The second annual European Hiring Success Conference launches with TA leaders from top brands like Uber, LinkedIn, and N26.

The Hiring Success conference returns to Europe for an electric gathering in Amsterdam with the top brands and leading voices of recruitment today. Over 350 attendees will join SmartRecruiters, canalside at the Compagnietheater for two days of interactive sessions and top-tier networking at Hiring Success EU – Amsterdam September 10-11, 2019.

Across three stages, over 80 talent acquisition (TA) experts from leading brands like LinkedIn, Uber, and N26 will discuss the most topical issues in recruiting. Conference-goers can curate their experience by following the three tracks of inclusion, innovation, and hiring success.

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

Hung will be there! Along with many others. Today, we take a moment to meet some of the leading voices in today’s TA space who will be joining us in Amsterdam! #HireEU

Maarten Bokhoven – ABN AMRO Bank N.V.

Head of Employer Branding, Sourcing & Community Management

With the personal mission statement that begins with “I want to move people, and make people move, ” Maarten Bokhoven is passionate about driving business results, but it doesn’t end there, he also wants his team members to achieve their personal goals. For this sourcer, investing in people is more than a turn of phrase – it’s a mantra. Maarten attacks employer branding with vim and creativity, constantly looking for new ways to strategically position his organization in the competition for top talent.

Véronique Bourée – LinkedIn

Senior Lead Benelux Talent Solutions

When it comes to leadership Véronique Bourée likes to say “people should be at the heart of any organization. Put them first, and exceptional results will follow.” As an executive with more than 15 years of professional experience, Véronique has developed a passion for HR tech and TA. She enjoys complex business challenges and winning trust. Recognized for her ability to get results with a “twist” as well as strategic positioning, this global TA leader appreciates how the ‘glocal’ economy is pushing recruiting forward.

Noor van Boven – N26

Chief People Officer

With 15 years of international HR 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.

Before joining N26, Noor was the VP of 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.

Anna Brandt – Uber/ Brandt Talent Solutions

Head of Talent Acquisition

Anna Brand is the founder of Brand Talent Solutions, a hands-on consultancy that helps organizations scale their TA efforts for maximum results. In her latest venture, Anna is zealously jumping on board with Uber Netherlands as the new head of talent acquisition to help these this ride-sharing app take community operations into overdrive.

Prior to Uber, Anna worked with top brands like N26, TomTom, and Zalando. While her experience may be varied, the one constant has been helping tech organizations scale, whether by coaching global recruitment leaders, offering workshops and training, or providing interim management during transitions.

Johnny Campbell – SocialTalent

CEO, Founder, and Sourcer

Johnny Campbell is the CEO and co-founder of SocialTalent, where he leads product and content. The startup established in 2010 is the world’s most popular learning experience platform for hiring, helping over 500 companies hire more than one million people in 2018 alone.

You may recognize Johnny as the MC for previous Hiring Success conferences both in the US and Europe, as well as his active social media presence. When he’s not out “chasing global domination”, he’s busy raising his four boys (so you know he can handle anything)!

Simon Roberts – Siemens

Head of Talent Acquisition, UK&I and Nordic Countries

Simon Roberts is a TA leader who’s all about looking to the future. He’s passionate about agile strategies that make positive impacts today and tomorrow. He likes to call Siemens “a collection of over 348,000 minds building the future, one day at a time.” For this head of TA, it’s all about collaboration: only through coming together can people solve big problems and make the world a “smarter” place.

Hayke Tjemmes-Aalders – Wehkamp

Recruiter

Responsible for product and marketing positions at Wehkamp, Hayke Tjemmes-Aalders is all about building extraordinary teams who are ready to push the boundaries of eCommerce.

Hayke’s mantra? “Learn. Laugh. Lead.” As a boots-on-the-ground recruiter, this TA practitioner understands the nuts and bolts of finding the best talent, from quantifying the quality of the candidate experience to designing relocation programs – and driving it all with big picture data and analytics.

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

Put your referral program into overdrive with this step by step guide (plus templates for outreach)!

If you don’t use referrals, you’re missing out on a killer opportunity to pour some rocket fuel on your recruitment process.

Yes, inbound and outbound channels yield amazing hires.

But referral hires…

• Have the highest applicant-to-hire conversion rate at 40 percent.
• Run with the company longer, with 46 percent staying over one year and 45 percent over two years.
• Cut the time-to-hire to 29 days from 55.

There’s more…

• Industry giants like Google, Intel, and Accenture do referral recruitment.
• Thought leaders like Patrick Burke (Pebble), Tim Diss (Facebook), and Theresa Singh (Asana) also use it.

Now, do you want to access hiring excellence? Strap in. This is going to be a fun ride.

Put Lead Generation on Autopilot

Imagine a constant pipeline of qualified candidates… wouldn’t that be nice? The good news is you’re about to learn how to make this happen.

Spotlight Open Positions

Employees kind of know what internal roles are open and they kind of know who might be a good fit. The result is underwhelming. Passive lead generation does not a superb hiring program make. However, you can flip things around and start highlighting open positions at all-hands meetings and in a company newsletter. It’ll help employees connect the dots.

Go on LinkedIn

An average employee has 100 or so LinkedIn connections. Put another way, if you have 50 employees, you can reach 5000 potential hires without lifting a finger. Here’s how: Encourage employees to like your job posts and link their LinkedIn accounts with the company’s page (see how). It’ll help employees stay on top of things and help your openings gain traction.

Use an Internal Jobboard.

If you’re a massive company with offices sprinkled across the globe, internal jobboards can offer a lifeline and make passive referral hiring Hulk-level strong.

Skip the Referral Bonus and Focus on Culture

You may want to lightsaber cash incentives. Aleksandra Włodarczyk, HR Specialist /Recruiter at ResumeLab explains why: “If you promise employees $1K for a successful referral, they won’t care if their friends make a great fit. They’ll want the bonus.”

However, If employees feel they work in a hip company, they’ll naturally want to intro others.

Tap into Employee Networks

You’ve made it to the juicy part. Put your party pants on because you’re about to discover a magical path to next-level referral recruiting. Consider making this part of onboarding. Remember, if you don’t sit down with a new employee to fish out referrals, you’ll walk right past low-hanging fruit.

Need proof? PURE (American property insurance company) gets a whopping 40-60 percent of hires via early referral. You can too. Here’s how:

1) Create a spreadsheet.

2) Sit together and comb through an employee’s network on LinkedIn.

The key is to ask ultra-specific questions: We’re looking for a [Content Marketing Specialist] to [write high-quality guest posts for major outlets]. Do you know anyone like that in [Chicago]?

3) Extract the basic info.

Record the connection’s name and LinkedIn URL by dropping them into the spreadsheet.

4) Fish out email addresses.

To do this, you must first get the staffer to login to LinkedIn, click ‘See connections’, and do a first-degree network search.

5) Once you pinpoint a potential hire, fire up their profile and click ‘See contact info’.

Bingo!

In the end, you should end up with something like this:

Note: You can mine employees’ networks once/twice a year without limiting yourself to new hires. People amass new connections regularly so it’s best to stay plugged in.

Do Outreach Like a Pro

You’ve got a golden list of stellar talent. Next, you need to reach out and sway them to the dark side. Problem? It’s a sucky manual task (especially if you end up with a list of 50+ contacts), but it doesn’t have to be if you use outreach automation tech that lets you create templates, track opens, and schedule follow-ups.

That said, you can do things manually. All it takes is some elbow grease and time.

1) First outreach… time for some heavy-duty action.

When you open the first email, be sure it includes:

• A note that you’re reaching out because their friend thinks they’re a great fit.
• What your company does.
• A link to the job ad.
• Heavy personalization (no one likes generic messages).

Need an example?

Hi [Marianne],

My name is [Max], and I’m a [content team lead] here at [The Boring Company].

Your friend [Josh] is on my team, and he says you’re killing it when it comes to [writing delicious content that drips with value].

I like people who can [write] like that, so I wanted to reach out and say hi.

[The Boring Company is an infrastructure and tunnel construction company founded by Elon Musk.]

You can learn about our values and culture here: [Link]

Now, I’d love to have you on my team as a [Content Marketing Specialist] to [write about flamethrowers]. You can learn about the role here.

Is that something you’d be interested in?

Thanks,
[Max]

2) Follow-Up

If there’s no reply after three days then it’s time to circle back and give a nudge.

Example:

Hi [Marianne],

Just a quick follow-up in case you missed my last email.

Like I said, your friend [Josh] says you’re a rockstar when it comes to [writing].

With that in mind, I’d LOVE you to join my team.

Details about the role. [Link]

Our values and culture. [Link]

Look forward to hearing back from you.

Thanks a million,

[Max]

3) When you get a YES, ask the referral to have a little phone chat to screen them.

Example:

Hi [Marianne],

Thanks for getting back – I’m super pumped.

Will you be available for a quick phone chat on [October 5th] at [2 PM]?

Thanks,
[Max]

4) On the off chance, it’s a no….

It sucks when you get a message like that, but you can turn things around and ask the referral to pass the details about the opening to their friends. This will help you push the info along and potentially find awesome talent.

Example:

[Marianne],

That’s a HUGE pity, really.

Is there any chance you could pass along the info about our opening for the position of a [Content Marketing Specialist] to your friends and colleagues?

About The Boring Company. [Link]

Details about the role. [Link]

Sending a mail pigeon with a thank-you note your way!

Thanks,

[Max]

So, what do you think? Do you do referral recruiting? How do you use employees’ networks to acquire top-value asset? Let us know @smartrecruiters.

As offices prepare to welcome the first generation of true ‘digital natives’ there are more currents below the surface shaping the future of HR.

With unemployment at a 49 year low in the US, salary budgets are projected to increase by an average of 3.2 percent, up from 3.1 percent last year. Employers are feeling the growing labor shortage, which saw 6.9 million unfilled jobs last year, a number that is predicted to grow in 2019, with the most affected industries being education/health services and professional/business services.

All this as the first majority Gen Z university class dons their caps and gowns this Spring, and prepares to enter the workforce. According to recent LinkedIn research, the fastest growing fields of entry for these grads are web designer (for women) and Software tester (for men). However, it isn’t just fresh face employees making their mark on the workforce, some 10 thousand baby boomers turn 65 every day, and as a result, half of the 11.4 million jobs projected to be created over the next seven years will be filled by people over the age of 55.  

As the face of the labor market changes, so does the infrastructure that supports it. In the last five years, HR technology has seen a proliferation of startups, big consolidations, and a race for innovation. At the same time, new legislation, like the General Data Protection Regulations in Europe, brings data security to the forefront; and workers movements like #metoo, educator strikes, and Uber protests raise questions about what the future of work should look like.

In the midst of all this recruiters and HR are working harder than ever. A recent Monster survey found 62 percent of recruiters say their jobs are more difficult than the previous year, and 67 percent say the difficulty exceeds that of five years ago. So, let’s break down these changes step by step to understand the trends taking root in the latter half of 2019.

1. The Beginning of Gen Z Takeover

Every employer has now taken into the fold, the once enigmatic, millennial cohort. In fact, the generation born between 1981 and 1996, is the biggest portion of the labor force today. Yet, time marches on, and employers must now welcome a new crop to the workforce… with their own special quirks.

Gen Z, the first generation of true ‘digital natives’ (those born between 1997 and 2016) are expected to represent at least 40 percent of all consumers by the year 2020, potentially influencing $166 – $333 billion of annual family spending.

Some of the defining characteristics of Gen Z include: entrepreneurial, less money-driven, and honesty seeking. Read the full list here!

2. Remote Work Is the New Norm

More and more employees are enjoying remote work with increased productivity. As a matter of fact, an almost two year Stanford study revealed a remarkable boost in productivity among telecommuters in a test group that is equivalent to full day work.

The report found that remote employees tend to put in a full day of work and even more since they don’t have to struggle with a daily commute only to leave earlier for personal errands or be late for work.

Furthermore, employee attrition was reduced by about half, saving the test group around $1,900 per employee in yearly retention costs. Not only that, but operating costs were also reduced by at least $1,400 per worker since they were not using company facilities like water and power and taking up office space.

3. Digital and Consumer-Grade HR

Employees, as well as employers, will continue to demand user-friendly workplace tech. This will push HR solutions to be fully cloud-based, mobile-enabled, open to APIs and meticulously designed with the end user in mind. Furthermore, HR tech and data will be accessed and shared with the ability to integrate across various platforms while connecting internal business silos.

Now there are technologies for every step of the employee lifecycle from candidate relationship management, to onboarding, to time/attendance tracking keeping HR and Talent Acquisition engaged with their workers from start to finish.

Says Bob Melk, Chief Commercial Officer, Monster: “For recruiting to be effective in 2018 and beyond, it must go beyond traditional methods. [There’s a] need for an integrated recruitment strategy spanning the entire candidate lifecycle. A multi-solution approach – combining marketing, digital, and analytics – is critical in moving recruitment stress to recruitment success.”

4. Employers Get Competitive About Benefits

This competitive hiring landscape can be particularly challenging for startups and small business without the name recognition of larger companies.

These fledgling businesses will need to get creative with the benefits they offer, such as lifestyle spending accounts, flexible work arrangements, student loan support, and health/wellness programs. Elastic and Salesforce not only offer generous vacation packages, they also pay their employees to volunteer for the causes they are passionate about. Netflix, on the other hand, extends paid parental leave to salaried employees so parents of any gender can take a year off with full pay following the birth or adoption of a child.

5. Delivering Against Diversity And Inclusion Initiatives Continues

With the unemployment rate expected to continue its decline, employers need to expand the talent pool. That means building pipelines for underrepresented and untraditional candidates.

Daniel Zhao, a senior data scientist at Glassdoor, notes changes in the tech sector saying to CBS News “We’ve heard a lot of anecdotal evidence that employers are starting to reduce qualifications or look for nontraditional workers. They might reduce qualifications from a master’s to a bachelor’s degree, or they might start an apprenticeship.”

As we move into 2020 there will be more changes to come! Let us know what you think is on the horizon @smartrecruiters #HiringSuccess.

The sun sets on our final day, and here are five learnings we’re taking with us from day two.

Riding high off the carnival treats from the last night’s SmartyParty, Hiring Success 19 attendees braved another misty morning in San Francisco as they congregated at Pier 27 for day two of panel discussions, breakout sessions, and the highly anticipated Hackathon and Recruiting Startup Awards ceremonies. Day one set a high bar for exciting content, but the crowd appeared ready for a second round after fueling up at the fresh donut bar. How could day two top yesterday’s activity?

Day one of Hiring Success 19 saw SmartRecruiters announce the launch of its new corporate social responsibility (CSR) program – Reverse Recruiting. This three-pillar approach to CSR includes SmartRecruiters donating one percent of the company’s equity towards a future foundation, making best-of-breed recruiting tools available to non-profits of all sizes through free and discounted products, and hosting Reverse Recruiting weeks across all global offices four times annually. And, for this last part, SmartRecruiters wants to invite you and your company to join in.

Learn more about Reverse Recruiting, and how to host your own event, here!

Now let’s turn our attention to today’s events to revisit the best reveals and takeaways for Hiring Success 19 – Americas.

1. New Hiring Success function to support customer achievement

Hiring Is Success laid out SmartRecruiters’ 2019 product roadmap, as well as a vision for the future of TA!

With the announcement of Rebecca Carr as SVP of Hiring Success comes a new branch of SmartRecruiters, staffed by TA experts (all of whom have previously held high-level positions in people functions) who will provide SmartRecruiters’ programmatic support in the areas of awareness, transformation, acceleration, and optimization.

Here’s what this support will look like on the ground:

Awareness – Business engagement around the metrics that matter, where the business needs to be, and how it will get there.

• Business Audit
• Implementation Success
• End-user testing and analysis

Transformation – Setting realistic goals for change in alignment with desired performance metrics & developing programs to support it.

• Product success
• In-product education
• Candidate and user Surveys

Acceleration: Differentiating against the competition with innovative programs, new technologies, and aggressive performance goals.

• Pilot programs
• Local events
• Business apps and integrations

Optimization: Consistent re-evaluation of existing processes and technologies to ensure your business is staying current against the market and competitors.

• Expert Workshops
• Hiring success dashboards
• Process and Technology Certification

2. What are the concrete actions you can take to turn good intentions into results when it comes to gender equality?

Gender Inequality offered solutions and insight into the microaggressions women experience through the hiring process and within company culture…

“It’s important to keep the channels of communication open, especially with the hiring manager. Keep explaining and re-explaining the actual needs of the role and how those need could be addressed by a diverse group of candidates.” – Sarah Blackmore

“Examine corporate values and how they apply to marginalized people. If you have a corporate value that says ‘assume good intent’, that value might tell someone that they have to assume that this person with more privilege is making a mistake for the first time.” – Margarett Quigley

“Having lived most of my life as a white male I never thought about privilege until my transition. Now, as a woman, I’ve lost my male privilege, I see that people generally treat gender equality as a woman’s problem, not as an everyone problem. People want to be themselves as at work, but women find it hard to simply do that.” – Joanne Lockwood

3. Optimizely sweeps gold at the 2019 Hackathon

Three teams locked themselves in a room for the last 24 hours to build on top of SmartRecruiters’ APIs for the grand prize of $5000 in this year’s Hackathon.

While each team competed admirably, Optimizely took the grand prize with Action Center, an app that solves for task completion lag time.

Right now, Hiring Managers have to search flooded inboxes for buried at-mentions, but what if all hiring tasks were in a dashboard that they could easily click into via mobile – resolving tasks in moments of free time throughout the day? Action Center does just that. Now, hiring managers have access to a task dashboard on the SmartRecruiters mobile app homepage where they can easily click into tasks and send digital nudges to other members of the hiring team to do the same.

4. Be a recession-proof recruiter

Matt Charney talked the long game in Recruiting in a Recession. Economy and labor trends are cyclical, and just because we aren’t in a recession now doesn’t mean there isn’t one coming. So, how should recruiters make themselves critical to business success in fat times so they stay competitive in the lean? Here’s the short answer…

• Treat recruiting like business school: ask many many questions.
• Make your hiring managers happy. Most recruiters rate their performance as stellar, while most hiring managers rate their recruiters as subpar – bridge that gap!
• Measure the metrics you, as a recruiter, control.
• Don’t spend budget just because you can – make sure it will affect P&L positively!

5. Recruiting Startup Awards

Over 100 recruiting technologies competed for a chance to pitch their products on the  mainstage, but five finalists got the chance to pitch to the entire Hiring Success 19 audience.  This was a moment to celebrate innovation in TA, and, after deliberation from an expert panel of judges – as well as the audience – Candidate.ID took gold.

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.

***

Thanks so much to all our attendees, and we hope to see you next time at Hiring Success 19 – Europe!

SmartRecruiters announces a new corporate responsibility initiative (CSR), and three other moments worthy of a mic-drop.

This morning, merry conference-goers were greeted by a classic case of San Francisco rain and fog. Is it any surprise that the number one tourist purchase in San Francisco is sweatshirt? However, damp environs proved no match for attendees’ giddy spirit or the palpable enthusiasm of a giant dancing alien named Winston the Smartian, SmartRecruiters’ brand new mascot.

The revelries began at the crack of 7:30. As conference-goers rolled into Pier 27 and began catching up over delicious cups o’ quiche, they couldn’t help but notice our friends at G2 crowd collecting surveys from SmartRecruiters customers. For every completed survey, SmartRecruiters made a $10 donation to Defy Ventures, a non-profit organization providing career training and mentorship for formerly incarcerated people in the US. Forgive the shameless plug, but it’s for a good cause, people!

But, enough of work. The sun is setting on our first day at the conference, and we’re all headed to the Smarty Party carnival, so let’s take a moment to recall some of the top moments of our first day at Hiring Success 19 – Americas.

When SmartRecruiters announced a new CSR: ‘Reverse Recruiting’ Invites Hiring Success Community to Give Back.

In the opening keynote by Jerome Ternynck, CEO and founder of SmartRecruiters, attendees learned about the launch of a new corporate social responsibility program, Reverse Recruiting!

This CSR goes well beyond the SmartRecruiters business. It starts with SmartRecruiters pledging one percent of their equity towards a future foundation. SmartRecruiters also wants to ensure non-profits have access to top-level hiring technology through free and discounted services for organizations of all sizes, and ends with everyone (including your company) getting involved with Reverse Recruiting!

What is Reverse Recruiting?

On Reverse Recruiting days, recruiters no longer work for their companies — they work for candidates. They invite rejected candidates and previously overlooked talent to review their resumes, conduct mock interviews, offer suggestions, and assist struggling candidates in their job search. And guess what? Managers are invited as well! What a great way for everyone to give back.

SmartRecruiters will participate in Reverse Recruiting days once a quarter in all of our global offices, and the hope is your office will consider this as well. Sign up to learn more and receive a toolkit with all the materials you need to host your very own Reverse Recruiting session.

How to ‘backtest’ your hiring practice like the folks in finance do.

In today’s Select track, Are Purple Unicorn Hires Repeatable, Robert Coombs, CEO of Head of Business Operations at CredSimple, talked algorithms. It’s a word we hear a lot, and before today this author defined it as ‘the magical computer thing that figures stuff out for us lowly humans’. Now I know it’s actually as simple as a set of rules we use to problem solve. A low-tech example of an algorithm is a recipe. We can reasonably expect chocolate chip cookies when we put the right ingredients through the right preparation and cooking steps, but let’s get more specific.

An algorithm, whether it be for cooking or financial gains, has several elements in common:

• Inputs –  The thing that is applied: data, ingredients, historical trends,
• Outputs – The thing that comes out: transactions, delicious cookies, great hires
• Definite –  Clear, unambiguous, and feasible
• Finite – Must have an endpoint
• Effective – Similar inputs yield similar desired outputs

So, let’s look at a recruiting example. Take one of your really successful hires, and let’s reverse engineer the process to see if your recruiting algorithm is effective. This is called ‘backtesting’.

We took the example of Roy Baladi, head of the marketplace for SmartRecruiters. Say we want to test effective keyword searches — we look at the job description and start pulling keywords to search for candidates. Again and again, Roy’s name does not show up in the shortlist. What does this tell us? Maybe we need to revisit the job description (i.e. our input) and revise our wording to be more relevant towards the role.

Some people call this process ‘dogfooding’, which basically means internally testing your external processes to see if they are indeed effective. Have hiring managers test this on themselves to increase empathy and produce more accurate job descriptions!

Three recruiting lessons from teachers, that are scalable for your TA function.

Speaking on the Attract track, Brian White of the Auburn-Washburn Unified School District 437 asked everyone seated at the session Get Ahead of Seasonal Hiring Challenges to close their eyes and think of a teacher who made a positive influence in their life. For most attendees, it didn’t take long for inspirational educators to come to mind. Whether it was the math teacher who sat with you until multiplying fractions finally made sense, or the tutor who helped you master the past perfect in Spanish, the examples are practically infinite.

When we are asked to think of similar moments with recruiters, the examples are far fewer. So what can TA take from teachers’ best practices to boost candidate experience?

1. Learn what’s important to the student. The most effective teachers find out what motivates their students, what they care about, and use that knowledge to inspire learning.
2. Learn to communicate based on the individual. For teachers, this can mean catering to different learning styles. Brian’s team used this advice to create a texting line for job inquiries and implement a chatbot.
3. Understand the student is more than a number. Even with the incredible volume of students teachers interact with every year, they think of each one as an individual person. For recruiters this can be as simple as including a personal detail their outreach to show talent they really care.

The biggest myth is that anyone is normal.

In today’s hire track, during Mind Mix: Neurodiversity at Work’ Sara-Jane Harvey, an autism advocate who also is on the spectrum herself, helped our audience understand the prevalence and value of neurodiversity in our society.

The biggest mental health myth is that there is indeed a “normal”. Normal doesn’t exist. If your mind is a computer, then the way you process information is your operating system, and just because your computer doesn’t run Windows doesn’t mean it’s broken.

There’s no need to be ‘realistic’ when setting goals.

In today’s closing keynote, Colin O’Brady, four-time world record holding endurance athlete, reminds us how crazy his goals seemed when he first set them.

When Colin told his mother from a hospital bed in Thailand, where he was recovering from third-degree burns covering a quarter of his body, that he wanted to train for a triathlon, she didn’t say, ‘let’s set a more reasonable goal.’ Even with doctors saying Colin may never walk normally again, his mother took him seriously, and immediately got Colin small weights to start training.

Eighteen months later, Colin entered the Chicago marathon — and won! He continued to set outrageous goals, and continued to check them off like items on a grocery list. Climb the seven highest peaks in the world in a record-breaking 132 days – check! Be the first to cross Antarctica solo and unaided – check!

“I don’t think everyone wants to go walk across Antarctica,’ said Colin, ‘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.”

From her unique perch in TA marketing, this CEO has an unparalleled view of the industry that you’ll want to see!

HR tech marketing is a pretty small niche to land on but for Maren Hogan, CEO and Founder of Red Branch Media, it just made sense. This “dyed in the wool” marketer was introduced to the burgeoning world of talent acquisition (TA) through her spouse, who was starting a recruiting agency back in 2008. Though that year turned out to be a most inauspicious time to start a company – need we recall the Financial Crisis of 2008 – the adventure did set Maren on her path towards becoming one of the leading experts in the HR and Recruiting Tech industry.

She laughs while reminiscing how Red Branch Media was intended to be a small-scale operation that would allow her to tweet from the couch. However, demand proved otherwise, and eight years later Red Branch has become a full fledged agency with 50 employees and presence at most major TA events.

Now, Maren brings her expertise to Hiring Success 19 – Americas, February 26-27 in San Francisco both a judge for the Recruiting Startup Awards and as the host of her own session, The Innovation Quadrant: How to Align You with Your Company. We talk with her today about what she has in store for us at the conference, and the role of brand in sourcing.

Can you give us a preview of your session?

My session, The Innovation Quadrant: How to Align You with Your Company, comes from my deep interest in what drives innovation within companies. I began looking at different types of innovation and building a quadrant for companies and individuals to map themselves based on the Global Innovation Index.

In our 30 minutes together, I’m going to give a simplified version of the innovation questionnaire I’ve developed, and attendees will grade themselves on a scale of A-to-D in each of the four quadrants: management, leadership, inspiration, and individual contributor.

You’ve said recruiters need to sell a job brand – not just employer brand. Could you explain the difference between the two?

Anyone who has worked at a large company knows the culture will vary in different departments, branches, or teams within the company and that’s why it’s important to get specific.

On a super high level, employer brand is the company’s value proposition and culture. I think of it as the promise a company makes towards all levels of its employees from VP to janitor. On the other hand, the job brand will speak to the unique culture of a group within the company, and the responsibilities of the role. It’s something that you have to work more closely with the hiring manager to figure out, including understanding what type of person does well in that role.

Why is it so important to get so specific when it comes to brand?

Maybe it’s my Omaha sensibility, or just my marketing standpoint, but it doesn’t make sense to me that a company would make a commitment to hiring someone without being sure they were the right person for the job. The average salary in the US is about 62k. That’s the cost of a house here in Omaha. I wouldn’t make that investment without being sure.

Talk to me a little bit about some new sourcing channels.

Obviously, sourcing channels are always evolving, the ones that were new and innovative a couple of years ago are no longer as relevant today. When I try to discover new sourcing channels, I put myself in the candidate’s shoes. Who am I? Where do I hang out, in person or online?

When people think sourcing, they generally think ‘online’, but sometimes it works to go super old school. I had one client sourcing college students and what worked there was posting signs in bar bathroom stalls.  

Another sourcer I know just kept a pile of candy on her desk and gave out a piece to anyone who delivered a name and number. It honestly worked more effectively than any $100 referral bonus program I’ve ever seen… I guess because of the immediacy?

It just depends on who you’re looking for aka your ‘candidate personae’ and where that personae will be.

You talk a lot about candidate personae, is creating candidate personaes something that is becoming more popular now?

Anecdotally I would say yes. I’ve been talking about candidate personaes for over five years now. It used to be when I asked a group who had candidate personaes for their job no one raised their hand, now almost everybody does.

Hear more from Maren Hogan on why she’s coming to Hiring Success 19 – Americas in her video below!

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.

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.

D&I may not have a finish line, but that doesn’t mean we want to have the same conversation 50 years from now.

Torin Ellis, host of SiriusXM CareerMix, author of RIP the Resume, and leading diversity and inclusion (D&I) strategist joins SmartRecuiters for the fourth year in a row at Hiring Success 19 – Americas for an expert panel on the economic value of diversity.

Torin started a recruiting firm in 1998 and what he saw in the industry wasn’t always pretty. Up close with transactional Talent Acquisition, he was privy to the dearth of diversity across industries. He found himself asking “why” a lot – Why was there only one black person on the whole North American sales team?… Why were there so few in management?… Why were company leaders talking about a ‘war for talent’, yet failing to consider non-traditional candidates? The list went on. And although in his capacity as a headhunter, he did his best to boost under-represented talent, he wanted to do more.

So, in 2010 he decided it was time to face the issue head on and founded the Torin Ellis Brand, a boutique HR agency  to advise companies on D&I strategies and risk mitigation.

During this time of economic recovery in the years after the 2008 financial downturn, D&I was not on the forefront of the workplace milieu, and when it was the news was dismal – homogeneous workforce and biased hiring processes, but Torin didn’t want to focus on the bad press.

“My thought then, and I follow this principle today, is that I need to get more people involved,” says Torin. “If we keep having punitive conversations about D&I, that aren’t solutions-oriented, then I know white men are going to run in the opposite direction. I know that white women may not participate. I know that black men are going to continue to be frustrated when they get passed over for a job or a promotion. And I know black women will continue to have to work until August to make the same amount of money that their white male counterparts made in by December of the previous year.”

His main goal is to not have the same conversation 50 years from now, and what he preaches are solutions-based D&I programs, that achieve more than a press release. Learn the three tenants of successful strategies, and the next challenge work culture faces.

Give us the outline for a D&I strategy that is more than window dressing?

• Empowerment
• Strategic Exploration
• Tactical Execution

Empowerment: We need people to speak up. D&I programs fail when there is silence. So part of the strategy needs to be grassroots where people leverage their own power to tell their higher-ups ‘D&I programs are something we need’. The other part is management creating avenues for those voices to be heard and the concerns addressed.   

Strategic Exploration: Be willing to sit amongst people that are different from you and explore a variety of strategies. Know that there will be gambles and mistakes. Be genuine with apologies, and don’t be afraid to recalibrate. Most of all, trust that the community will be receptive to genuine efforts.

Tactical Execution: Not everyone can be in the meeting making the decision, so include people at different levels. Talk to the people on the ground, understand their needs, and empower them in the execution of  the program goals. These people can be the evangelists, amplifiers, and action-takers that translate your D&I efforts from paper to practice.

Last year you started your session ‘The Power of Diversity’ by quoting Bernard Coleman the III, global head for D&I at uber saying: “The house burned in front of them but they wanted the data to prove it. That is the audacity and ridiculousness of making the business case: convincing one of the obvious. If the smoke doesn’t alarm you, the fire certainly should.”

Why did you share this and what does it mean?.

That quote arrested my spirit. It made me think, there is absolutely no reason, people like myself, should have to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to create a business case for diversity.

For the last 20 years, people have been saying there’s a war for talent. Well, if there’s a war for talent, then why are organizations not embracing – or even seeing – different talent pools? Why are organizations not looking for ambitious and creative ways to nurture non-traditional candidates?

Too many companies are paralyzed in their comfort zone of ‘we are preparing a white paper on why diversity is important’… It’s a thin veil covering a lack of progress.

Watch last year’s session below!

Looking to the future, it’s hard enough to implement D&I programs in a traditional workspace, how will organizations find success in the gig economy?

We have a more disparate workforce than we’ve ever had before. Companies struggled with D&I programs when everyone came to the same place to work. So, how are we going to do it when people are all over the place?… How are we going to make sure that remote workers still feel a sense of culture and inclusion?

The truth is we don’t have definitive answers to ‘what’ will be successful in this, the fourth industrial age. We are beginning to employ the tools from like big data, analytics, AI, and nanotechnology, which is a great start.

What people need to understand is that D&I doesn’t have a finish line, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get somewhere.

Meet the leaders who will make you sit up, lean in, and question everything you know.

Look forward to two days of learning and inspiration, throughout our 50 plus sessions including more than 100 speakers – these are just a few of the leaders joining us for Hiring Success 19 – Americas.  

“We’re bringing together business leaders to shape the future of recruiting,” says SmartRecruiters Founder & CEO, Jerome Ternynck. “Organizations now lean on talent acquisition to provide the competitive edge it takes to win. The Hiring Success conference arms practitioners with the latest in recruitment innovation, strategy, and best practices.”

February 26-27, over 1,000  TA leaders from global brands like LinkedIn, VISA, and Google join SmartRecruiters to define the future of recruiting. Three tracks – innovation, diversity & inclusion, and Hiring Success – allow attendees to customize their own learning adventure.

Meet seven of our fan favorites returning this year to share their stories of growth and perseverance.

Lou Adler

Lou’s life as a recruiter began in 1978 when he walked into a hot wheels manufacturing plant to hire a production manager and said… “Forget the job description, walk me through the plant, tell me everything that’s wrong, and I’ll find someone who can fix it.”

And to this day he lives by the same credo – hire someone who can actuallly do the job. He calls it performance-based-hiring and it’s the foundation for everything that has come since, from founding his own company, The Adler group to authoring two Amazon bestsellers.

Read our full interview with Lou Adler, and learn why this simple philosophy continues to disrupt the TA industry to this day.

Saumya Chopra

Have you ever tried to implement new tech and instead of making everyone’s lives better, the chaos of transition brought your team to a grinding halt? Saumya feels your pain. As People Technology Product Manager for Square, she’s been leading teams through system changes for seven years, successfully!  

Through all these implementations, integrations, and transitions she’s learned one thing: it’s not just about finding the right tech solution but getting everyone else on board.

Read more about Saumya Chopra, and how to make your end user the center of tech adoption.

Bill Boorman

Recruiting’s “man in the hat,” Bill Boorman is the harbinger of new tech and the creator of recruiting’s merriest meetup, #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!

Learn more about Bill and why he was dressed as Father Christmas the first time we met.

Robert Coombs

Over the last decade, Robert’s career has hit every note in the tune to success. The current COO for The Class by Taryn Toomey, has advised top government officials, held events at the White House, testified before the US Congress, spoken at TEDx, and had initiatives featured in The New York Times. So he thought finding a new job should be easy, he was wrong.

After a frustrating couple of months of being screened by bots, he decided to flip the hiring process on its head by building a bot to apply to jobs for him.

Learn the end result of this little experiment and what it means for TA.

Sandi Lurie

As Sr. Director of Global Recruiting for the digital experiment platform Optimizely with over 25 years of experience, Sandi isn’t afraid of a little trial and error. And she expects the same adventurous spirit from the recruiters she works with.

While she’s always trying new things, one constant is her firm belief in empathy as a recruiter’s most powerful tool, and the proof is in the pudding. Optimizely was voted 4th best place to work in Silicon Valley in 2018.

Understand how Sandi and her team have helped foster an environment of support and why it’s the best thing they could have done to boost candidate experience.

Hung Lee

The creator of recruiting brainfood (the talent acquisition newsletter eagerly awaited by over 9,000 people weekly) is always asking questions. How do I reach the right people? What is my mission? How can I do it better?

If you follow him on social media you’ll see Hung is constantly gathering feedback from his audience and actually incorporating it! Maybe that’s why he has been able to build an audience that’s not only large, it’s active!

Get inside this influencers process, and start engaging your crowd today!

Jo Lockwood

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 in businesses and other organizations.

Learn more about the obstacles trans candidates face and how your organization can step up.