After the whirlwind that was our first European Hiring Success Conference, let’s take some time to smell the proverbial roses.

When you left your hotel to join us for the second day of #HIRE18 EU did you think that in a few hours you would be part of a band of 300 people, playing maracas? Likely, not. Yet, at 2 p.m. there you were – holding a shaker that looked like an apple, holding down the rhythm you’d learned only moments before, and killing it!

When an industry comes together in person, amazing things can happen. We learn, solve problems, push our comfort zones, and maybe even discover hidden musical talents, but it’s kind of a blur by the end. That’s why today, as we all journey back to our day-to-day grind we wanted to remind you of four moments, that challenged, surprised, delighted, and inspired!

When we learned two strategies for defeating our unconscious biases.

Diversity and inclusion specialists Natalie Mellin and Joanne Lockwood turned a figurative mirror on the audience in a session entitled “A Path to Gender Parity,” asking everyone to think about how our inherent prejudice affects how we approach people and situations at work.

“If you think about it, 99.96 percent of our decision-making process is unconscious,” says Mellin. “Yes,” Lockwood agrees. “It’s a very reptilian part of our brain.”

But we aren’t without hope, two strategies these experts recommend can help you bring your unconscious decision-making process into the light. The first is to flip the situation. If you are having a negative reaction to someone, ask yourself: “Would I feel this way if this person was a different gender, or a different age etc?”. The second is to move slow. Take the time to write down three reasons every time you make a personal decision (good or bad), if you can’t think of three, that choice is probably a result of unconscious bias.

Equality isn’t treating everyone the same. It’s giving everyone the tools they need to succeed. Amazing stuff #hire18 pic.twitter.com/aCZyr16sQW

— Kasia Borowicz (@kmborowicz) September 20, 2018

When recruiters hacked Tinder to find programmers.

In Germany they like to call it “convincing existing algorithms,” but for the rest of the world, it’s known simply as hacking. Recruiting maverick, Robindro Ullah recounts how his team banded together to reverse engineer the algorithm of tinder to fill programming positions. What they found was that the dating app connected to Facebook to glean interests and surface dating matches, so they began building the perfect profile to find the candidates they were after. The cherry? A picture of Ada Lovelace, the mother of programming, as the profile pic. The one question this author has about the experiment is, was the search confined to men seeking women?

Painiting of Ada Lovelace as a recruiting tool? This and other crazy ideas presented by @Robindro #HIRE18 pic.twitter.com/5c66BG7gyU

— Piotr Podolski (@pyortp) September 19, 2018

When we discovered what it means to listen by making music.

M. Baha, a professional percussionist and founder of Solution Folder lead the entire contingency of the Hiring Success Conference in an unexpected journey to inclusion and empathy through music. This instrumental jam session began with the dissemination of shakers, bells, rhythm sticks, and drums until everyone in the audience had a noisemaker of some kind. Instruments in hand, Baha lead the group in layered rhythms that helped each person actively listen. The result? A bonding experience and a lesson in vulnerability.

Explain this without context! #hire18 pic.twitter.com/fSMotlMvjN

— Falko Pleß (@f_pless) September 20, 2018

When we heard first-hand the struggle to find employment as a refugee.

When Nebras Khiata was forced to flee his home and job in Aleppo, he struggled to find a job in Germany despite his advanced degree in finance, years of experience, and command of English. Even international companies required German applications and cover letters, and government job placement programs pushed him towards employment outside his sector – as a postman or security guard.

Khiata eventually found work in his field, as an analyst for Deutsche Bank, but it took years. Now his employer, and other major companies are initiating programs to help refugees, like him, find a place in the labor market – faster – through mentorship that demystifies the unique employment culture of Germany.

Through copious data collection and analysis from experts at Humboldt University a surprising fact emerges: opportunities do exist for refugees, but they are often hard to find. One of the best things an employer can do is to make their applications mobile-friendly, and do away with cover letters and/or accept cover letters in English.

Personal, #HiringSuccess story of the syrian refugee. Great insight into struggles of refugees #HIRE18 pic.twitter.com/iPyB6q0XWr

— Piotr Podolski (@pyortp) September 19, 2018

When Enboarder took the trophy for the Recruiting Startup Awards

One-hundred companies joined the recruiting startup award in hopes of taking home the grand prize of 9,000 euros in media-spend, including a gold sponsorship to the next Hiring Success Conference and an article from Business Insider. From the many, five emerged as the top finalists who, propelled by the voting support of their networks, came to pitch it out live at Hiring Success 18 EU – Berlin Edition.

Enboarder distinguished itself as the only onboarding solution among the pack. This workflow management tool helps companies introduce new employees into their work culture and practices, and alerts department heads to potential flight risks. The user-friendly UX, and customized notification system, where you get to choose the medium of message delivery text/email/slack, make enboarder a true delight.

Check out Enboarder in the SmartRecruiters marketplace.

We were at @SmartRecruiters #HIRE18 and pitched as a finalist for the Recruiting Startup Award…and we won! Awesome work, Steve!
Watch our pitch here: https://t.co/CN9uAnBGVU (it starts at the 31:04 mark). pic.twitter.com/S8DFFYPdin

— Enboarder (@Enboarder) September 21, 2018

Virtual reality, instrumental jam sessions, live chat-bot battles, and everything else you would – and wouldn’t – expect from an HR conference.

Hiring Success 18 EU is here! 250 Talent Acquisition leaders from around the globe – including yourself, perhaps – have landed in Berlin for 48-hours of thought-provoking interactive sessions and live demos on three main tracks, #Innovation, #Inclusion, and #HiringSuccess, that will delve into the most important topical issues in recruiting today.

With over 30 sessions to choose from in only two days, we thought it wouldn’t hurt to recommend a few!

Have you hired a refugee?

#Inclusion

Is your company interested in starting a program to hire refugees? The first step is empathy and understanding. Hear from actual displaced persons about what it means to leave behind the life you know and rebuild everything from the ground up. The second half of the session invites informational Scientists from Humboldt University to participate in a panel discussion to deep dive into the programs available to refugees now, and how your company could start building its own.

Unlock potential with augmented and virtual reality

#Innovation

Explore the burgeoning fields of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, first through art, then though recruiting. Josephine Ackerman COO & Deputy Global Head Art, Culture & Sports at Deutsche Bank gives a live demonstration of how her company uses AR and VR to bring artworks to life in contemporary art exhibitions they support. These new technologies allow an artist’s intention and historical context to come to the forefront of the museum experience without dense wall text. Using only a smartphone, a static image or text can turn into a rotating font of information. Learn how Deutsche Bank and others have begun to apply the same principles to job advertising, onboarding, and training.

Battle of the Bots

#Innovation

Watch the leading chat bots battle it out in a live face-off. Leading recruiting chatbots will have a face-off in a live battle. Ask these virtual helpers questions to test the limits of their natural-language processing, get to know their unique personalities, and see how gracefully they fail. Your vote determines the winner at the end!

Accelerate revenue with TA

#HiringSuccess

Stop looking at TA as a cost center. Learn how the recruiting team at Microsoft were able to accelerate revenue for Azure Cloud during their digital transformation with heir Director of TA for EMEA, Elke Jorens. This workshop shows how infusing data from market and funnel-analysis contributes to the bottom line, so you can apply that same expert methodology to a project of your choice.

Synchronicity

#Inclusion

Whether you are a practicing musician or haven’t picked up an instrument since the recorder, this session is for you. Join the MIT grad and leadership expert, M Baha in an interactive jam session that uses the principles of music to promote the tenets of diversity and inclusion in a business setting.

Inspire your Remote Workforce

#Inclusion

While the draw of global talent is great, managing remote teams is still largely unexplored territory. Which is why we brought in Beat Buhlmann, one of the few people in the world who have a doctorate related to managing virtual teams, and the current GM for Evernote.  

Buhlmann lays out the benefits of employing a remote workforce and then shows how to address the challenges these offsite teams pose,  from both a culture and a tech standpoint. Walk away with the tools to sell your board on remotes hires, and the know-how of how to engage them throughout their tenure.

Internal Career Pathing

#HiringSuccess

Companies unanimously recognize the value of employees who have experience in more than one department, yet these high performers remain an anomaly rather than a matter of course. The abstract promise of great return on investment (ROI) in hiring, never seems to be enough to push internal mobility initiatives to the top of the to-do list. So we bring you the director of people for Native Instruments, Laura Moreno Salinas, and the Director and Program Lead Accelerate One HR at Coca-Cola European Partners, Sanam Moayedi-Stummer to demonstrate the success of their internal career pathing programs and help you get started on your own.

Recruiting Startup Awards

#Innovation

Step into the future of TA technology with our Recruiting Startup of the Year Competition, where the newest and most daring startups in HR pitch it out on our main stage. The winner will receive €9,000 in sponsorship and an article about them written by a leading TA influencer. The contest began July 1st, when these fledgling startups leveraged the strength of their social network to be voted into the top five, who will now convince the expert panel at Hiring Success 18 they have what it takes.

Celebrate Hiring Success in the industrial glamour of Säälchen part of the famed nightclub Kater Blau with DJs, drinks, a visit from the circus, and a surprise musical performance.

To close out the first annual European Hiring Success Conference, SmartRecruiters invites you to network and unwind in Säälchen, part of the renowned Kater Blau nightclub. This exquisite space combines the ornate touches of art deco and the industrial allure of new Berlin with parquet floors, exposed brick, and a killer sound system. Embrace the vintage ambiance with a Vesper, while enjoying the du jour DJs of Berlin’s techno and house scenes, like Spoul, Wolf and Modest Crow.

In the same spirit of  #HIRE18 San Francisco’s Smarty Party, which took guests on a tour of California’s storied bay aboard the Hornblower – complete with a pass under the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset – guests at SmartX Closing Celebration will experience a night of authentic Berlin vibes as they dance to the beat of Europe’s definitive party destination.

[foogallery id=”37238″]

Mingle with speakers, attendees, and the who’s who of Berlin’s burgeoning tech scene. Be astounded by a spectacular acrobatic performance that defies the limits of the human body. Then be ready to boogie with a set from Marching Band, a ten-piece, brass group that reimagines pop favorites in swinging jazz style.

But be sure to save some energy for the surprise musical performance that will end this party with a bang. Doors open at 21:00 with R&B essentials from DJ Hessam, and don’t close until 5:00 in the morning. See you there!

*Conference attendees are automatically on the list, but if you are hoping to attend without a conference ticket register here while there’s still room!

What started as a misadventure to grandma’s house turned into the car-sharing app that’s taken over the EU. Frédéric Mazzella tells us how he did it.

Have you ever looked beside you on the highway and noticed another lone driver and thought, “What a waste?” That’s what happened to Frédéric Mazzella while riding with his sister, and it happened again and again, as car after car whizzed by with no passengers, and those countless unfilled seats began to haunt him.

So this three-time Masters holder and researcher for NASA put his mind behind the issue of how to put those untapped vacancies to work. The result? BlaBlaCar, the ride-sharing app that goes beyond city jaunts to take, otherwise carless urbanites, to the farthest reaches of the sprawling countryside, and the EU is smitten. The company has expanded to 22 markets and 60 million people in its 12-year lifespan with no sign of slowing down – unless it’s to pick up another passenger.

We sit down – stationarily – with Founder and President Mazella to discuss how he got to where is today, and what advice he has for growing companies.

(Catch Freddy at Hiring Success 18 September 19-20th in Berlin!)

The idea for your company came with a bit of a eureka moment, didn’t it?

The idea dates back to Christmas 2003, when I wanted to get home to my family in the French countryside. I had no car and the trains were full. As a last resort, my sister made a detour to pick me up. When driving down on the highway, I noticed that the roads were full of mostly empty cars. That was my eureka moment: I realized that there were millions of available seats, except they weren’t in trains, they were in cars. If only we could match drivers with passengers heading the same way! From that moment onwards I have been on a mission to build a people-powered transport solution, where drivers can offer their empty seats and passengers share the cost of the ride.

How many people does your company employ now? How long did it take to reach this size and what are your future growth plans?

We are 350 globally today, serving 22 markets. We used to double the hiring figures each year, and we are still hiring, but as of now, we’re concentrating both on key market growth and tech talents.

How have your hiring needs changed over the years?

Talent acquisition is key to our growth, especially in the scale-up phase where we needed to hire the best people, and fast, to reach a sustainable growth and expand our business. We are now hiring for more senior profiles, whether in terms of management or on key specialties (market, technology, etc…)

What were the first positions you needed to fill? Which ones were the easiest/most difficult?

As we were building our marketplace, we needed tech/developers, but also marketing and communications talents. Today, tech talents remain the most difficult ones to hire as they are scarce, and we see a global talent war.

How important should hiring be to a CEO?

In the early years, convincing complementary talents to join the adventure and help you turn the vision into reality is key. A huge amount of my energy went into finding the right co-Founders, and bringing great talent onboard. Second, as your company grows, you also want to retain a strong culture to go in the right direction, and keep everyone motivated with a strong sense of purpose.

What would be your advice to your younger self-starting the company?

Find strong business partners with skills complementary to yours, as you can’t be great at everything. Hire people better than you in their area of expertise, and when hiring, never compromise on culture for skill.

After a decade in the industry, SmartRecruiters’ Head of People, Sarah Wilson, shares why she still never misses a conference.

Sometimes I walk away from an event and think, “That was pretty good, I am glad I went,” and sometimes I skip out of the room thinking, “Holy shit I love my industry!” Our Toronto Hiring Success breakfast definitely fell into the “holy shit” camp. It was an early morning, a time of day that pairs poorly with jet lag and Toronto humidity. The struggle was real getting out of bed. Though the hotel was moments away from the venue, by the time I reached the slightly muggy room, I was already thinking, “This is going to be a long one.”

“HR is the coolest job, you get to impact everyone in the company.” Sarah Wilson @SmartRecruiters #RecruitingAutomation pic.twitter.com/ObMc8rKgmu

— RAS (@RAS_SF) June 14, 2018

Moments later, a few of my favorite Torontonians walked in – equally blurry-eyed – and that amazing thing happened when you remember why you love something. HR has always been about the people for me. The people we serve, but also our peers, our exhausted fellow practitioners who can make an early morning conference session fly by with insight and enthusiasm, and I wanted to share some of the top takeaways that sent me back to San Francisco still skipping, even after 10 years of doing this whole HR thing – and in ascending order:

5. Think of marketing and recruiting like peanut butter and jelly.

We’ve been talking about Marketing and Recruiting intersecting for several years, but now it’s really happening. The consensus from the room was that marketing (for now anyway) belongs inside the Talent function (ask us again in a year or two and see whether we change our minds), but we have a lot to learn from our marketing counterparts. At the top of the list is how to be data driven when we think about reach, response, and investment. The key to having a business case for marketing spend is built upon solid data. If you aren’t sure how to do that, don’t be shy about asking your friends in marketing.

4. Just tell the truth.

Not every candidate is going to get hired. In reality, 99 percent of the candidates you meet may never work for your company.  What’s important to them is that you keep them in the loop. Let them know if you aren’t going to hire them – gently of course – because all they really want is the truth from you. One of our panelists talked about rejecting a candidate over the phone because there wasn’t an open opportunity, but offering to chat casually with a few colleagues so the candidate would be top-of-mind when a position comes up. Taking accountability:   Making the candidate feel special:

3. Help hiring managers more.

Listen to their needs, learn from them, and lend them your expertise so they can pick the best candidates.

2. Never feel alone!

Every story prompted a chorus of nods. When we opened to questions from the floor, there was continuity in the flow of ideas. My a-ha moment that morning wasn’t so much a tactic I could take away and implement tomorrow,  it was that I felt a sense of community. Which leads me to my final takeaway…

1. Get together more often.

Talent Acquisition is a team sport. It’s an industry that gets better by sharing. Yes, the war for talent is real, but that doesn’t mean we can’t work together to win it for the industry as a whole. Of course we are a competitive bunch, but we are also a group of “people people” who gather energy from everyone around us. The people I meet at conferences inspire me, and push me to be better – and I know I can do the same for them. Who’s with me?

Join SmartRecruiters for Hiring Success 18: European Edition, being hosted September 19-20th in Berlin!

SmartRecruiters’ first European Hiring Success Conference calls on the fresh voices of the EU, UK, US, and beyond to recast the TA conversation.

At its core, recruiting is about community building that powers business success. Hiring Success 18 Europe, coming September 19-20 in Berlin, Germany, brings together experts of varied disciplines, from TA gurus, political advisors, to tech savants. The one thing they all have in common? An uncanny ability to lead.

Whether it’s inspiring an organization to redefine talent, or challenging your team to become fluent in social media, the speakers at Hiring Success 18 know how to achieve business goals through inspirational people strategy that gets everyone on the same page.

Today we introduce just a few of the innovators in our exceptional line-up. Make sure to check out our conference agenda here and register now for best prices for you and your team.

Dr. Franziska Leonhardt

Dr. Franziska Leonhardt is an executive legal consultant for high-profile corporations and private equity firms in Germany. She first made an impact in Berlin’s startup scene as part of the management team of Rocket Internet SE, where she helped structure the company’s international business portfolio and IPO in 2014. Dr. Leonhardt currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer of kloeckner.i, the web platform for the steel and metal industry giant Klöckner&Co SE, where she oversees company growth strategies in the digital space.

Diana Kinnert

CEO, equal-rights activist, political advisor to the Chancellor, published author. She’s not even 30 yet.

Matt Alder

Since 1999, any company ready for the digital transformation has turned to Matt Alder to lead the charge. This digital strategist and author has already redefined “exceptional talent” in his eponymous first book and now he’s ready to show us how you can make your own best practice.

Frédéric Mazzella

Car-hailing and -sharing services are now normal in most cities. But when your ailing grandmother sends for you from her country house at the end of a muddy lane 60 miles away from your favorite Starbucks, what do you do? Paving the next lane in car apps, Mazzella founded BlaBlaCar to handle the kind of long-distance carpooling that will have you dipping biscuits into granny’s tea in no time, and leave you enough money for your next week of lattes to boot.

James Purvis

Heading a Human Resources department at a paper factory is one thing. James Purvis has the responsibility of choosing between the smartest people on Earth for the most prestigious job postings in modern science, at CERN. After almost 30 years of career growth within the organization, he may, by now, even be able to explain to you what the Hadron Collider does.

Jenny Elisabeth Jung

Jenny Jung attended her first peer coaching program in 2017, and was so inspired by it that she launched MindTheLeader, a leadership training and peer-coaching service for startup leaders and entrepreneurs. Firmly rooted in the Berlin startup environment, Jung was previously the VP of Operations at EyeEM, a premier photography community and sharing platform, as well as the COO of Factory, a tech startup campus that hosts SoundCloud, Twitter, and Zendesk. Leveraging her wealth of experience in the startup space, Jung mentors up-and-coming leaders on company organizational health, business operations, and people ops.

Kasia Borowicz

This sourcer, trainer, and lifelong learner helps recruiters get the hang of the social aspect of social media to build real relationships with candidates. Kasia knows how to create communities around professional passion, and she’s ready to make you part of hers!

Adam Kostyál

From his Stockholm office at the top of Europe, Nasdaq’s Adam Kostyal oversees the comings and goings of tech firms across European markets. A professional watcher of startups, an obsessive once he sniffs the possibility of hypergrowth, there is no one better be able to read what’s coming on the far side of an IPO, or when betting on the outcome though investment will pay off.

No one is unfamiliar with the brand, but the company’s mechanics are new to most. And in many ways, the sports giant’s recruiting function is already operating in the future.

When it comes to hiring, Adidas is all about the future. Their former HR Head even had Futures in his job title. And wrangling 60,000 employees at one of the most recognizable brands on Earth takes some forward thinking. For Steve Fogarty, processing tomorrow’s best employees isn’t so much about fitting a person into a job title, but getting a new hire out of their comfort zone, oftentimes even out of their daily physical environment, to see where their untethered imagination might take them.

“We have 170 locations globally, and move people over the world,” said Fogarty. “There’s never a meeting at Adidas where you’re not speaking with people from five countries.”

What’s clear is that Adidas, and Fogarty himself, are in the business of storytelling, which for a company as successful as this German-founded multinational, is more akin to mythmaking. (Maybe that’s why Fogarty inserted the word “archetype” into so many of his sentences.) Let’s face it, when you’re talking about giving more creative design control to Kanye West and Pharrell Williams, it’s not about those three-striped pre-war soccer cleats anymore. And this evolution is essential to the company’s work culture.

“In the 50s,” said Fogarty, “people talked about jobs. In the 90s it was ‘careers’, and today we talk about purpose. This is front and center with our employer brand strategy.”

And as an increasing number of firms tilt towards that way of seeing – purpose with a capital P being inextricable with things like equality and diversity – the bigger players like Adidas can be even more creative in how these ideas are mainstreamed into corporate culture.

“For us,” explained Fogarty, “diversity goes beyond being just an initiative. We know it’s our secret sauce for creativity, and to be relevant and fast, you can’t have a few guys sitting in a room in Germany making decisions. We need to look like our consumers” – he does – “and make decisions that are relevant to them.”

Chances are, a summary of Adidas’ campaigns that have gone beyond core footwear products is not necessary here – there’s YouTube for that – but for all the lip-service companies pay to social awareness, the foundation eponymously named after company founder Adi Dassler, among other sports-led initiatives around the world, collects plastic waste from the ocean and molds them into shiny new sports shoes. “Actually,” notes Fogarty, “I should have worn them today.”

Hard to tell if that was an honest slip or an anecdotal flourish, but what Fogarty understands is that it’s all about the story, which makes sense, speaking not only to a gaggle of recruiters, but to our species, dubbed by author Jonathan Gottschall as “the storytelling animal”. Stories are what only we humans do (probably. At least with tongue-to-palate enunciation). And “storytelling,” explains Fogarty, “is not just the story, but how it’s framed, and even in setting up our employer brand, the story is always told in the context of the future.”

Everyone knows Adidas the sports brand as it presents itself from the outside, but given Fogarty’s insights to the internal mechanics of Adidas — the corporate ship with a Borgesian number of cogs — the main takeaway here was that far from being a binary, antiquated slog, there’s plenty of room for creativity in this hiring racket. Adidas’ ad projection of innovation seems to align fairly well with actual functionality. That’s something to shoot for. And given the technological advances we’ve all been talking about for the last year or more, making hiring more fair and unbiased, hiring more creatively is the way things are going, fast, so better get on board. If you don’t, if nothing else, you might miss out on a really good story.

After months of prep, sweat and anticipation, day one of Hiring Success 18 had arrived, and the big boss was front and center to lay out what to expect during those seam-bursting couple of conference days in San Francisco Bay.

To kick off SmartRecruiters’ annual Hiring Success conference, CEO Jerome Ternynck took the stage promptly at 9am. Lights flitting, lasers beaming, his ear-held slim-fit mic broadcasted greetings to the attendees packed into the Hyatt Regency ballroom.

“We have 1000 people here,” his voice reverberated throughout the hall, “representing over 400 organizations from all over the world.”

And that kind of representation, these days, in this industry, if it’s not the new normal it may at least be the new local. Far from being SmartRecruiters-only, the speakers who addressed the latest in HR Tech represented firms from as far off as Europe and Asia Pacific, and as nearby but underexposed as, yes, Utah. As HR Tech becomes more sophisticated by the day, so does the community become truly global, as evidenced by the diverse crowds at conferences like Hiring Success.

“All you recruiters, TA leaders, Innovators, system owners, optimizers;” Ternynck listed, “all of you who’ve dedicated your career to helping companies find talent, to help people find jobs: this is your Hiring Success.”

The opening keynote, given a stone’s throw from SmartRecruiters’ San Francisco headquarters, ushered in not only a roster of essential industry insiders from Adidas, IKEA, Visa and Bosch, but breakout sessions for the latest breed of innovators, a hackathon for the wiliest app-geeks – who competed head-to-head for a full 24 hours – and to support the next generation of innovators, the Recruiting Startup of the Year competition, which saw Honeypot.io best all competitors.

SmartRecruiters also launched its own new features, including SmartStart, which allows small businesses to access to a free version of the platform, on-demand analytics so customers can get the figures they need whenever they want them. Then there’s SmartJobs, which will target job ads to assure the right job posts are going to the right websites; SmartCRM, a fully integrated application which allows you to source and nurture passive talent; and, most importantly, the industry’s first AI-powered Recruiting Assistant, which is poised to change the way companies hire forever, by screening candidates automatically, while reducing human bias and encouraging diversity. This is a fully native AI solution, a first for the industry, which by saving an estimated 30 percent of recruiters’ time, will make recruiting more human again.

All this boils down to the premise that brought everyone together, from thousands of miles apart, for two days: that hiring is the frontline of business success, and the more companies understand that, the better things will be for everyone.

“Who you hire defines your company more than any other activity,” stresses Ternynck. “It defines your outcomes as well as your culture. It defines your success as well as your failures. Who you hire defines you as a leader.”

We talk RPOs at Hiring Success 18 with Tim Oliver Pröhm of KellyOCG  and Kristen Graham of VideoMyJob – How can they help you navigate the HR tech market and do they actually save you money?  

Don’t lose momentum after the excitement of Hiring Success 18! Keep learning and stay inspired with the best reads from the conference.

Everyone knows the deflated feeling of arriving home after a whirlwind of activity and excitement, but as you drop your bags by the door, don’t drop the ball when it comes to Hire18 takeaways for better hiring this year.

To help you stay the course, we’ve compiled a list of top reads authored or recommended by the very same speakers who galvanised you with their stories just two weeks ago. Whether you want to improve your communication skills, build your employer brand, or instil an atmosphere of workplace creativity, we’ve got you covered with the following titles:

A Second Chance

Read more about Defy Ventures through the lens of its founder, Catherine Hoke.  The non-profit, founded in 2010, seeks to transform the lives of formerly incarcerated people through employment training and opportunities. This groundbreaking narrative was introduced at Hiring Success 18 by Bay Area executive director Veronica Ensign, in her session, A Second Chance. Share in Catherine’s heartfelt vision, be inspired by her story, and pay it forward.

Thinking Fast and Slow

This must-read for, well, pretty much any business person, will teach you how to master that bit of intuition we call the gut feeling. Packed with digestible, intuitive takeaways from the Nobel prize-winning psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, this book applies specifically to recruiters, because it speaks precisely to that part of ourselves we trust innately, while at the same time also need to keep in check, lest we fall into the patterns of unconscious-bias. Read it fast or read it slow, but definitely read it.

Creativity, Inc.  

Pixar-president Ed Catmull provides the ultimate inspiration guide for employees, and reveals the hidden forces that block creative atmospheres. This book comes with a stamp of approval from Steve Fogarty, senior director of talent futures for Adidas, who stole the Day-Two mainstage at Hiring Success 18 with his patented behind-the-brand insights.

Crucial Conversations – Tools for Talking when the Stakes are High

This communication manual by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillian, and Al Switzler, prepares the reader to speak effectively in those crucial make-or-break moments. TA professionals know these moments all too well, and can relate to the real-world examples of emotionally charged situations that the book lays out to illustrate its methods.

The New Rules of Work: The Modern Playbook for Navigating Your Career

Kathryn Minshew, CEO and Founder of The Muse website brought her insight into employer branding to her Hire18 session, Candidate Experience and Scaling Your Brand, and now you can absorb her insights gleaned from the flipside of candidate experience. Delve into the world of millennial workers and learn what’s important to the generation that now – shudder – claims the majority of the world’s workforce.

Hire with your head: Using Performance-Based Hiring to Build Great Teams

Lou Adler joined Hiring Success on the main stage for an in-depth explanation of how to predict the quality of hire, before you make an offer. Hire with Your Head lets the reader explore the industry Yoda’s strategy for hiring great people with a nuts and bolts approach that shows his deep understanding of the recruiting business. After all, he’s been in it for 40 years. 

A Mind at Home with Itself

Byron Katie brought her renowned techniques for mindfulness to her Hire18 session, Break Free of Unquestioned Beliefs.  If that workshop inspired you (or you missed it) this book is a great introduction to and unpacking of the beliefs that launched this life coach and author into the firmament of the self-improvement set. 

RIP Resume: Job Search and Interview Power Prep

Torin Ellis, human-capital strategist for over 17 years and the host of the Power of Diversity Panel at Hiring Success 18, puts the candidate in control of their employment search with real-world examples both applicants and recruiters can learn from, making the job hunt more productive for all parties.

Hiring Success Fundamentals: How to Win in the Talent Economy

SmartRecruiters shows the reader how to evaluate their hiring practices and bring metrics to the c-suite, making your hiring function sustainable well into the future. Don’t think short term, give your company the competitive advantage with a powerful TA practice.

Employer Branding for Dummies

Lars Schmidt, founder of the boutique HR firm Amplify, talked tech implementation during his session, Big Bang VS Phased Approach, but the subject nearest and dearest to his heart is employer branding – he even wrote the book on it. When it comes to employer branding most of us are actual dummies so start at the beginning and build your understanding brick by brick. The foundation is the most important part!