Historically we’ve tracked and measured hundreds of metrics in our customers’ hiring activities inside the SmartRecruiters platform. This year, we have distilled that number down to 15 metrics that have the highest correlation with the health and performance of talent acquisition organizations as witnessed by our previous analysis. 

These metrics reflect our customers’ hiring performance in 5 important categories: Hiring Team Engagement, Recruiting Team Performance, Candidate Experience Management, and Company Internal Engagement.

Additionally, we have focused on metrics that are least impacted by variables such as company size, industry, type of roles typically hired, size of hiring teams, etc. 1) For each award, we use a combination of 3+ metrics that measure different aspects to support the selection. 2) We normalize the metrics with interfering variables to prevent favoring any particular type or company size.  

The winners will be selected from customers with the best performance across those metrics from Jan 1, 2019, to Dec 31, 2019. 

Most Compelling Candidate Experience Award

Candidates say the No.1 frustration during the overall job search is the lack of response from employers. The Candidate Experience Award applauds employers who take the time to continuously communicate status updates to their candidates at all stages in the hiring process. The award measures three factors: the response rate to all applicants, the response rate to interviewed and rejected candidates, and the speed of the first response. 

Most Productive Recruiting Team Award

A recruiting team’s success requires a combination of timely hires and systematic pipeline management. Successful recruiting teams make more hires on time and manage their candidate pipelines with intention. The Recruiting Team Award measures three important aspects of recruiters: their ability to fulfill the companies’ hiring needs, their efficiency, and their management of the candidate pipeline. 

Most Collaborative Hiring Team Award

Hiring the best talent takes a tremendous amount of teamwork. The Hiring Team Award recognizes a highly structured, efficient, and collaborative hiring team. The award measures three important factors: the level of involvement from hiring team members, the robustness of the hiring process, and the efficiency of individual interviewers.  

Most Active Company Award

Achieving hiring success takes more than the hard work from talent acquisition practitioners. The Company Award is measured by three important factors that gauge company-wide involvement with recruiting: how successfully employees are engaging with internal opportunities, the relative size of active user base, and the product usage level and user feedback in helping us build a better product.  

And without further ado the winners for 2019!

Most Compelling Candidate Experience

1. Equinox

Equinox prides itself on being the best of the best when it comes to high-quality fitness clubs. With such a top tier customer experience, Equinox needed a way to create the same experience of excellence when it came to candidate experience. Equinox uses a decentralized system for recruitment in which local branch managers conduct their own hiring based on their requirements. This approach utilizes around 20 full-time recruiters supported by over 300 local hiring managers who also often carry out many other Equinox activities on a day-to-day basis. SmartRecruiters decentralized systems to enable Equinox to increase speed and communication between hiring teams and candidates. 

2. Home Instead 
3. Devoteam
4. Wipro Digital 
5. RLH Corp 
6. Colliers International
7. Uncommon Schools
8. Dungarvin
9. International SOS
10. Allstate

Most Productive Recruiting Team

1. Public Storage

Public storage knows how important a productive recruiting team is to business success. With over 2,000 locations public storage needs to move quickly in order to meet the high growth demands of the company. Nathan Tan Head of Talent Acquisition & Workforce Analytics at Public Storage notes how velocity and cost metrics allow you to analyze whether the hiring processes in place are efficient and effective and adapt accordingly.

2. The Nature’s Bounty   
3. WAREMA
4. Evolution Gaming 
5. Uplift Education
6. Arkadin  
7. BlueScope
8. Uncommon Schools
9. Leidos
10. Abercrombie and Fitch Co.

Most Collaborative Hiring Team

1. Astreya

Astreya understands the importance of hiring the right people and to get that done requires communication and collaboration across hiring teams. Priding itself on providing both its clients and employees with unwavering happiness, Astreya relies heavily on hiring collaboration in order to assure a robust and fast-moving hiring process. 

2. Marc Jacobs 
3. BlueScope
4. Education Development Center 
5. Numberly 
6. City of Philadelphia 
7. Play Octopus
8. Jack Link’s Protein Snacks
9. Broadridge
10. Merkle Inc.

Most Active Company

1. Visa 

 With over 19,000 employees in 2019, it’s no surprise that Visa deals with a massive volume of candidates. SmartRecruiters ATS allows them increased engagement and collaboration across the board. With a high rate of user adoption at Visa, hiring teams have been able to achieve fast turnaround rates that increases the offer acceptance rate.

2. Biogen 
3. IKEA 
4. BlueScope
5. Square
6. FireEye
7. Mitie
8. American Iron and Metal
9. The Warehouse Group
10. Expeditors

The Methodology for Hiring Success 20 Awards is as follows. 

Methodology Used to Determine the Winners:

1) Most Collaborative Hiring Team Award

Metric 1 |Percentage of Jobs With at Least 1 Assigned Interviewer

Why: This metric reflects how structured the interview process is.

Metric 2 | Average Time to Complete a Review 

Why: This metric reflects hiring managers’ efficiency at completing their tasks to move the hiring process along.  

Metric 3 | Average Number of Distinct Users Involved per Interviewed Application 

Why: This metric reflects the hiring team’s level of involvement and the robustness of the hiring process. 

Metric 4| Percentage of Interviews With Ratings Submitted 

Why: This metric reflects hiring team’s participation at completing their tasks to move the hiring process along.  

2) Most Productive Recruiting Team Award

Metric 1 | Percentage of Candidates Moved out of New Stage 

Why: This metric reflects how well recruiters manage the candidate pipeline. 

Metric 2 | Completion Rate 

Why: This metric reflects the recruiters’ ability to fulfill the companies’ hiring needs. 

Metric 3 | Percentage of Positions Filled on Time

Why: This metric reflects both recruiters’ ability to hire and their efficiency (hiring on time). 

3) Most Compelling Candidate Experience Award

Metric 1 | Percentage of Applicants Who Receive a Response

Why: This metric reflects the experience of all applicants in terms of the company’s responsiveness. 

Metric 2 | Percentage of Rejected Candidates Who Receive Rejection Messages 

Why: This metric reflects the experience of candidates that do not move forward to be hired, but have at least one personal interaction with the company.  

Metric 3 | Average Time to Reply to a Candidate 

Why: This metric measures the experience of the candidates in terms of wait time. 

Metric 4 | Percentage of Candidates That Are Still in an Active Stage

Why: This metric measures the experience of the candidates in terms of closure and notification. 

Metric 5 | Percentage of Abandoned Candidates 

Why: This metric measures the experience of the candidates in terms of followup and closure. 

4) Most Active Company Award

Metric 1| Percentage of Hires That Are Internal Candidates OR Referral 

Why: This metric reflects how actively and successfully employees are engaging with internal opportunities. 

Metric 2 | % of User Base That Are MAU 

Why: This metric reflects how active the user base is on SmartRecruiters platform.

Metric 3 | UserVoice Upvotes and Requests

Why: This metric reflects the employees’ product usage level and their support of getting us to build a better product.

Congratulations to the winners! Be sure to tune in next year for the 2021 Hiring Success Awards!

Hiring Success is almost here! February 11th-12th, TA leaders from around the globe will congregate at the Marquis Marriott in San Francisco to shape the future of talent acquisition. Where will you be?

With sessions ranging from social justice to inclusive leadership, social media recruiting, gender equality, cutting edge AI deployment and more, it’s hard to imagine a more inspiring conference than Hiring Success. Over 1,200 attendees will share in the insights of veteran recruiting and talent acquisition leaders from companies like Amazon, Visa, IBM, LinkedIn, Bosch, and more.

Below you’ll find seven profiles of speakers presenting at this year’s conference. A preview of coming attractions! 

Dr Steven Jones: JONES, Traveling Monk

Nationally known as one of “America’s Top Experts on Diversity” (Diversity, Inc., 2005), Dr. Jones’ philosophy is to lead with listening to support clients in finding a strategy and solution that works for them. 

Dr. Jones holds a Bachelor’s in Computer Science, a Master’s in Multicultural Counseling, and a Ph.D. in Industrial/ Organizational Psychology. He is the author of Journey to Excellence, a transformational book helping people define and achieve excellence in their lives.

In the global arena, while he was studying business practices in Chang Mai, Thailand, Dr. Jones became the first person of African descent to be ordained as a Buddhist Monk at a 700 year old monastery called Wat Umong.

Jones will be leading a session on Inclusive Leadership.

Carlos Fernandez: Houston Methodist, Manager of Talent Acquisition

Carlos Fernandez currently oversees talent acquisition strategy, employer branding, and sourcing outreach for a system of eight hotels and a workforce of 23,000+ employees.

Fernandez has over 10 years experience within talent acquisition, project management, learning development, and change management, and has led several technology implementations and processes to enhance the candidate experience. He led the redesign of Houston Methodist’s career site and social media recruitment efforts, increasing overall application volume by 40% since 2016.

Fernandez will be co-leading a roundtable discussion on Candidate Experience.

Gerry Crispin: Principal, CareerXroads

Gerry Crispin founded CareerXroads in 1996 to encourage the transformation of hiring into the 21st century. Today, with his business partner, Chris Hoyt, CareerXroads is in its second decade as a member driven community of Talent leadership teams from 130 major firms who are devoted to learning from and helping one another improve and succeed.

Among other achievements, he has co-authored eight books on the evolution of staffing, and has written hundreds of articles and white papers on similar topics. His career spans fifty years and includes Consulting, Recruitment Advertising, HR leadership positions with Fortune 100 employers, Executive Search and Career Services at the University where he graduated with his BE and in Engineering and IO/Psychology degrees.

Crispin will be leading the following session: What Keeps You Up At Night?

Jonathan Mears: VISA, Head, Global Executive Talent Acquisition

As a global HR and talent executive, Jonathan Mears is known for driving innovation in developing markets. He is currently responsible for Visa’s Global Executive Talent acquisition and delivery across all markets, leading Executive Talent teams to deliver internal and external talent, and Visa’s HR Leadership team.

Mears previously led large cross geographic and functional teams for IBM in 14 countries supporting LATAM, North America, Europe, MEA and Asia Pacific. His areas of expertise include leadership of high performance teams, employment branding and strategic sourcing, contract negotiation, business development, retention, redeployment, and more. 

Mears will be co-leading a roundtable on Interviewing Skills.

Lawrel Aufmuth: Advantage Solutions, Vice President, Talent Acquisition

Lawrel Aufmuth is Vice President of Talent Acquisition at Advantage Solutions. She is an innovator and HR professional with extensive experience in the private and public sector with growth organizations.

Lawrel is well known for delivering measurable results through creative, “out of the box’ solutions that build best in class measurable human capital strategies. Lawrel Aufmuth knows TA in and out, and is an expert in using Artificial Intelligence (RPA & ML & NLP) to bring organizations to new heights. 

Aufmuth will be leading the following session: Turning Recruiting Into a Profit Center.

Sarah Yang: Former Talent Brand & Diversity Lead at Getaround

Sarah Yang is the former Talent Brand & Diversity Lead at Getaround. She crafts and nurtures compelling stories on why Getaround is a wonderful place to work and has over fifteen years of experience in creating videos, blogs, and social media that are critically acclaimed. Yang is the recipient of the prestigious MarCom Platinum Award, which she won for the global recruiting video she co-produced for Workday. 

In addition to being a TA leader, she is a professional drummer, filmmaker, poet, comedian, and improv actor, and a magnetic and animated speaker on creativity (the #1 soft skill according to LinkedIn), diversity, and storytelling to global audiences (i.e. Grace Hopper, Cisco, Workday, Oracle, CoderDojo, Lesbians Who Tech, and Women Who Code).

She will be leading the following session: Convincing Your HMs to Value Diversity Hiring.

Hung Lee: Recruiting Brainfood, Curator

Hung Lee is the founder and CEO of WorkShape.io – the revolutionary recruiting platform for Software engineers and Editor of leading industry newsletter Recruiting Brainfood. He is an industry professional with over 15 years experience as an agency recruiter, recruitment manager, Internal Head of Talent, recruitment trainer and strategic advisor for rapid growth businesses.

Hiring Success is just 25 days away! As always, we’ve assembled the finest lineup of talent acquisition leaders to present on topics that will expand your horizons—professionally and personally. Join us for what’s going to be the most memorable recruiting event of the year.

Attending Hiring Success is a bit like visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The available content is exquisite; however, it would be next to impossible to try and absorb all of it in a single visit. There’s simply too much. It’s best to focus on quality over quantity. That is, of course, unless you’re into the whole conference fatigue thing. 

For the rest of you, we advise coming up with a shortlist of sessions tailored to your personal interests ahead of time. To help you do so, here’s our second roundup post of this year’s speakers. 

Albert Loyola: Accenture, Artificial Intelligence Lead in TA and HR

Albert Loyola is a technology and AI HR enthusiast, currently employing his talents at Accenture. Previously, he worked in talent development and HR for major corporations such as Duke Energy, the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, PepsiCo, and Ignite.

In addition to artificial intelligence, he is an expert in the following areas: machine learning in employee training, RPA & intelligence automation in recruiting, design thinking, employee experience, and enterprise transformation.

Loyola will be leading the following session on day two: Reimagine Recruiting in the Age of AI.

Bridgette Corridan: Speaker, Talent Strategist & Coach

With over twenty years of experience as a talent strategist, speaker and coach, Bridgette Corridan is passionate about building talent strategies that support employee engagement, transparent cultures, customer satisfaction and stellar business performance. She deeply understands the importance of building and connecting leads that connect with a deeper purpose, bringing enthusiasm and positivity into the work environment.

Her areas of expertise include talent acquisition strategy, behavioral interview training, executive coaching, and talent systems architecture. She has worked closely with leading brands such as Apttus, Marin Software, Eventbrite, Open Table, Restoration Hardware (RH), and Stella & Dot.

Corridan will be co- leading the following roundtable discussion on day one: Candidate Experience. 

Ellis Briery: Triplebyte, Head of Talent

Ellis Briery is the Head of Talent at Triplebyte, a technical recruiting company that “helps great engineers find work at the fastest growing companies in the world, with the least amount of time and effort.”

Briery has been in the recruiting space since 2012; for four of those years he held the title of CEO and founder at T3 Intelligence. A San Francisco native, Briery is committed to scaling and evolving teams of top talent to meet the ever-growing needs of startups. He is an expert in creating full-cycle recruiting processes that scale. 

Briery will be co-leading the following roundtable discussion on day one: Employer Branding.

Jason Paradowski: Bosch, Head of HR Service and Talent Acquisition, Americas 

Jason was named Executive Director of the HR Shared Services team for Bosch in North America in 2013. He now serves as the Regional Head for HR Shared Services; servicing over 42,000 associates in North, Central, and South America. The Bosch Group is a leading supplier of technology and services with over 400,000 associates in some 70 countries in four business sectors: Mobility, Industrial Technology, Consumer Goods, and Energy and Building Technology. 

Paradowski will be leading the following session on day two: Slicing Time-to-Hire From 80 to 30 Days.

Elena Valentine: Skill Scout, CEO/Co-Founder

With the war for talent reaching new heights, Elena Valentine is on the frontlines of employer branding. Elena is an expert in leveraging video storytelling in talent acquisition, citing the medium as a much-needed antidote to poorly crafted, uninspiring job requisitions.

With the motto “you cannot be what you cannot see,” Elena started filming jobs as a way to get young people excited about the world of work. Since then, her team at Skill Scout has built a world class media company. Their films have helped clients like Nike and American Airlines engage candidates and employees alike. 

Valentine will be leading the following session on day two: Recruitment Video Storytelling.

Jonathan Kestenbaum: Talent Tech Labs, Co-founder & Managing Director

Jonathan Kestenbaum is the Co-Founder & Managing Director of Talent Tech Labs. He is a lawyer by education and an entrepreneur and investor by trade. Kestenbaum can be found at HR technology conferences all over the world as a sought-after speaker and panelist sharing deep insights into the evolution of the talent acquisition ecosystem. His company Talent Tech Labs operates as an innovation hub, fostering technological advancement that improves the way talent is sourced, engaged, selected and hired. 

Kestenbaum will be leading the following session on day one: Talent Acquisition Landscape: Attract

Ellen Kapoor: ITW, Talent & Leadership Development

Ellen Kapoor is a human resources professional with a passion for leadership and attracting, developing, and retaining the next generation of talent. She is currently the Director of Talent Management & Leadership Development at ITW. Working as part of corporate HR, Kapoor helps ITW by providing key leadership and support in ITWs candidate pipeline. She works to raise awareness of ITW as an employer of choice and ultimately enhancing the quality, depth and diversity of the company’s leadership pipeline.

Kapoor will be co-leading the following roundtable discussion on day one:  Employer Branding.

Laudine Vallarta: ETSY, Global Head of Talent Acquisition

Laudine Vallarta is a strategic people and talent acquisition leader with 14 years of expertise in the technology, retail, and network television industries. At Etsy, she is responsible for the talent acquisition roadmap, ensuring the company is in the best possible position to attract, retain and develop talent.

Among other things, she’s in charge of global recruitment employer branding, internal mobility, D&I recruiting and referral programming. She is an expert in building strong relationships with leadership and executive teams as an internal consultant to continuously collaborate and advise on the day-to-day as well as forward-thinking strategies.

Vallarta will be leading the following session on day one:  Interviewing Rubrics. 

A brief recap of the closing day of SmartRecruiters’ 2019 European conference for talent acquisition professionals.

The enthusiasm and momentum from day one at Hiring Success carried over to Wednesday morning virtually uninterrupted. Shortly after 8 a.m., the Compagnietheater was once again brimming with conference-goers. The crowd chattered excitedly, their optimism buoyed by the scent of freshly-brewed coffee in the air and the resonating sound of the theme from Mission Impossible, provided by a trio of string musicians in the foyer. It was an auspicious beginning to the day, indeed.

The chorus of voices in the lobby turned to whispers, then gave way to silence as the attendees filed into the venue halls for the morning sessions. The lectures held throughout the day proved to be equally engaging as Tuesday’s, ending the conference on a high note. Here’s a glimpse at some memorable moments from the final day of Hiring Success EU 2019. 

Best of Breed Innovation

SmartRecruiters’ Head of Product Management, Natalia Baryshnikova, commenced Wednesday’s activities by presenting on the ways that technology enables Hiring Success—particularly compelling candidate and user experiences. 

Before unpacking her ideas, Baryshnikova took the opportunity to share an anecdote about the Dutch Impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh, an apropos reference given the conference’s location. In his prime, Van Gogh produced four paintings per week. His productivity, she noted, was marked by regularity and consistency.

What does that have to do with SmartRecruiters or Baryshnikova? Regular and consistent productivity are instrumental in her approach to product development. Baryshnikova’s team strives to release around five product updates every week. This allows for a product that’s agile and can quickly adapt to the needs of both customers and candidates, thus providing compelling experiences.

To illustrate her point, Baryshnikova, with the help of colleagues Kelly Fang and Rafal Szczepanski, demoed two upcoming product feature updates: 

• The addition of multi-language, automated and integrated SMS communication with candidates
• The ability for users to forward CVs from their email accounts directly to their SmartRecruiters accounts

These innovations may not be Van Gogh masterpieces, but they’re essential in the ongoing process of creating an ATS that doesn’t just help people with their hiring needs, but to achieve Hiring Success.

Become an Inclusive Leader

What does an Aikido master, who also happens to be the first ordained meditation master of African-American descent, and is now an advisor to Fortune 50 CEOs have to share? Albeit a rhetorical question, Dr. Steven Jones walked the audience through a captivating session on inclusive leadership, with simple and live exercises that showed how different perspectives, when managed well, yield stronger results.

We learned that the human brain isn’t wired to see things as they are; we see things as we are. Similarity signifies safety, and as such we naturally gravitate towards perceptions and concepts that we’ve grown accustomed to. Jones encourages us to constantly remind ourselves to see things from others’ perspectives.

“Diversity is about counting heads, inclusion is about making heads count.”

Dr. Steven Jones

So on the conference themes of Innovation and Inclusion, approaching work (and relationships in general) with a truly open and inclusive mindset builds trust. This ultimately drives productivity and performance. As Jones thoughtfully put it, “Diversity is about counting heads, inclusion is about making heads count.”

Reflecting on Freedom 

The final keynote speech for Hiring Success EU 2019 was delivered by Khalil Osiris, a speaker, educator, and activist. Osiris, a one time member of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, found himself locked into America’s criminal justice system at the age of 17 and wasn’t paroled until his 40s. 

While in prison, Osiris corresponded through letters with one of Nelson Mandela’s daughters. He found liberation through these missives, as well as intense self-reflection. After leaving prison, he began to volunteer for a civil rights organization where he mentored children of incarcerated parents. Soon thereafter he co-authored a book on the psychological experience of inmates, which became a college course, as well as a DVD series. 

Osiris continues to work as an advocate for those from backgrounds similar to his, and works with them to find inner peace and mental freedom before becoming physically incarcerated. His story is an admirable example of the perseverance of the human spirit and the importance of devoting one’s self to purposeful work—whether in the office or the world at large.   

The above mentioned sessions only represent the tip of the iceberg that was Hiring Success EU 2019. We would like to thank all of the amazing speakers at this year’s event, the entire SmartRecruiters team, the staff at Compagnietheater, and all of our sponsors: 

Highlights from day one at SmartRecruiters’ annual EU conference on all things recruitment.

In the heart of Amsterdam, along the Kloveniersburgwal canal, lies the Compagnietheater— a former Lutheran church that now serves as an event location. The Baroque-era venue still lends itself to mass congregation, albeit it under different circumstances, and it’s here that talent acquisition executives, thought leaders, technologists, and investors from 31 countries have gathered to discuss the state of the recruitment industry, as well as the shape of things to come. 

Over four hundred attendees from across the world have come to the Dutch capital to network, participate in workshops, view product demos, and attend lectures from a diverse cross-section of industry experts. The venue is outfitted by accessibility experts to accommodate guests of any visible and invisible disability, including translators and a sign language-encouraged coffee bar! A key ingredient of Hiring Success conferences, the sessions touch on a variety of workplace-related topics that are significant for talent acquisition professionals. Topics range from the latest technology & process innovations to diversity & inclusion, and—of course—Hiring Success.

It would be impossible to account for the total Hiring Success EU experience in a blog post. That’s a pleasure reserved for attendees. However, here are a few highlights from day one. And to those who couldn’t join us this year, we hope to greet you in person in 2020.

Hiring Is Success — Kickoff with Jerome Ternynck, Founder & CEO of SmartRecruiters

The CEO of SmartRecruiters, Jerome Ternynck—affectionately known as the chief Smartian—set the Hiring Success festivities into motion on a personal note. 

“Some people believe their calling is to cure illness, for others it’s to find a way to get to the moon—for me, I’ve always believed that my calling is to help connect people to jobs at scale,” he announced to an audience of over four hundred talent acquisition practitioners and professionals. And, as anyone with recruiting experience knows, that’s no small feat.

The modern labor market is multi-faceted and more complex than ever. Among other things, globalization, remote work, the rise of the gig economy, and an increased demand for highly-skilled workers have made it increasingly difficult for recruiters and the companies that they work for to source the talent they need to succeed. This is a daunting reality not only for Ternynck, but the majority of executives. 

According to Ternynck, 77 percent of CEOs see hiring for key skills as the biggest threat to their businesses, and 82 percent of Fortune 500 companies don’t believe they’re in a position to recruit highly talented candidates. Given that by 2030, there will be a global human talent shortage of more than 85 million people, it’s not hard to see why this sentiment is so common among executives.

What, then, is the solution for this discrepancy in workforce supply and demand? For Ternynck, the answer to that question is clear: applying the guiding principles of Hiring Success to talent acquisition. In a nutshell, that’s accomplished by doing the following: 

1. Take a holistic approach to the hiring experience by providing an engaging candidate experience, ensuring that hiring managers are engaged during the process, and having a team of highly productive recruiters.
2. Ditching outdated hiring metrics like Cost-per-Hire and Time-to-Fill for more useful analytics like Hiring Budget, Hiring Velocity, and Net Hiring Score.
3. Treat talent acquisition as if it were a function of sales and marketing. Candidates should be treated like customers. 

In closing, SmartRecruiters’ CEO implored guests to take a non-traditional approach to connecting candidates to jobs by giving back and participating in Reverse Recruiting. Now adopted by over 50 major companies including Tesla, Twitter, and Visa, Reverse Recruiting is a program in which organizations help overlooked and/or marginalized jobseekers find employment. 

Select sessions included:

The Open Hiring Revolution 

For many job seekers, there’s one unfortunate obstacle that stands between them and their ability to secure employment: bias. For some, like former convicts, this bias is systemic and concretely difficult to circumnavigate. For others, it’s more subtle and harder to identify. An example would be victims of ageism or disablism. No matter the source of the bias, it excludes from the workforce countless individuals across the globe that are well-qualified and well-intentioned. 

This is an unnecessary loss for all parties involved.

Fortunately, there are a few progressive-minded companies and foundations that have taken it upon themselves to directly challenge this injustice by championing a concept known as Open Hiring, the belief that people should be allowed to decide if they’re able to perform a job—not someone else’s bias. 

Ingeborg Zwolsman, Program Manager for the Start Foundation, made a persuasive case for the movement in her morning session “The Open Hiring Revolution.” The Start Foundation, an independent venture philanthropy fund based in Amsterdam, partners with local businesses that are willing to give jobs to candidates that are traditionally overlooked. The only prerequisite for employment is a willingness to work. There are no interviews, screening questions, or other such hurdles.

The Start Foundation takes their inspiration from Greyston Bakery, an American non-profit that pioneered the concept of Open Hiring to create over 3,500 jobs and pay out over $65 million in salaries to employees that previously struggled to find work. Greyston Bakery was thrust into the public eye after Ben & Jerry’s, impressed with their mission, decided to source the brownies for their ice cream from the non-profit.

Let’s Debate the Future of Work 

As SmartRecruiters’ CEO Jerome Ternynck mentioned in his opening statement, the labor market is now more complex than ever. Phenomena like automation and a spike in the gig economy have complicated our traditional notions of the workplace. How recruiters and employers adapt and prepare for similar changes in the future is a point of contention. 

To gather insight into the future of work, we invited Karen Rivoire (IKEA) and Kevin Wheeler  (The Future of Talent) to an Oxford Union-style debate hosted by Hung Lee, co-founder and CEO of Workshape.io. Rivoire and Wheeler both ran global TA and HR organizations, and have dealt firsthand with the aforementioned issues at scale. 

Prompts for the debate were fielded from the audience, three of which were shortlisted: 

1. Will the gig economy become the primary workforce of the future? 
2. Will recruiting be fully automated? 
3. Is workforce planning a complete waste of time?

The questions, voted upon by the audience, seemed to convey a collective sense of unease about the ever-changing nature of the labor market and the implications that has for the recruiting industry as a whole.

Rivoire seemed to share the audience’s apprehension and called for a tempered, cautious response to transformations in the workplace, particularly with concern to automation and artificial intelligence. Wheeler, on the other hand, unflinchingly argued in favor of adopting technologies like AI to counter human bias. Though they held contradictory opinions, both participants comported themselves judiciously and in a manner befitting of democratic, spirited debate.

Though the debate was cut short due to scheduling constraints, it underscored the complexity of issues that talent acquisition professionals encounter and, consequently, why it’s essential for employers to invest in highly skilled recruiters.

Attaining Hiring Success

If Ternynck justified why Hiring Success must be a top priority for today’s business leaders, then Rebecca Carr, SVP of Success at SmartRecruiters, painted a clear path for attendees on how they can attain it. Armed with a methodology consisting of business assessments, maturity model frameworks and pillars of investment areas, Carr outlined how talent acquisition leaders can evaluate, strategize, execute, and finally optimize current processes and skillsets to level up in performance across:

• Talent attraction & engagement
• Collaboration & selection
• Management & operating model

Using candidate sourcing as a sub-topic under the talent attraction & engagement pillar, Carr floated sample business assessment questions and live-polled the audience to calculate their maturity levels. It was a fitting way to wrap up day one, connecting the dots on how to invest in various areas of talent acquisition in order to drive business outcomes while connecting people to jobs at scale.

Check back tomorrow for a recap of day two at #hireEU 2019, and join the conversation on Twitter and LinkedIn Live.

Cramped hotel conference rooms and uncomfortable chairs are the banes of many recruiting conferences, but here’s how SmartRecruiters is flipping the script on the traditional industry events.

What was the last conference that truly excited you? What made it unique—the sessions, the networking, the food? Did it have a unique structure, or did it follow the traditional format of sit, listen, stand up, talk? More often than not, industry conferences fall into the latter category, where most event attendees inch towards the closest exit first chance they get. No one is a fan of stuffy conferences, and that’s why SmartRecruiters seeks to redefine the experience for talent acquisition professionals everywhere. 

Hiring Success EU isn’t designed to test your passive listening skills; in fact, participation is encouraged. Every session is designed to be interactive, giving audiences the opportunity to absorb insightful content in a refreshingly new way. In addition to the speaker-led sessions, there are countless workshops and round table discussions where TA and HR leaders can roll up their sleeves and learn as a group. 

The recruiting community is unique for its focus on shared knowledge. We are constantly working together to share ideas, perspectives, and best practices on talent acquisition so that every organization can build better hiring processes that attract the best talent possible. SmartRecruiters feels this approach is necessary to create both a memorable experience and make a lasting impact on how people think about recruiting. 

Hiring Success EU kicks off September 10-11 in Amsterdam, and here is a sampling of what attendees can expect at this non-traditional conference:

1. Reverse Recruiting
Reverse Recruiting is our way of taking action to connect overlooked candidates to jobs at scale. At this year’s Hiring Success EU, 300 interviews will simultaneously take place between audience members and hopeful job seekers, including formerly incarcerated individuals, refugees, transgender people, people with disabilities, and more. These impromptu interviews offer them a chance to practice their interview skills, make connections with current TA professionals, and boost their self-confidence in finding gainful employment. This-meet-and-greet-format will create new bridges of friendship, mentorship, and jobs between our communities. Isn’t that what recruiting is all about?

2. The Hackathon
Twenty technologists invested countless hours over the last few months to create unique hacks and APIs built on the SmartRecruiters platform. Now, these innovators can demo their builds in real-time at the conference. Here’s the catch: Every attendee starts with 1000 “wow points” to invest in the teams they believe have the greatest impact on the future of recruiting technology. The top 3 teams that receive the most investment will be sent to the final round to battle it out for fortune—$10k in sponsorship at Hiring Success 20—and glory.

3. Session: Make your Organization a Microcosm of the World
One of the best-kept secrets in recruiting is the extra-ordinary output of neurodiverse people. Many of us are neuro-diverse—we just don’t know it.  Sara-Jane Harvey, aka Agony Autie, is a world-class activist for neurodiversity and returning Hiring Success speaker, having debuted at Hiring Success Americas earlier this year. Now, she’s back to expose truths about how making offices accessible for autistic people have far-reaching benefits for companies, employees, and the potential to transform the world economy.

4. Session: Reflecting Freedom
Self-imposed limitations are created when our choices and actions are dictated by automatic responses and unquestioning beliefs. Understand these limitations and find freedom from the prison of the mind. This session will take attendees through an inspiring journey of grit, and who better than to tell it than Khalil Osiris, who spent 20 years in prison. During his time in incarceration, he earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Boston University. Khalil is now an author, educator, social activist, and CEO of Reflecting Freedom, a social enterprise company. 

5. Session: Getting Smarter
What will your hiring mix look like in 10 years? Get this question right and you’ll see your stock soar. Get it wrong, and you’ll spend your time playing catch up. This session will bring a much-needed perspective from the navigation technology and consumer electronics company TomTom on how it discovered the ideal hiring mix. This session is presented by Thomas Waldman, Global Head of Talent Acquisition at TomTom, leveraging his 20 +years of experience in recruiting and sourcing to discuss how TomTom conducted its own internal discovery and transformation.  

6. Session: Becoming an Inclusive Leader
What does an aikido master and the first ordained African-American meditation master, who also advises Fortune 50 CEOs have to teach company leaders? Find out in this participatory session that is sure to strengthen everyone’s leadership skills. Dr. Steven Jones, who—among numerous accomplishments and accolades—is the CEO of JONES, a consulting firm specialized in diversity and organizational effectiveness, teaching the value of inclusive leadership.

Don’t miss the opportunity to be a part of this one-of-a-kind recruiting conference. Where else can you make a positive impact on someone’s life, flex your entrepreneurial muscle like a VC, or learn from a curated selection of activists, speakers, and TA leaders from around the globe? You will find it all here at Hiring Success EU. To find out more about what to expect, visit our website and secure your tickets before September 10th—see you there!

We talk people analytics with the TA leader breaking down big data at Hiring Success 19, February 26-27 in San Francisco.

Chris Louie, Senior Director of Talent Acquisition for LinkedIn, didn’t start out in TA. Four years ago this recruiting leader was a product marketer rising through the ranks of Nielsen, the NY-based global performance management company. So, when Chris announced his move to the company’s people function, everyone had the same reaction.. ‘But, why!?’

Where Chris saw an opportunity for innovation and an unscripted future, the rest of the world saw a department with a reputation for being the most corporate of all the corporate functions, ie a dusty snoozefest. As one recruiter so delicately put it “The pros are that you would be part of a new generation of HR leaders; the cons are that HR is still dramatically underpaid and disrespected as a function!”

Yet, none of this well-meaning guff deterred Chris. He saw how critical talent was to business success, and he thought, “If I can effect change in TA, it will really make a huge difference to the organization as a whole.”

Chris didn’t know it at the time, but he was actually part of a larger trend of outsiders entering this once insulated field. And, as it often does, his outside experience informed his new work in positive and unexpected ways. Chris began approaching the challenges of HR with the mind of a product marketer, leveraging his penchant for analytics, and working backwards from the desired end point to find solutions.

After three years as Nielsen’s Talent Acquisition and People Analytics, Chris began a new chapter at LinkedIn, taking with him his love of experimentation. Ahead of his session ‘Impact of Analytics in Recruiting’ at Hiring Success 19 – Americas, February 26-27 in San Francisco, we catch up with this industry changemaker to hear what it’s like to be at recruiting’s premier brand, and why HR needs its own Hippocratic Oath.

What have your first couple months at LinkedIn been like?

I’m part of the talent acquisition team here at LinkedIn. I’m not going to lie, it’s a pretty awesome team…and you would hope so given the brand reputation, right?

At LinkedIn, I am leading the teams that support all of our recruiters, helping them be their best for our hiring managers and candidates. This includes inclusion recruiting, talent attraction, candidate programs, platforms and assessments, project management, and feedback to the LinkedIn product team – so they can make our solutions better both for LinkedIn TA and the broader industry.

You once wrote that TA systems need product managers, not administrators – could you explain this idea?

Software companies don’t just develop a product for clients and walk away. They market the system, support their customers, and think about user experience – honing and evolving solutions over time. However, there’s a tendency to not view internal systems as ‘real products’ and instead just roll them out to employees with no marketing or customer success. That’s why when you look at the NPS of internal systems it’s typically quite low.

My thought is, that we need to bring the same marketing, support, and tracking efforts to these internal systems as we would to the products we deliver to our customers. Internal systems are ‘real products’, and they are critical to business success.

Tell us more about your session at Hiring Success 19 – Americas, what will practitioners walk away with?

The approach I take to people analytics is basically the scientific method. What is the problem statement or challenge that we’re trying to solve? The answer to that question dictates what you should do from an analytic perspective. Start with what you’re trying to accomplish instead of ‘what analysis can I run?’

I really love marrying analytics and talent acquisition, because you can use insights to make decisions and improve processes that payoff immediately. At the end of the day we’re not running analytics to write papers or sit on panels. This is about boosting the experience for everyone – candidates, hiring managers, and recruiters.

All that said, people analytics is still fairly underdeveloped, and only recently have we attained ready access to the data we need. The catalyst has been the digitization of our workflows and the adoption of HR tech that puts capturing data and enabling analytics at their core. But there’s still a ton more we can do.

People tend to be intimidated by the idea of creating an analytics program, do you have to be a math whiz to make sense of your data?

Anybody who’s intimidated by the math of it at all should know it’s really not about the math. We can hire statisticians or programmers to do that. What’s hard is finding people who understand the way HR and TA work today and can identify the real problems and challenges, as well as the root causes.

Could you describe your personal brand in three words?

I guess I would go with connect, care, and create.

Connect: Competing initiatives often pop up in complex organizations and ideas get lost in the shuffle. I strive to be close enough to what’s happening on the ground but also understand enough of the broader narrative to help bring things together – projects, people – so we can accomplish things instead of working at cross-purposes inadvertently. I really enjoy making connections, so that everyone gets to contribute instead of feeling their time has been wasted.

Care: At a really fundamental level, I think the ultimate job of a leader is to help his or her team succeed. And so, when you spend time with anyone on your team, you should spend more time trying to be interested than interesting. I love problem-solving, and anytime I meet with someone on my team, I try to understand what challenges they’re facing and ask how I can help. I’ve been able to progress in my career because people have shown they’ve cared about me. I hope I’m able to pay that back by doing the same for others.

Create: I’m always at my best when I’m trying to create something new or take on a challenge that’s stymied others. If you have the perfect system in place and just need someone to maintain it, then I’m probably the wrong person for the job. I’m continually looking for a fundamentally better way to do things instead of just going through the motions, which is probably one reason why I’ve made relatively dramatic career moves across multiple functions, instead of just progressing linearly in one.

In the wake of the #metoo movement, you suggest HR leaders create their own Hippocratic Oath. Tell us what yours would be.

I believe HR should adopt the ‘do no harm’ credo when it comes to the employees they support. While the impression some have is that HR is naturally “the people’s function,” the reality is that practically (given relatively large ratios of employees to HR people) it’s much more aligned with leaders. I think as an industry, we should consider whether HR should have an official responsibility of employee advocacy, which could call for creating a structure where it can have some independence from the leadership – like reporting to the Board. It might be a radical idea, but I think it still merits a discussion.

On a personal level, I guess, my Hippocratic Oath be as an advocate for my team and the candidates.

It’s important to not fall into the trap, as a manager, of viewing your team member’s work in an overly transactional way. That means continually seeing how the people working for you are growing, knowing what their professional goals are, and helping set them up for a positive trajectory. That “care” thing again.

I name candidates as well because they are often the voiceless in the recruiting process. If someone is having a negative candidate experience, they can feel alone and really have no recourse. There’s the one-in-a-hundred candidate who will get an email through to the CEO or CHRO and elicit some action, but that’s pretty rare. Given the numbers, candidates can sometimes get lost in the shuffle unfortunately. You really need to pay attention to this and safeguard the candidate experience and our sense of responsibility to them. At LinkedIn, candidate engagement and experience is extremely important to us, and it’s one of the KPIs we measure to gauge our success.

This year’s contestants represent the most diverse mix of global startups to date—here’s what you need to know ahead of their pitch presentations at #HIRE19

In recent years, the TA industry has seen a proliferation of recruiting startups rising to meet the demands of hiring teams seeking top talent. Many of these startups are small rooms full of people, all working on an idea in the hopes of moving fast and breaking things. While a vast majority of these budding companies will fail, those successful few must demonstrate exceptional innovation and purpose.

As part of SmartRecruiters’ mission to help businesses achieve hiring success, we want to highlight those scrappy startups offering truly unique products and services for hiring teams worldwide. Now in its third installment, the Recruiting Startup Awards returns to Hiring Success 19 – Americas, February 26–27 in San Francisco.

At the outset, over 140 startups leveraged their business and social networks to earn votes. Soon, the top five with the highest number of votes will fly to San Francisco to pitch their business in front of 1,200 CHROs and recruiting leaders—which will walk away with $10,000 in sponsorship and press?

Previous RSOTY winners include Honeypot.io, an e-staffing company focused on software developers, and Enboarder, an intuitive onboarding platform that helps candidates hit the ground running. This year’s finalists run the gamut from chatbots to pipeline automation services, and hail from the UK, Canda, Australia, and the US.

Get to know the 2019 Recruiting Startup Awards finalists below, and be sure to watch them deliver their pitches on the final day of Hiring Success 19 in San Franciscos—see full agenda here!

1. Candidate.ID

Candidate.ID’s software allows organizations to create genuine talent pipelines and easily identify candidates as cold, warm, and ‘hire-ready’​ in real time, claiming to reduce time-to-shortlist by 50 percent.

An increasing number of businesses are turning to more proactive hiring strategies to remain competitive in today’s job market economy. Reactive hiring no longer yields high-quality talent, Candidate.ID addresses this problem by zeroing in on pipeline automation, offering tools and insights that enhance hiring teams’ ability to source, discover, and nurture talent ahead of business needs.

2. Jobiak

Jobiak created the industry’s first AI-based recruitment marketing platform designed for Google. In a few clicks, recruiters, TA teams, and HR professionals can quickly and directly publish job postings to Google for Jobs. Jobiak makes it easy to post jobs by eliminating any coding or complicated HTML edits from the advertising process thanks to its advanced algorithms and machine learning functionality.

With over 70 percent market share, Google is the world’s most popular search engine by far. Additionally, Google captures 80 percent of all mobile traffic. With this in mind, Jobiak puts forth the following stat: 73 percent of jobseekers begin their search on Google, but the majority of them never see your company’s job ads.

3. GoHire

GoHire leverages text messaging, Facebook Messenger, and chatbots to help organizations reach more candidates at the right time while also automating recruiting workflows. These optimizations help GoHire clients generate as high as 500 percent increases in applications, and significantly reduce the amount of time spent on pre-screening candidates.

GoHire was founded during the height of the TA industry’s focus on social media recruitment strategies, with founders Jonathan “JD” Duarte and Mike Lam seeing the opportunity to combine innovative technology with the preferred communication channels of today’s jobseekers.

4. Vervoe

Vervoe decided that candidates should be evaluated on their merit, not their background, so the company built an AI-powered skills testing platform to improve the quality of candidates in the hiring pipeline.

Companies can test applicants’ skills and attitude with customizable assessments that mimic real-world scenarios, and the Vervoe AI automatically scores, ranks, and recommends the best candidates for the position. Vervoe claims that it can help businesses identify the best talent at under $100 per hire.

5. VanHack

Globalization has allowed more companies to expand into new markets and geographies, but staffing new offices can be challenging. Enter VanHack, a growing community of over 180,000 software developers, designers, and digital marketers seeking jobs abroad. VanHack believes in building a borderless world where careers are not restricted to a particular office, city, or country.

More than simply connecting jobseekers to opportunities, VanHack also works with employers to find talent for hard-to-fill roles like senior data scientists, machine learning experts, DevOps, and more, while helping facilitate visa and relocation processes for selected candidates. According to the company’s website, 90 percent of all jobs posted on VanHack receive qualified applicants in less than 24 hours.

Food trucks, giant Jenga, LED hula hoopers, and a cupcake Ferris wheel – these are just some of the colorful delights you can expect at this year’s Smarty Party.

After Colin O’Brady’s shares with us his record-breaking journey solo and unaided across Antarctica, join us downstairs for another spectacular Smarty Party! (See full agenda here.)

Who doesn’t love a carnival? Adulting is great, but every once in a while it’s important to unwind with whimsey and just have fun. The Smarty Party is a can’t miss event at each of our conferences, and Hiring Success 19 – Americas is no exception. Network with your peers while trying not to topple a tower of giant Jenga blocks, or follow up with speakers at the pop-a-shot hoop. Indulge in some childhood nostalgia with oversized Connect Four, and make sure to grab a sweet from the cupcake Ferris wheel!

As the sun sets on our jam-packed first day, LED hula hoopers take the floor to dazzle us with a personal light show, followed by onsite food trucks with all your California style favorites, from empanadas to delicious Asian fusion.

And what carnival is complete without cotton candy or food on a stick? Don’t worry, we have that too!

At Pier 27, attendees get to enjoy a sweeping view of San Francisco’s iconic bay. While some work trips relegate you to little more than hotel lobbies or conference halls, the Hiring Success conference takes pride in imbuing every event with the spirit of the city. San Francisco has always been a place for creatives and dreamers, from the artists and activists of the 60s, to the innovative tech minds of today. We invite you to take a cue from the Golden City and reimagine what Talent Acquisition could be.

Speaking of the future, don’t forget the big debate on our second day: What can robots do that people can’t? And, how far do we go with selection by algorithm? TA industry vet and noted disruptor Bill Boorman will facilitate an interactive debate with live audience commentary. We have assembled two teams, practitioners vs data scientists, and you get to vote in real-time polls. This is a perfect time to discuss your arguments and gain insight from other practitioners.

While you’re there, seize this opportunity to make new connections, process the day’s learnings, and follow up with presenters who sparked your interest. The scenic vistas, classic games, and inspiring company (no scary clowns, we promise) will ensure you are recharged and ready for another nonstop day of demos, panels, labs, awards, and interactive sessions.

See you there!

Who’s ready for a paradigm shift? Here are the session highlights most likely to change your mind, deepen your empathy, and get you out of your chair.

It’s time to get on your feet and out of your comfort zone. In just two weeks, over one-thousand TA leaders will convene at Pier 27 in San Francisco, and not just for the amazing view. February 26-27, Hiring Success 19 – Americas – our largest conference to date – will challenge industry leaders and recruiting practitioners to define the future of Talent Acquisition (TA).

Over two days, 100 speakers and 50 sessions will bring new insight to the common pain points of TA, and introduce what’s on the horizon for tech and best practice. Sessions are divided into three tracks so participants can mix and match to meet our expert content at your point of need. See full agenda here!

• 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: Case studies and hiring hacks from practitioners who have #BeenThere and know your pain points.

Here are just five sessions from the magnetic lineup of changemakers who will help you break down your loftiest goals into actionable steps.

1. Mind Mix: Neuro Diversity at Work

The ability to think differently brings societal changes, and can grow your business exponentially. People often say they want ‘out of the box thinkers’ but when it comes to actually including those who think differently, the execution is often lacking.

In this session, unique thinkers will share their experiences on both the candidate and recruiting side. By the end of this talk, the preconceived notions about autism, ADHD, and dyslexia will be shaken, flipped, and served a reality check.

You’ll tap into an extra 80 IQ points by adding new perspectives to your organization and deepen your empathy along the way.

2. Impossible First: Journey to Everest and Beyond

Summit the peaks of your ambitions with Colin O’Brady – the four-time world record holder who most recently became the first person to cross Antarctica solo and unaided.

Hear how Colin’s career as an adventure athlete started with a major injury in Thailand – that left him bedridden with doctors warning him he may never walk normally again – and took off when he entered and won, the Chicago triathlon just 18 months later. From there, Colin went on to climb the seven highest peaks in the world in a record-breaking 132 days.

Yet, even more humbling than these amazing feats of endurance, is how this explorer encourages all of us to erase the line in our minds between the few who can achieve and the many who cannot. Rather, he hopes his journey demonstrates that you too can draw on your “inner reservoir of strength” to pursue your loftiest ambitions.

“I don’t think everyone wants to go walk across Antarctica, but I know that people certainly have challenges in their life. Everyone has reservoirs of untapped potential inside of themselves and can achieve really incredible things.” – Colin O’Brady

3. The Great Debate: In Two Parts

Recruiting has arrived at a watershed moment, where the future of the industry will be defined by how we choose to collaborate with technology.

TA industry vet and noted disruptor, Bill Boorman will facilitate an interactive debate, with live audience commentary. We have assembled two teams, practitioners vs data scientists, and you get to vote in real-time polls. Who said discourse was dead?

Debate 1: What can robots do that people can’t?
Debate 2: How far do we go with selection by algorithm?

4. Impact of Analytics in Recruiting

Learn how to make your source-to-hire a 10-day process from the company that’s already done it, and yes we are talking about corporate reqs. Hear from Diana Ferguson, VP of Talent Acquisition – technology solutions and services at Oppenheimer Funds, how to construct a streamlined hiring process that leverages tech to increase hiring manager engagement, boost candidate experience, and discover new talent… all while decreasing time to hire.

5. Double Session: Recruiting Startup Awards  and The Future of Recruiting with Lou Adler

We close out two days of amazing learnings as we always do, looking to the future! Recruiting Startup Awards gives one fledgling company the chance to win a $10,000 sponsorship to our next conference, followed by the ‘Godfather of Candidate Recruiting,’ Lou Adler who will show you how to achieve the best performance-based interview!

Recruiting Startup Awards

Over 140 recruiting technologies vyed for a spot in the top five, and now these finalists are coming to San Franciso. This is a moment to celebrate innovation in our beloved industry, judges and the audience will vote to decide the winner!

Finalists include:

Candidate.ID: pipeline automation

Jobiak: recruitment marketing

GoHire:  chatbot

Vervoe: AI skills assessment

VanHack: tech recruiting

Performance-Based Interviewing

Strong interviewing skills is something every recruiter and hiring manager needs in their wheelhouse. Join Lou Adler, as he interviews everyone in the audience – everyone – to demonstrate his signature evaluation technique of performance-based hiring.