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. 

Keen to rejig the status quo, SmartRecruiters pulled out all the stops for this year’s Hiring Success conference. Need proof? Check out the Hire18 sizzle reel and see for yourself.

In typical San Francisco fashion, March was cold, wet, and foggy. Meanwhile, the atmosphere at the Hyatt Regency in the city’s historic Embarcadero crackled, as SmartRecruiters welcomed nearly 1000 recruiting and TA professionals from across the globe to share insights, network, and discuss the future of the recruiting industry at our annual Hiring Success conference.

For 48 hours, the Hyatt glowed bright green as top industry analysts, thought-leaders, and speakers took to four stages with topics running the gamut from technological innovation to workplace empathy.

In addition to a seam-bursting schedule, Hiring Success 18 ushered in exciting company announcements including an AI recruiting assistant, on-demand analytics, and all that was just in SmartRecruiters CEO Jerome Ternynck’s opening keynote.

Between sessions, attendees perused vendor and sponsor booths, observed the first ever recruiting Hackathon, which saw the talented team at Visa create an internal mobility add-on for the SmartRecruiters platform in just 24 caffeinated hours. Attendees also found out why Honeypot.io bested the competition to become the Recruiting Startup of the Year.

Finally, no Hiring Success conference is complete without a rousing SmartParty. This year we served up unparalleled views of the San Francisco skyline — along with a taste of the VIP lifestyle — from the decks of the mighty California Hornblower yacht.

Check out the post-wrap sizzle reel below as you try and try to stifle your FOMO. We are already planning for next year’s event, so be sure to mark your calendars and we’ll see you at Hiring Success 19!

How many cities have you checked off your travel list but never really seen because you were stuck in a conference the whole time? Hire18 changed all that with this year’s Smarty Party!

Of course a work trip means you’re going to be working, so there isn’t always time to take in the Statue of Liberty or the Eiffel Tower. But this year, we at SmartRecruiters decided to find a way to share our beautiful Bay Area home with all the attendees of Hiring Success 18.

When you think of San Francisco you think of the Golden Gate Bridge, and indeed, the view of Joseph Strauss’ masterpiece cannot be overhyped. So we met at pier three of the Embarcadero Last Tuesday, March 13 to board the Admiral Hornblower, a seaworthy yacht that floated our annual Smarty Party around the city’s storied bay.

As we approached the bridge at sunset, the guests could not agree with the initial press reaction which scorned the design as ‘ugly’, and after two full days of demos, panels, labs, and speakers, attendees were ready to relax in the fresh air and take in the world-famous icon of engineering. Recharged after dinner, drinks, and ping pong, seamates networked with friends old and new, and processed what they’d learned.

Passengers fell in love with HR all over again and left ready for one last crazy day of awards, stories, discussions, and networking. And knowing they not only had takeaways for work, but that they can tell your friends they actually saw a bit of San Francisco, too.

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Who’s the hottest hire in Silicon Valley today? No, it’s not the data scientist, mobile app engineer, or digital marketer; it’s a user experience designer. Today, if your enterprise app isn’t beautiful, simple, elegant, and easy-to-use from day one, your company has little hope of becoming a billion-dollar business. Design is everything.

Data from jobs website Glassdoor showed that, in early May, 2,260 companies nationally were hoping to hire user experience (UX) designers.That compares to 975 companies trying to hire big data engineers, another “hot” hire. Jobs for user-experience designers are expected to grow 22% over the next 10 years; in the San Francisco Bay Area, epicenter of the current tech boom, Glassdoor reports the average salary for a senior UX designer at about $114,000, as of last month. The head of one New York-based startup recently told me he’s now paying UX designers two times what he pays other types of equally experienced designers, compared with just 30% more a few years ago. This CEO is actively recruiting UX gurus in Europe — despite the visa costs — because of what he sees as a pronounced shortage in the U.S.

Having been an entrepreneur and investor in enterprise software companies for 20 years, I’ve seen a huge shift in the last few years toward creating a stellar user experience. Remember when software companies like Oracle, Microsoft, and SAP sold massive, costly, complex applications that took months to learn? IT administrators spent several months installing and learning how to use the new software. Then, employees sat through training courses and muddled through complicated screens to figure out their new “productivity tools.” Ironically, the applications were so poorly designed that they hampered productivity; many end-users were so confused, they avoided using the apps all together.

Next-gen SaaS companies like Salesforce.com made rolling out software faster and cheaper, but the user experience is still pretty dreadful. Well, no one will put up with that now. IT administrators—and employees accustomed to using beautifully designed products like Apple’s iPhone–want to instantly “turn on” Web and mobile apps so employees can grasp new enterprise tools within minutes, with no formal training. In fact, some of the best designed applications are consumed by the employees directly with no training or involvement from IT whatsoever.

A few years ago, SaaS companies such as Box, Dropbox, Atlassian,and Zendesk led the charge to create elegant and easy-to-use enterprise apps. Today many enterprise startups like Captora, Any.do and SumAll (Battery Ventures is an investor in SumAll) are also baking design into their DNA. In each case, a UX designer was one of the first five hires, and product design was core to the company’s product strategy. This is in stark contrast to traditional enterprise software companies like Oracle, SAP and Salesforce, where design was an afterthought.

Let’s look at some examples to see how far we have come.

Box vs. Sharepoint 

Zendesk vs. Remedy

So, as an enterprise software entrepreneur, what does a design-driven world mean to your company at a practical level?

• First, make sure an experienced designer is one of your first five hires. This will ensure design is prioritized early in your company’s culture.
• Second, aim to hire one designer for every three to five engineers. This ratio may sound high, but remember that design is a competitive advantage over time. Better product design typically yields higher product engagement, quicker sales cycles and higher customer lifetime value.
• Third, consider making UX a VP-level role. It would not surprise me to see more enterprise companies elevate the design function to a senior status. One recent example of this is Trifacta, where two of the company’s senior executives have “Experience” in their title – Jeff Heer, cofounder and chief experience officer, and Tutti Taygerly, VP of user experience. Once designers see your company has a VP-level design role reporting directly to the CEO, they’ll be more likely to accept job offers, as they know their contributions will be valued.

Of course, large enterprise software companies aren’t about to give up on the design race without a fight, and companies such as IBM have publicly announced initiatives to hire thousands of UX designers. But startups have an edge in the “race to simplicity” because it’s far easier to create an elegant product from scratch than it is to fix a clunky and complex one.You can put lipstick on a pig (digitally), but it’s still a pig.

This article was written by Roger Lee in the My Say Column by Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.  Photo Credit ChrisLaBrooy. Learn more about SmartRecruiters, your workspace to find and hire great people.

It’s no secret that the labor market is broken, but instead of complaining about it, we need to take action and find a solution!  Last night I had the opportunity take action and give back in a very special way. I want to share my keys to job seeking with you.


For the last 60 years, The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce has supported local job seekers through The Job Forum. Every Wednesday evening a Panel of experts from Bay Area businesses volunteer their time to provide ideas, advice, counsel and encouragement to the job seekers (and career changers).  Each attendee’s goals are discussed, one at a time, in a group forum.

I shared my 3 keys to job seeking. Think Creative, Persistent, and Direct.

1. Creative: It’s vital for a candidate to think outside the box to get noticed.  Just simply submitting a resume and a cover letter (which is rarely read FYI) is not a enough to stand out in a stack of 300+ resumes. You got to be different, unique, creative!

A candidate last night mentioned that they were frustrated with the fact that they applied to all these jobs but weren’t hearing anything back. We brainstormed. She could submit her resume in person and say  with a smile say, “Hello, I’d like to work together!” Or search LinkedIn for mutual connections and send a message with resume along the lines of,” “Hi, I’m Avril and I want to work at your company. Here is my resume. Can you please pass it along to a hiring manager, or recruiter?” Keep in mind that most companies have a referral bonus, so that person you reached out to might be able to cash in on you as a candidate!

2. Persistent: It is simply not enough to submit a resume and wait to hear back.  Employers want to hire a person with drive, passion, and a will-not-quit attitude and that you can’t find that in a resume. Therefore you need to show them who you are and how bad you want it.  Another candidate last night told stories of how he had recently started following up on his applications with a phone call, and or Linkedin message.  He wouldn’t stop until he got a response. While yes that seems a bit crazy, as an employer I want someone that will go the extra mile.  I want someone that will do whatever it takes to get the job done. Status quo (i.e. submitting a resume with everyone else) is NOT enough to capture someone’s attention.

The Job Forum is a unique resource in a desperate time. These are individuals with diverse backgrounds that aren’t complaining but rather uncovering a useful way to find a solution.  If we really want to fix the labor market, we need more Job Forums.  We need more individuals that are willing to take action and give back.  This group of volunteers and job seekers showed me that there is hope, we just need to be willing to work together to find it.

And jobseekers, remember to be creative, persistent, and direct!

Charlie Nelson is the Director of Business Development at SmartRecruiters. ThumbNail Photo Credit NetWitsThinkTank.

SmartRecruiters Office Manager Melinda Johnson explains how our tech startup, SmartRecruiters, is creating its new place of business:

Over the past 6 weeks, our 750 square foot office space in SOMA has become a bit…shall we say…cozy. Desks (and the people to fill them) have doubled and with no end in sight to SmartRecruiters hiring, I expect we’ll soon be hanging desks from the ceiling.

SmartRecruiters Office Manager Melinda Johnson Knocks Down Walls.

This is a not uncommon problem for innovative tech companies in San Francisco at this time. Our products, our people(!), our brilliance booms quickly, unexpectedly, in spurts like fireworks on the Fourth of July… but our office space has yet to boom with us. So, what is one to do?  Look for a new office location, of course. I led the search. However, with so many companies booming simultaneously in such a small geographical area, the search for a new space became a race to get there first.

After two false starts, I am happy to report that SmartRecruiters has found our next home! We were unexpectedly lucky and, as David Smooke has said, “These are big walls.” We have moved north, toward Market Street. Our new office sits where SOMA Meets Downtown, a 5,000 square foot cement blank canvas with 20-foot ceilings (see more pictures below).

We’re half way through the remodeling process.

Walls have been torn down.  New walls have been built elsewhere.  Every day, more decisions need to be made – paint colors, desk layout, Foosball table handle shapes – all important decisions necessary to make our new office space as sleek and user-friendly as the great technology we will develop once we’re there.

Moving day is racing towards us.  Our excitement is tangible as we huddle together in our small office, sharing desks and good-naturedly maneuvering through the daily challenges that arise when you stuff 10 folks into an one room office. Of course we will miss the office that we have called home for the last year and a half.  But we have more brilliance waiting to shine and now we have the space to sparkle.

Melinda Johnson loves to create organization out of chaos.  She is an artistic yet precise tech geek with a degree in Performing Arts.  Master of all things administrative, she’d be happy to build you a web page, a complex travel itinerary, a benefits plan or a piece of furniture.  She enjoys reading post-apocalyptic science fiction novels, coercing yarn into knit and crochet objects and photographing the world around her. Also, she is the Office Manager at SmartRecruiters.

Check out some of our tech office building progress so far: