Stummer (HR Director & Program Lead, Coca-Cola European Partners, and Elke Jorens (Director of Talent Acquisition, EMEA Microsoft).

2. Network with industry leaders.

With TA leaders, analysts, hiring practitioners, and industry thought leaders in attendance, conference-goers have the opportunity to make meaningful connections. Networking is an important dimension to any in-person event, which is why every Hiring Success Conference features a Smarty Party where everyone can relax, discuss learnings, and meet new people. Last year, attendees enjoyed a night at one of Berlin’s top night clubs, complete with a marching band and ariel acrobats.

3. Three topical tracks to guide your learning adventure.

The Hiring Success Conference is built around three proven tracks to meet practitioners at their point of need:

Innovation. Understand the latest recruiting tech and see how these digital tools will actually affect you and your practice.

Diversity & Inclusion. Stories of success and inspiration from hiring practitioners that will help you create the business case for a diverse workforce and inclusive work culture.

Hiring Success. The case studies and hiring hacks from practitioners who have #BeenThere and know your pain points.

4. Explore the latest diversity and inclusion initiatives.

A new topic experts will discuss this year is ‘candidates with resume gaps’. Whether the sabbatical was to travel the world, care for a loved one, raise children, return to school, or heal from an illness, applicants shouldn’t be dismissed as ‘irrelevant’ upon their return to the workforce. In this interactive session, recruiters will learn strategies for successful workforce reintegration.

5. Dive into the best practices of tomorrow.

The Hiring Success Conference is a great chance to get out of the company silo and learn from other practitioners; this is especially the case with analytics. When starting a people analytics program, it’s hard to benchmark data without anything for comparison. Ever wonder how effective posting jobs vs events vs referrals vs database sourcing is at attracting top talent? All these questions will be answered in a participatory session, and everyone will walk away with a sourcing-spend plan.

6. Stay abreast of innovation in recruiting tech.

The Hiring Success Hackathon makes its European debut at the Amsterdam conference. Teams will have 24 hours to produce an original add-on to the SmartRecruiters platform and attendees will vote to decide the winner.

At Hiring Success19 – San Francisco Optimizely swept gold with an app that solved for task completion lag time, but who knows what imaginative hack will impress in Amsterdam?

7. Location, location, location.

Jerome Ternynck, CEO and Founder of SmartRecrutiers put it best when he said: “Amsterdam speaks to the future of recruiting. This lively city is on the avant-garde of tech adoption, where global talent flocks, and people-centric innovation abounds.”

8. See Winston dance again!

Who can resist Winston’s killer dance moves?  SmartRecruiters’ very own Smartian is (without doubt or prejudice) one of the greatest mascots of all time.

via GIPHY

Here’s what will define Talent Acquisition (TA) in the coming year, and how your team can win in the 365 days ahead.

2018 was defined by deep, recruiting-AI integrations, including the first AI native to an applicant tracking system (ATS) in the form of SmartRecruiters’ SmartAssistant, and a data security revolution heralded by the general data privacy regulations (GDPR) in Europe, as well as similar legislation around the world.

No story ever ended neatly at the stroke of midnight on December 31st. We will continue to see AI take root, and data security will remain top of mind. Yet, as a new year begins, one can’t help but look back at the last journey around the sun to identify the lessons that will prepare TA for the next 365 days.

To understand better the trends and challenges of 2019, we sat down with CEO and founder of SmartRecruiters, Jerome Ternynck, to learn how a new ‘marketing’ outlook shaped by a laser-focus on candidate experience, and a mastery of tech, will get TA into the boardroom this year.

Five Predictions for Talent Acquisition in 2019

3 min 26 sec video

1) Recruitment marketing or bust…

“Source candidates like an outbound marketer. End-to-end recruitment marketing, branding, and candidate relationship management systems (CRM) with consumer-class candidate experience throughout — Recruiters need to leverage the whole gamut by proactively sourcing, building talent pools, and nurturing relationships in order to compete for top talent in today’s candidate-driven market.”

2) Diversity and inclusion are ‘non-negotiables’…

“If you don’t have a strong D&I strategy (there are many ways for it to be simple but effective), you’re losing the long-term talent game.”

3) TA is boardroom-ready…

“We’ve always known that hiring success = business success, now it’s time to show the world. This is how we’re going to do it: Today’s leading TA Suites provide you with all the data and insights you need to drive hiring success and, by extension, business outcomes. A simple hiring success dashboard with net hiring score, velocity, and budget metrics is easy for a boardroom to grasp. It’s no longer about faster and cheaper — it’s all about the value created! We tried it, our customers adopted, and it works.”

4) Think ‘global’, act ‘local’…

“With more and more companies evolving towards distributed workforce models, often spanning across 3-5 offices/countries, your TA strategy needs to be global, yet your tools and processes need to be local. Think detailed configurability within an overarching collaborative platform as the staple ingredients for a successful recruiting strategy.”

5) Digital savvy is the ultimate differentiator…

“Tech, tech, and more tech. From AI and blockchain to chatbots and scheduling, it’s all happening online. These digital solutions have made it possible for recruiting to deliver results to the boardroom. Growth strategy will increasingly depend on tech stacks, and the partnership between vendors and customers will be key to driving business growth.

Necessity breeds invention, and that’s what we’ve seen with TA over the last decade. As the talent economy becomes more competitive, tech rises to the challenge to support recruiters and bring hiring to the next level.”

Learn why 47 percent of employees claim to be shut out of tech adoption, and how companies can do better – including employee personality types and motivations.

Employees want the best tools for their jobs, but when companies adopt new tech they often feel out of the loop, and ‘put upon’. How many of you have received an email like ‘we are changing systems, please complete these 10 easy steps…’ and then just ignored it forever? You aren’t alone! …Or maybe you were the one who sent that email, and wondered ‘why is everyone complaining and dragging their feet?!’ Most of us have been there as well. The simple fact is, that getting buy-in for new tech is hard, especially when people don’t understand why.

In a recent survey, PwC found that while 90 percent of managers report the introduction of new technology is made with the workers’ needs in mind, only 53 percent of the employees agreed, and 73 percent of those employees say they know of systems that would help them turn out higher quality work than the ones they use now… uh oh.

Those numbers are bleak, especially when one takes into account that this isn’t a niche problem. The survey included 12,000 workers spanning c-suite to administrative roles, from eight countries, and through a wide range of industries including consumer markets, health industries, financial services, manufacturing, and technology and media.

It’s clear then that tech adoption is a widespread problem, and a pain point on both sides of the equation – the departments pushing digitization and the workers being bowled over by it. So, here are some things to consider before driving innovation!

What motivates employees? When it comes to motivations there are three distinct employee personality types with their own distinct set of motivations. Curiosity-driven, status-driven, and rewards-driven.

• • Curiosity-driven: 34 percent of employees are motivated by curiosity, efficiency, and teamwork. This group is the most open to new tech adoptions and will invest up to 20 hours of training per month. These are the folks who champion tech to the rest of the company!

• • Status-driven: 37 percent of employees are motivated by advancement in their careers, recognition, and status. They likely already feel overwhelmed by all the different tech being introduced into their working lives, and would prefer streamlined solutions. Don’t let the grumbling fool you, this segment will still spend around 17 hours on tech training every month.

• Rewards-driven: 29 percent of employees are motivated by individual achievement within a predictable environment. This group likes a routine and cares about the well being of their coworkers. They are the hardest to evangelize as they don’t prize efficiency or recognition as highly as the first two segments.

How much time are they willing to invest? Turns out, most employees are willing to invest upwards of two days per month in upskilling, but only 50 percent are satisfied with the available resources, and 46 percent say their company doesn’t value tech-savvy workers. This data signifies an opportunity for leaders to define avenues for their teams to learn, and be rewarded for their learning. Sooner, rather than later, would be ideal as The World Economic Forum projects that by 2022, 54 percent of employees will need a substantial amount of training, with 35 percent of those in need, requiring at least six months of instruction.

Does the human touch still matter? Yes, when asked employees would still prefer, by in large, to have face to face interactions when it comes to talking with colleagues, providing feedback, getting help with difficult questions, and receiving HR assistance.

… but the digital assist still has its place. Some processes can be both human and digital. For example, initial tech evangelization can happen through in-person meetings, and product demos while extended training on features and nudge reminders can happen digitally over slack or via the product directly.

Things employees would prefer to do via tech: schedule vacation time, update personal info, get IT help, review benefits, enroll in benefits, and look for new employment.

Confer with mixed-level tech committees: Consider conferring with “informal leaders”, people who may not hold a leadership title per se, but who can give you an idea of what the company looks like on the ground level. Don’t discount the value of this view!

***

At the end of the day, employees want to feel like the leadership is driving tech-innovation to enable workers, not replace them. When asked if the rise of AI would make the world a better place, 88 percent of the C-suite respondents said yes, while only 48 percent of the staff surveyed agreed. This disconnect is emblematic of why the tech adoption can be so tricky; workers fear that digitization isn’t to support them, but to edge them out. The best thing any organization can do to encourage innovation is to involve employees in the decision, and illustrate the value proposition clearly!

Learn why recruiters need a “best of breed” solution to win the war for talent from our expert webinar with Glassdoor and SmartRecruiters.

Companies often push their talent acquisition (TA) team to use the recruiting module of the human capital management (HCM) system already in place to manage employee facing administrative tasks like payroll, benefits, and performance tracking. On the surface, it seems like a good idea.  IT is happy because there are no further integrations needed, and finance thinks it will be better for the bottom line. However, time and again, we see that the costs greatly outweigh the benefits.

For a deeper understanding as to why HCM solutions aren’t the software answer for recruiters, we turn to four takeaways from our “Hire Smarter” webinar with experts Rob Symons, VP of Northern Europe at SmartRecruiters and Ravi Edwards, sales leader for EMEA at Glassdoor.

1. Scale: Recruitment happens on a scale more comparable to sales or marketing than employee management. For example, the Royal Post hires 30,000 temporary employees every year around Christmas. In order to hit this target, they have to receive one-million applications, and one can imagine that the number of marketing touches has to be exponentially greater. Companies who chose to use HCM recruiting modules may think they are saving money only to be surprised by rampant server expenses.
2. Interface: Employees may deal with clunky systems (when it’s crucial to their job function), but candidates (and many hiring managers) certainly will not. Sixty percent of candidates abandon job applications midway through because they are too complicated. A consumer-grade user interface (UI) is a must, that means the system uses design philosophy to ensure little or no training is needed to navigate the platform (think Facebook or eBay).
3. Compliance: The newly enacted General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) in Europe, and similar legislation in England and California, are elevating the level of concern around the proper handling of candidate information. A system without compliance at its core forces teams to create timely manual solutions that negatively impact productivity.
4. Complexity: Recruiting is a complicated process with many moving parts. Most hires are made with a minimum of 15 resources. For example email, text, social media, job boards, psychometrics, background checks, video interviews, digital signature, and the list goes on. The recruiting system needs to support these applications, and HCMs just can’t.

The bottom line is, HCM  is an internal-facing system that cannot keep pace with the recruiting demands of today’s talent economy. TA needs more than applicant tracking systems (ATS), they need dedicated talent acquisition suites (TAS) in order to remain competitive.

To learn more watch the recording below, or join us live for our next webinar with Glassdoor, “How to Hire Smarter – Discover how data-driven recruitment can revolutionize your business – from hiring at scale to measuring success”, December 5th, 2018 | 11 am GMT. Register here!

MobieTrain swept the recruiting startup finals today at UNLEASH, a strong message that learning and development are what employers care about now.

“Every Startup – from Google to Facebook – starts with someone believing in the idea. That’s what we are here for today!” said Jerome Ternynck as he kicked off the final pitch session for the recruiting startup awards at UNLEASH, in Amsterdam. As the founder and CEO of SmartRecruiters, MrTed, and others, Jerome knows the nerve it takes to get on a stage in front of hundreds of people and pray they see your vision for the future.

. @jerometernynck hosts #UNLEASH18 startup competition! pic.twitter.com/orEHg3wqAG

— SmartRecruiters (@SmartRecruiters) October 24, 2018

Today, four startups took the stage with vim, and laid it all on the table in the hopes of becoming this conference’s recruiting-tech champion.

First up, MobieTrain, a micro-learning platform for the retail sector. With content at the point of need as well as fun badges and helpful nudges, this app is imparting needed-knowledge without the headache of lengthy courses.

Micro learning with @mobietrain goes for the gold! #UNLEASH18 pic.twitter.com/q6xu93n1xz

— SmartRecruiters (@SmartRecruiters) October 24, 2018

Second on the stage, Career Spark, this company wants to transform career pathing by making people decisions more data-driven rather than opinion based. How? Through machine learning and fact-based data science that helps you learn from your company’s top performers.

.@career_spark wants people-decisions to get data driven! #UNLEASH18 pic.twitter.com/ZHJJbDo4Vx

— SmartRecruiters (@SmartRecruiters) October 24, 2018

Third, Candidate.ID, the platform that turns your recruiters into marketers. Save time and increase the quality of hire with this ATS/CRM integration that includes candidate nurturing and scoring, email marketing, and closed-loop, real-time reporting tools.

“Genuine talent pipeline means you know who is cold, who is warm, and who is hire-ready!“ — @Candidate_ID pic.twitter.com/hsqQtSYnY4

— SmartRecruiters (@SmartRecruiters) October 24, 2018

And finally, Zapiens, knowledge management software that uses AI to raise the level of intelligence in your company so your employees can get answers fast!

.@zapiens find talent — and keep it — with data based learning solutions for your employees! #UNLEASH18 pic.twitter.com/kMtZqrgRDO

— SmartRecruiters (@SmartRecruiters) October 24, 2018

After the pitches, we heard from the judges about who they found impressive, Candidate.ID and MobieTrain emerged as clear front-runners.

“I’m split between Candidate.ID and MobieTrain,” shared Bill Boorman. “Though I am leaning slightly towards the latter because I think a platform that focuses on one sector, in this case, retail, tends to do better.”

“Yes,” agrees China Gorman, “I like that MobieTrain isn’t trying to boil the ocean.”

In the end MobieTrain won out, with Candidate.ID taking a close second. As Jerome pointed out, ”Sometimes it’s better to attack the market with a knife over a hammer.”

The main challenge that judge Yvette Cameron foresees for today’s winner is content creation. A stellar learning flow still needs the right sequence information. It will be interesting to see how this fresh recruiting-tech tackles this in the year to come.

Are you a Startup ready to compete? Check out Hiring Success 19 Recruiting Startup Awards!