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. 

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Exceptional Speakers

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

2. Network with industry leaders.

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

3. Three topical tracks to guide your learning adventure.

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

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

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

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

4. Explore the latest diversity and inclusion initiatives.

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

5. Dive into the best practices of tomorrow.

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

6. Stay abreast of innovation in recruiting tech.

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

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

7. Location, location, location.

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

8. See Winston dance again!

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

via GIPHY

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.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hiring Success Hackathon Grand Prize: $5,000

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

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

Recruiting Startup Awards Grand Prize: Gold Sponsorship for #HIRE20

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recruiters and TA professionals gathered for the second day of SRD18 to share insights, network, and beef up their recruiting toolboxes—here’s what we walked away with.

“What is your power word?” asked Anna Ott and Robindro Ullah as they welcomed audiences to the main stage of the Ellington Hotel in Berlin for the final day of Social Recruiting Days 2018. “Transparency”, “Surfacing”, and “Algorithm” flitted across the screen as the two conference emcees discussed how these terms are quickly becoming part of the modern recruiting lexicon.

More than a simple etymological exercise, exploring the ideologies behind these words is important when considering the future of candidate experience, workflow, and technology in the TA industry. After all, with issues like candidate experience and artificial intelligence moving to the forefront of conversations surrounding new trends in recruiting, it’s no wonder why “Transparency” and “Algorithm” made the buzzword short list.

Discussions about what’s next in recruiting were the major focus of the day’s schedule, which featured interactive sessions that armed recruiters with new tools to do their jobs better, explored topics of diversity and inclusion, and took a deep dive into the challenges of being human in a digital industry. For those who were unable to attend the conference, here are five of our biggest takeaways from Social Recruiting Days 2018.

1. A candidate’s resume or CV does not indicate their performance in the three major criteria of top performers.

Traditionally, resumes and CVs have been a recruiter’s bread and butter, but according to Bas van de Haterd, truly evaluating a candidate goes well beyond what’s on paper. In his session, “Beyond the CV”, Bas shared his insights after experimenting with a number of industry-grade digital assessment tools to see how data reveals a candidate’s job compatibility.

According to Bas, ambition, talent, and character, are three key areas that distinguish great candidates from good ones, and many of them can be quantified with assessment tools. “It’s about testing the candidate’s genetic and psychometric abilities,” said Bas, through game-based tests like those from BrainsFirst, which accurately measure a candidates’ cognitive abilities, their eye for detail, problem-solving abilities, or communications styles—skills that would not be found on a typical CV.

2. Having an LGBT+ friendly culture is in the top 3 criteria of choosing where to work.

In fact, in the US and DACH regions, having an inclusive workplace culture was ranked number one priority for LGBT+ employees, more than salary level and geographical location. This reporting came from Stuart Cameron, founder of Uhlala, who survey over 4000 LGBT+ professionals worldwide for his presentation about one of the largest underserved talent communities in the world.

According to Cameron, the number of self-identifying LGBT+ people worldwide is roughly 340 million people, but only 50 percent of the population feels comfortable enough to be open at work. Moreover, 80 percent would go back in the closet if they changed employers. In the UK, 33 percent of LGBT+ employees feel that being out would be a career risk.

Cameron highlights companies that are working to build more inclusive work cultures for their LGBT+ employees, applauding PayPal, McKinsey, Adidas, Allianz, Apple, Facebook, and Google for their efforts, but recognizes that we still have a long way to go to make this community feel safe, celebrated, and included at work.

3. The more digital we become, the more human we must be

“Feel first, think second”, says Dave Hazelhurst, partner and director of client services at Ph. Creative, a global marketing an advertising agency. “Think about the actions and behaviors you want to drive”, he continues, addressing the recruiters in the audience. To Hazelhurst, understanding your customers and clients—or in this case, candidates—is how you not only build a killer employer brand, but how you attract the best talent.

Hazelhurst looked at the pain vs. pleasure dynamic, claiming that we are far more motivated by pain than we are pleasure, so recruiters should be thinking about how to ease a candidate’s fears, doubts, and worries first. From there, we can consider how to make the candidate experience more enjoyable—”effortless” according to Hazelhurst.

4. If you want to continually hire the wrong people, stick to traditional recruiting practices

Dr. Uwe Kanning, professor of Business Psychology at Osnabrück University, brought equal parts knowledge and laughter to the main stage with his tongue-in-cheek session about the ways that companies are making the wrong recruiting and hiring decisions. Dr. Kanning claims that, despite hundreds of HR-related publications are distributed each year, most hiring teams still “go with their gut” rather than look at what the data says.

Dr. Kanning argues that most interviews follow a similar pattern that rarely includes job-specific evaluation criteria. As a result of our human bias, we base our decisions on criteria that has nothing to do with the actual job requirements—factors like attractiveness, weight, or ethnicity. Traditional “assessment systems” are built on intuitive decision making, and the longer we rely on the old way of recruiting, the more companies will be stuck with the wrong candidates.

5. We may soon get rid of CVs, resumes, and cover letters—and both candidates and recruiters will be better off for it.

MoBerries, Talents Connect, and Talentcube took over the main stage to discuss how their services are redefining the status quo of talent acquisition. From changing how recruiters source candidates for IT and STEM positions, to swapping the traditional CV and cover letters for video interviews, the future of recruiting looks to be going all digital, mobile-optimized, and no longer reliant on candidate-provided documentation.

Video interviewing remains a top tech choice for companies this year, with two-thirds of the World’s Most Attractive Employers (WMAEs) already using the technology according to Universum’s 2018 Employer Branding Now report.

These changes, they argue, represent what candidates want from their job-search experience, make it easier and more convenient for them to apply, and limits the probability of candidate misinformation or misrepresentation. It’s clear that recruiting is moving towards a more candidate-centric model, and these slick startups see a chance to make the process faster, better, and more technology enabled for both candidates and recruiters.

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

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

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

When we learned two strategies for defeating our unconscious biases.

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

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

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

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

— Kasia Borowicz (@kmborowicz) September 20, 2018

When recruiters hacked Tinder to find programmers.

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

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

— Piotr Podolski (@pyortp) September 19, 2018

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

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

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

— Falko Pleß (@f_pless) September 20, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

— Piotr Podolski (@pyortp) September 19, 2018

When Enboarder took the trophy for the Recruiting Startup Awards

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

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

Check out Enboarder in the SmartRecruiters marketplace.

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

— Enboarder (@Enboarder) September 21, 2018

Jenny Jung coaches leaders on how to be better at their jobs through peer-based mentor groups—topped with a healthy dollop of self-awareness.

The tech industry has an intimate relationship with failure. With figures estimating that 70 percent of all startups collapse, and the phrase “fail fast” now an established mantra, executives must have the skills to negotiate such choppy waters, motivate their crews, and “work under constant pressure to ship”.

As it happens, failure is where Jenny Jung’s job begins. “Many leaders find it very hard to identify a safe space inside their organization where they can offload or speak about challenges that they’re facing at work with people who truly understand ,” says Jung. Having worked with fast-growing businesses for the past decade, most recently as EyeEm’s VP of People & Operations, Portfolio Manager at Lakestar, and COO of Factory, Jung recognized a lack of peer support at the executive level. “I realized that, by nature, some leadership and executive roles are highly isolated,” she says. “Many don’t have any true peers.”

Inspired by her experience with US-based coaching firm Reboot, Jung teamed up with her colleagues Anna Löw and Jenny Buch in Spring 2018 to launch MindTheLeader, a consultancy focused on leadership development through peer coaching programs and one-on-one sessions, whether for founders, HR leaders, or new/first-time managers.

We caught up with Jenny ahead of her session at Hiring Success Berlin to find out more about why MindTheLeader focuses on startup leadership, and the one thing executives can do to be better at their jobs today.

What are you most looking forward to at Hiring Success?

Fresh faces and new people are always inspiring. Even if you spend two days at an event talking with strangers about things you’re passionate about, you always learn something or make some progress. I’m also very much looking forward to meeting people I should have been catching up with for months.

Why is leadership at the startup level so crucial for business success?

It’s a dramatically underserved area, and having been on the operational side many times, I’ve seen companies fail because they wouldn’t invest in—or wouldn’t pay attention to— aligning around basic leadership principles and forming managerial skills without mixing the two up.

Both through our group sessions and in my individual consulting work, I stumbled upon the same questions, many of which are basic managerial questions, like how do I navigate this tricky conversation? How do I give this feedback in a way that is impactful without being offensive or demotivating? How do I help somebody on my team to grow into a new position? Why is it OK if the earliest employees leave after two years?

These are cyclical problems in startup growth, and they’re very basic human issues that can be very easily addressed if you just take the time and pay attention.

What sort of training do you offer at MindTheLeader?

It depends on the program. In our upcoming New Manager program we train basic management skills; in the HR program, the participants decide which topics they want to focus on (i.e. remote work, psychological safety for employees, dealing with co-founder conflicts).

What all programs have in common is that we teach basic peer-coaching skills rooted in a systemic-constructivist perspective to our participants, and then over time we, as facilitators, become supervisors as they coach each other. The methodology has a relatively low barrier of entry.

How is the leadership coaching at MindTheLeader unique?

Our secret sauce is the mix between the introspective work provoking self-awareness, the hands-on tools we train, and the safe space we offer to help leaders cope with—and grow from—their challenges.

I think we bring our own experiences working in tech that go beyond programs that simply offer training. We also don’t pressure anyone to speak in our group sessions. If you don’t want to talk you don’t have to—you can just do that work for yourself.

Above all, we do the hands-on work on organizational development, and we’re well-equipped to do so. We have enough credibility in the market to say hey, “we know our shit.”

What is one thing leaders can do today to make them better at their jobs?

I think self-awareness and the openness to information coming from sources that are dramatically different from your own perspective are the key skills that it takes to be a good leader. By awareness, I mean taking time to self-reflect, uncover behavioral and thought patterns, allow yourself to also be outside of the leadership role, and, most importantly, you’re still a human being. Stop every once in a while and just ask yourself how you are.

Hiring Success 18 Europe bedrocks itself on the three topics your TA team should be most thinking about: innovation, inclusion, and hiring success.

No longer powered by fax blasts into the great unknowable aether, Talent Acquisition has become an industry at the crossroads of inclusion, technology, and business strategy. A place of organizational importance unimaginable to the backroom resume-shufflers of yesteryear is now our reality. We asked for a seat at the table, we got it, and now we have to bring it.

Business leaders now have begun to view the people-function of their companies as a strategic asset, as they should. The challenge then becomes to keep abreast of the ever-shortening cycles of innovation, and that’s what Hiring Success 18 Europe, September 19th-20th in Berlin, is all about. Two days of non-stop workshops, demos, interactive presentations, and collaboration for practitioners to engage with the latest in best-practice for tech, diversity, and on-the-ground recruiting.

We’ve broken it down into three most challenging topics facing TA today, check out our full agenda here!

Innovation: big data, bots, blockchain, and AI.

In our exploding age of hyper-data, learn how recruitment advertising is poised to take over traditional job posting in “The Future of Job Advertising.” Watch chatbots battle it out live to answer your questions and prove their language-processing chops in “Battle of the Bots.” Will blockchain create a new gig economy, and how can this crypto-tech be the answer for data security compliance? Find out in “Blockchain in Recruiting.” Talk AI, or demo rather, with interactive presentations that illustrate just how far we’ve already come in “The March of Artificial Intelligence.”

Also: augmented reality, assessment, and analytics!

Inclusion: leverage social media, refugee candidates, and remote work.

Sure, you have candidates, but how do you turn this random group into a community? Find out how in “The Art of Community Building.” Tap into marginalized talent markets with “Have Your Hired a Refugee.?” If you are short on candidates, maybe your bias is blinding you: in “Ageism at Work” recruiters learn to root out irrelevant judgments so they can hire the best people. Go remote without losing engagement with these tips in “Inspire Your Remote Workforce.”

Also: why unlikely applicants make great hires and gender parity!

Hiring Success: leadership strategy, employer brand, and zainy campaigns.

Get on the same page as leadership in “Aligning the Board with Your TA strategy” and anything is possible. Your company is great to work at, so make sure the candidate knows it too in, “How to Pitch Your Company.” Or get inspired by the innovative recruiting campaigns in “Creative Recruiting Combinations,” spoiler – someone uses Tinder.

Also: hyper-growth, scaling through IPO, recruiter brand, and internal mobility!

Are you ready for the future of recruiting? Get to know some of our featured speakers here!