The biggest Hiring Success conference to date continues to drive engaging content alongside top-tier networking with over 1,200 talent acquisition (TA) leaders.

Are you a compliance wonk? A D&I devotee? An HR buff? Or, an HRIT connoisseur? Do you live recruitment, breathe TA, and are always thinking ‘what’s the next level for the industry?’ If so, get ready, because we are ready to nerd out with you at the fourth annual Hiring Success Conference, February 26-27 in San Francisco!

SmartRecruiters returns, once again, to San Francisco’s storied bay for Hiring Success 19, where TA leaders from around the globe will come together for two days of interactive sessions, the latest recruiting tech innovation, and top-tier networking that will define the future of recruiting.

Register now until January 18 for last chance on early bird pricing!

With 50 sessions, 100 speakers, and over 1,200 attendees #HIRE19 will be our largest event to date.

Participants can look forward to the scenic views at  Pier 27 that overlook the San Francisco Bay, where floor to ceiling windows and contemporary design gives a refreshing indoor-outdoor experience that will promote presence throughout the marathon of learning that is #HIRE19.

Recruiters on the front lines of today’s talent scarcity know firsthand how digitization is pushing everyone – from candidates to employees – to constantly sharpen their skills and stay abreast of the latest innovations. Hiring Success 19 helps practitioners do just that. TA practitioners share their experiences, learn from industry leaders, and workshop challenges with their peers.

Hear from practitioners like Sam Sepah, Organization Development Program Manager at Google, Anita Grantham, Chief People Officer at Pluralsight, Tara Strebe, Senior Director Global Talent Acquisition at Visa, alongside industry thought leaders like Lou Adler and Bill Boorman.

Three tracks help you create your own learning adventure. Mix and match to meet our expert content at your point of need. (full agenda to be announced shortly!)

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

• 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.

Two fan favorites return this year: Hiring Success Hackathon and Recruiting Startup Awards.

Hiring Success Hackathon Grand Prize: $5,000

This year we are excited to announce our second annual Hiring Success Hackathon. Teams will challenge themselves to build innovative features on top of the SmartRecruiters talent acquisition suite in just 24 hours. Inspired by our commitment to innovation and usability, we invite developers to join us in testing the limits of our Public API – and their own creativity.

All are welcome to apply! Submit your idea and list of participants to hackathon_team@smartrecruiters.com by January 15.

Recruiting Startup Awards Grand Prize: Gold Sponsorship for #HIRE20

Over 100 recruiting startups leverage the power of their networks to earn a spot as one of the final six teams who will pitch it out for the grand prize in front of our expert panel of judges and the entire #HIRE19 conference. Vote here to decide who makes it to the final round!  

See the latest recruiting tech, from AI job boards, and in-depth analysis tools to chatbots with big-personality and even bigger functionality. Be amongst the vanguard when it comes to TA innovation alongside the dreamers, makers, and entrepreneurs disrupting HR tech.

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Finally, networking: the exchange of ideas that only comes from being together with your peers (and heroes) in person. As much as we all value planning and strategy, there must always be room for the spark of spontaneity that happens when we unwind and digest all the learnings of the conference with other people who speak our TA language.

At #HIRE19 we leave space for you to make connections and follow up with presenters. Catch-up during one of the networking breaks, or meet during the Smarty Party while we all relax with food, drinks, and entertainment.

Be sure to follow us @smartrecruiters for agenda and speaker announcements.

Register now until January 18 for last chance on early bird pricing!

As Hiring Success 18 Europe fast approaches, we bring you the people who are disrupting Talent Acquisition with tough questions and thought-provoking commentary.

Whether it’s psychology, technology, social justice, or simply the bottom line – there is no singular path that leads a person to a life in TA. However, there is a common question: How can we make work better for everyone?

This inquiry is what drives the practitioners you will see at Hiring Success 18 EU in Berlin September 19th-20th, and it’s what drives us at SmartRecruiters to bring the HR and recruiting community together for two days of seminars, demos, and networking on the scenic banks of the river Spree.

“This is a new era for recruiting,” says SmartRecruiters CEO and founder Jerome Ternynck. “Businesses recognize that their Talent Acquisition function is the competitive edge they need to succeed. Hiring Success is here to bring practitioners out of their silos and connect them with the latest in technology, best practice, and strategy.”

So let’s meet some of the changemakers!

Bill Boorman – Tru Events

Recruiting’s “man in the hat,” Bill Boorman is the harbinger of new tech and the creator of recruiting’s merriest meetup, known as #TRU un-conferences. He’s hosted 100 events in 65 countries and five continents over the last 12 months. As he zigzags the map, he’s learning about the latest in grassroots TA – and he’s ready to share! Meet Bill on the Innovation track as he hosts Battle of the Bots, a live showdown of recruiting chatbots where the audience asks the questions.

To learn more about Bill and why he was dressed as Father Christmas the first time we met, click here!

Jeri Doris – Delivery Hero

From Silicon Valley to Berlin, Jeri Doris, Chief of People for Delivery Hero, is always thinking about company vibes, like what makes an organization a great place to work, or how can a great employee experience happen at scale? Jeri joins us on the Hiring Success track with the session What Hyper Growth Look Like. A rare peek into a business phenomenon that few people ever get to experience, this TA vet will take us through the systems she used to stay on top of the company’s exponential expansion without sacrificing quality or culture.

Noor van Boven – N26

With 15 years of international HumanResources experience, Noor van Boven focuses on building, scaling and transforming companies into successful enterprises. Noor is the Chief People Officer at N26, where she is responsible for building the organization while maintaining a high employee experience and guiding the company through hyper-growth in a healthy way. Her session, What Hyper Growth Looks Like, will explore the instigators for exponential growth, and address key rules and processes needed to scale operations.

Before joining N26, Noor was the VP People at SoundCloud and led the Recruiting, Talent, and Organizational Development initiatives at TomTom worldwide. Her passion for travel, coupled with work opportunities from respected international employers, has allowed Noor to live across the globe, including New York, India, and Germany.

Joanne Lockwood – SEE Change Happen

In 2016 Joanne embarked on her personal rebrand, which included selling her IT services company and transitioning to her true gender identity. In the wake of this decision, she discovered the hidden obstacles that many trans candidates face when they search for the right employment opportunity.

In response to her experience as an applicant, Joanne founded SEE Change Happen, a diversity and inclusion practice specializing in supporting Transgender inclusion to businesses and other organizations. She joins us for the Inclusion track for the session A Path to Gender Parity, a candidate discussion of the subtle obstacles that undermine women in the workplace.

Hilary Klassen – Career Ari

As an HR leader with a decade of experience, Hilary Klassen, the founder of Career Ari, was constantly approached for career advice. So often, in fact, that it became a pattern. Klassen realized that even successful employees at companies that provide career counseling wanted a personal and professional opinion from a third party. “There has to be a way to scale this,” she thought, and that’s how the idea for the first-ever automated career brand coach came to be.  

Hillary joins us on the Hiring Success track for Internal Career Pathing, where she will discuss how to make lateral and upward mobility a frequent occurrence in your business.

Sergej Zimpel – ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE

To Sergej Zimpel, Senior Recruiter for ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE and Co-Founder of the HR organization Purple Squirrel Society, buzzwords like “candidate experience” actually mean something. A psychologist by schooling, the ever-evolving world of HR will never cease to fascinate this TA practitioner. Sergej will join us on the Inclusion track for a deep dive into The Art of Community Building, and a step by step guide of how.

Manjuri Sinha – Zalando

Manjuri Sinha leads the technology talent acquisition team for Europe’s ecommerce giant, Zalando. Prior to this, she was lead HR business partner for technology at Accenture. In addition to her professional career, she is also a speaker, mentor, and blogger. For her session at Hiring Success, Manjuri will speak about how to fix problems within organizations “in the battlefield”, offering practical advice on course correction that is invaluable to even the most veteran recruiters.

Chris Raw – Zalando

As candidate experience and innovation lead for one of the fastest growing ecommerce sites in Europe, Chris has helped Zalando through a hypergrowth of hiring in the past three years. His whirlwind tenure at Zalando has forced him to get creative, moving faster than the fashion cycle to get the right talent on board at the right time. This recruiter comes on board for the Innovation track to talk Course Correction in the Battlefield.

Juliane Stiller – Humboldt University

As an informational scientist for Humboldt University in Berlin, Juliane Stiller is in the business of finding, assessing, and applying critical information to the education and work industries. In essence, she looks at how we can take what we know and apply it to real-world scenarios to get a better result. In this case, Julie helps us take on the scenario Have You Hired a Refugee in the conference’s Inclusion track so all recruiters and TA leaders can learn how to help support this rich source of talent.

Robindro Ullah –  Deutsche Bahn Fernverkehr AG

Robindro broke into the Human Resources field in 2005 as a trainee at Deutsche Bahn Fernverkehr AG. Over the next few years he pushed for more social media coverage of talent acquisition at DB, which brought his passion for HR Marketing and Recruiting into focus. Most recently, he served as Head of Employer Branding and HR Communication at VOITH GmbH and oversaw global recruitment. Robindro rounds out his professional profile as an author, blogger, and speaker in the German HR scene. His session talk will look at creative ways to combine recruiting strategies with marketing and social media best practices to amplify TA efforts.

Natalie Mellin – Mellin Consulting

Strategic and hands-on. That’s how we would describe Natalie Mellin, a globetrotting diversity and inclusion specialist, and founder of Mellin Consulting, a consultancy that advises global companies how to convert well wishes to real programs. Behavioral economy is her game, and if you are fuzzy on what that means then your attendance at the Path to Gender Parity session is mandatory. As part of our Inclusion track, this panel will delve into femme experiences of the workplace in the wake of movements like #metoo.

Tracey Allison – Avery Dennison Co

Tracey Allison began her career in recruitment in 1990, and has built a reputation as an HR leader throughout the EMEA region and beyond. She is the Director of Global Talent at Avery Dennison Corporation, where she oversees Talent Acquisition teams covering all of EMEA, as well as head up the leadership program for the largest business division of Avery Dennison. Prior to joining Avery Dennison, Tracey worked at major tech and telecom firms, including Microsoft and Vodafone.

Tracey’s session will focus on the fundamental skills that elevate recruiters to “rock star” level, and share insights that only a Hiring Success veteran and a self-made, global TA leader with decades of experience can offer.

For a lean recruiting team to find the most entrepreneurial engineers in the US, only the slickest TA suite will do.  

Olsson Associates is in the business of civil engineering, both consulting and design, for multidisciplinary public and private infrastructure projects. What makes Olsson different is that it’s employee-owned, which means workers are more invested and the stakes are higher. So when Mandy Wehner, the company’s HR specialist, started shopping around for a new TA Suite, it didn’t take long to find, and ultimately choose, SmartRecruiters.

Thanks for chatting with us today, Mandy. Can you give us a brief history of the company?

Olsson Associates was founded in 1956 by John E Olsson, an East-coaster who decided to attend the University of Nebraska – Lincoln for engineering. Our headquarters are in Lincoln, and we have around 1,100 employees in eight states, and over 25 offices.

When did you join, and what attracted you to Olsson?

I became a part of the Olsson family in March 2015. What attracted me the most was how the organization fostered entrepreneurial thoughts, innovation, and encouraged employees to come to the table with new ways to solve problems. I love waking up every day knowing I get to make decisions, take ownership of my actions, and bring in new ideas to drive Olsson forward.

How did you find the hiring set-up when you arrived?

When I started at Olsson, the hiring was a bit different. In 2015, we had maybe 50 positions open at any given time. Since late 2016, we’ve had 90+ open positions to fill continually, and I don’t anticipate that slowing down at all. Our Human Resource team is starting to have some employees specialize in recruiting, so they’re really taking the lead in the ATS, knowing it inside-out and able to take the reins on the candidate experience.  

What were your biggest challenges, and victories, as you settled in and got things going?

Some of our challenges were being creative in trying to fill some challenging positions, creating talent pipelines, and building recruiting plans. Victories would include implementing a new ATS to help us become more efficient at our jobs, and more efficient with recruiting. We’ve been able to maintain better contact with candidates, and thus make their candidate experience enjoyable, with SmartRecruiters.    

How long was it before SmartRecruiters came into the picture?

We’d used a couple of ATS vendors before transitioning. We are still fairly new to SmartRecruiters, only having implemented the system in late September 2017.  

Was there a eureka moment that made the transition to SmartRecruiters a reality?

As we continued to grow, we realized we needed to upgrade our ATS to a system from which we could send emails, offer letters, and other documentation. Our old system just didn’t have that functionality. Our HR team is lean, and they were working too much outside the ATS, and it was taking too much time to complete tasks.

Did you know exactly what you needed to, or did SmartRecruiters come as one option of many?

We knew that we needed a new ATS, that was not a question. I had been doing a lot of research and SmartRecruiters actually was never on my list. It wasn’t until we were looking into onboarding systems (Clickboarding) that SmartRecruiters was mentioned, and when I looked into it, I was interested immediately.

What made you go with SmartRecruiters in the end?

Our HR group enjoyed the demo, because it was personalized for us. We felt the sales team really took the time to use our logo, and personalize the presentation to include our values, mission, etc. The functionality was top-notch compared to what we had before, and we felt SmartRecruiters would go the extra step to be a great vendor and to really work with us to get the most hiring success out of the ATS.

How long did it take to implement, and when was that?

We signed the contract to implement in July 2017, and we were up and running the end of that September. It was a very quick turnaround time for us, so we were really proud of the quick progress we made. The hardest part was getting our data out of our old ATS, but implementing SmartRecruiters was pretty painless.

Did you find any ways to make the software work for you that you hadn’t anticipated?

We have found that SmartRecruiters has new functions we didn’t initially anticipate using, ones around which we continually evaluate whether or not we should change our process. We especially like that SmartRecruiters has regular rollouts of updates – we didn’t have that with our old ATS so that is very promising.

What is the biggest thing SmartRecruiters has allowed you to do that you couldn’t before?

SmartRecruiters has allowed us to take a look at integrating our background check and drug-screen companies into the system. We’ve been able to save time and energy by completing tasks within SmartRecruiters that we couldn’t with our old ATS. We love the functionality of the system and look forward to continued improvements.

Excited about the potential of blockchain recruiting? You should be. But now let’s get down to brass tacks and harsh truths.

Blockchain—the decentralized ledger technology behind Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies—is positioned to flip the recruiting industry on its head.

For the uninitiated, blockchain technology promises a new reality where companies can confirm the authenticity of a job applicant’s credentials without having to contact former employers or pay for background checks.

Candidate information stored on a blockchain is both verified by the peer-to-peer network and immune to tampering—a game-changer in a world where up to 85 percent of job applicant resumes contain false information.

In other words, blockchain recruiting promises a lot. The question now is: When will it deliver?

Not anytime soon, if Gartner research is any indication. According to “Predicts 2018: Top Predictions in Blockchain Business” (available to Gartner clients), only 10 percent of enterprise businesses will achieve radical transformation with the use of blockchain technologies through 2022.

In fact, blockchain recruiting will not become a small and midsize business tool until at least 2025, due to factors such as limited resources and a lag in technology awareness compared to their larger brethren.

These predictions aren’t meant to rain on the blockchain parade, and they’re not meant to dissuade you from acting. On the contrary, recruiters that stand idly by and wait for this disruptive technology to reach their doorstep will not be ready to adopt when it’s time.

Here are three key obstacles recruiters should pay attention to before implementing blockchain recruiting in their business, along with tips on how to prepare today for this disruptive technology.

Obstacle #1: Government Entities and Academic Institutions Are Lagging

Think of each ‘link’ in a person’s blockchain-powered job application as a single event in that person’s career. When a person gets a promotion, it’s verified by their employer and added to their blockchain. Performance review? Add it to their blockchain.

That’s the beauty of this technology for recruiters: It’s a single source for verified candidate information. The problem is that there are significant chunks of important candidate information that don’t come from employers.

Take a candidate’s college degree(s) for example. Forward-thinkers like Australian University and MIT are currently experimenting with offering graduates digital diplomas powered by blockchain, but it will be a while before the rest of academia catches up:

Then there’s the government. From criminal records to social security numbers, recruiters still rely on government entities for background checks.

And, while the current administration is beginning to consider blockchain in the wake of the Equifax data leak, there are still more than a few regulatory roadblocks, between getting legislation passed and figuring out how to transfer old paper records, before identifiers such as birth certificates start going digital. Sadly, the United States isn’t as agile or forward-thinking as countries such as Estonia, which started adopting blockchain-powered ID cards for its citizens in 2002.

All that to say, it won’t matter how quickly the private sector jumps on the blockchain recruiting bandwagon if other important players in the hiring process lag behind. Until you can get the whole picture of a candidate through blockchain, you should wait to embrace this technology.

Obstacle #2: Legal and Security Concerns Still Exist

In theory, blockchain is an impenetrable record of data. Not only are all transactions on blockchain immutable and irreversible, but to be recorded in the first place, every computing device (or node) on a specific blockchain must agree to the transaction. Short of a nigh-impossible ’51 percent attack’ (where one party controls a majority of the nodes on a specific blockchain), any job candidate information on blockchain is hack-proof.

In practice, however, a number of costly incidents have proven that blockchain isn’t foolproof yet:

• In July 2017, a hacker exploited a flaw in the Ethereum blockchain network and made off with $31 million.
• In January 2018, the largest crypto hack in history on the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange, Coincheck, resulted in a loss of $534 million.
• That nigh-impossible 51 percent attack? It already happened.

Compounding these security concerns are legal ones. What if candidate data logged on a blockchain is incorrect or infringes on someone’s rights? The irreversible nature of blockchain means courts can’t just go in and change the record. Giving legal bodies a skeleton key would also negate one of the key benefits of blockchain: decentralization.

Questions over who has jurisdiction in international transactions are also largely unanswered. If a network in Spain approves a blockchain transaction in the U.S., is it subject to GDPR, the new E.U. data privacy law? Most experts agree blockchain technology and the new law are at odds.

With highly sensitive applicant data on the line, these issues should be addressed before you consider switching recruiting processes over to blockchain.

Obstacle #3: Blockchain Technology Is Expensive

One of the primary reasons businesses are excited about blockchain is the possibility of greatly reducing or even eliminating transaction costs. That’s the main sell for how blockchain recruiting will achieve a positive ROI in the long run: Instead of paying $20 to $30 per candidate for a third-party background check provider, recruiters pay a fraction of that amount to gain access to a candidate’s data themselves.

In order for the numbers with blockchain recruiting to work out positively though, initial costs need to come down. It doesn’t matter if it’s an application purchased through an outside vendor or a proprietary tool built in-house. Simply put, SMBs don’t have the budget for blockchain implementations in their current state, when you consider these three sources of high cost:

3 High Costs Associated With Blockchain Applications

• Finding blockchain talent. Blockchain application developers are rare and expensive, demanding at least $150,000 a year.
• Powering blockchain transactions. Blockchain transactions require a ton of computational power to take place. Cryptocurrency miners currently face high costs largely because of this need.
• Storing blockchain data. Remember, blockchain transactions don’t disappear. As more and more candidate data is added onto a blockchain—even one with a ton of nodes that share the burden of storage—costs will soar.

As a result, 80 percent of blockchain applications done at the enterprise level through 2020 in an attempt to save money will fail to do so, according to Gartner’s Predicts 2018. In order for blockchain recruiting to become feasible for everyone, costs related to the creation and maintenance of these platforms need to fall dramatically.

How You Can Prepare for Blockchain Recruiting Today

Yes, it’ll be a while before blockchain recruiting becomes a tangible reality for your average business. That being said, here are steps you can take right now to prepare for blockchain recruiting:

• Learn more about what blockchain is, and what it isn’t. When companies can simply add the word “blockchain” to their name and see their stock price skyrocket, it’s safe to say there will be more than a handful of software vendors that claim to leverage the technology, but really don’t. Seek out resources and learn more about blockchain to avoid being duped: Gartner is a great source on this topic; so is MIT Technology Review.
• Find alternative solutions in the interim. Here’s an interesting stat: According to Gartner’s “Blockchain Primer for 2018” (available to Gartner clients), 85 percent of projects this year that have “blockchain” in their title will deliver business value without actually using a blockchain. These projects jump-started by the desire to implement blockchain will ultimately arrive at alternative solutions. Instead of waiting around for blockchain to come to fruition, consider a different approach to improve recruiting processes (e.g., switching background check providers).
• Talk to software vendors about their plans for blockchain. Talk with your recruiting software vendor to learn about their plans for blockchain implementations or partnering with other blockchain applications. Oh, and if you don’t have recruiting software, fix that. It’ll improve your organization today and suitably prepare it for the tech of tomorrow.

Want to learn more about how software and technology can improve recruiting processes and hiring outcomes? Check out more helpful articles on Software Advice.