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.

The average job description is a breeding ground for meaningless corporate babble, but it’s mostly these six overused, vacuous phrases that steer candidates away rather than hold their interest.

To excel at anything requires a finely honed BS meter, and few things fail the smell test like overused corporate jargon in the workplace. Seeing the same phrases in your company job descriptions is equally groan-inducing for candidates. Writing job descriptions can feel like a time suck for recruiters who are pressured to quickly fill multiple positions, and this often results in job postings riddled with office lingo that end up discouraging qualified candidates from applying. More words do not equal more meaning, and a word salad can hinder the process, taking three times longer to fill the open position.

You want accurate and engaging job descriptions to attract high-quality talent, improve your organization’s time to hire, and drive more candidate traffic to your company. Job seekers read a lot of job descriptions—natch—and can see through hollow jargon, so before you put anything out there, take a break, read it again, get a second pair of eyes, and purge your JD’s of the following howlers. You’ll only look better in the end.

1. “The fast-paced environment”
This all-too-common phrase in the startup world tries to mask the reality that a new hire will start his or her first day weeks behind schedule with no one available to train them. A common excuse for this is a lack of “bandwidth”–another word to avoid unless you’re hiring at an internet provider–means that no one has the time or motivation to invest in training a new employee. If your organization needs to hire someone who can get up to speed quickly, outline what the candidate is expected to learn and accomplish within the first few months of the role.

2. “Excellent interpersonal/communication skills”
A recruiter should be able to tell from a quick glance at a candidate’s resume and cover letter whether or not he or she is organized and articulate. Instead, listing these “soft skills” suggest a new hire shouldn’t be abrasive or disagreeable with other employees. Instead, give practical examples of how public speaking, presentations, or collaborative projects are major functions of the role, and how candidates can succeed in these areas.

3. “Self-motivation”, “self-starting”, “proactive”
Translation: We want someone to predict the future, to know exactly what management wants, when they want it, and without them asking for it. Rather than these descriptors, use the job description to define expectations for the role, establish clear metrics for success, and goals that demand high-level job performance.

4. “Amazing, fun company culture”
Beyond the meaningless superlatives that do nothing to describe the company’s function or culture, phrases like this show that company leadership has only just discovered the concept of employer branding. Some companies will praise their office perks as a way to distract from underwhelming salaries. Employees are a company’s greatest brand advocates, so find ways to highlight the workplace culture through testimonials and other positive messages, rather than throwaway BS no one can define.

5. “Competitive salaries”
While salaries can be negotiated with respect to a candidate’s prior work experience, this term mostly means a company will ask for your expectations and cull the CVs asking more than they can pay. Financial compensation is one of the top concerns for prospective candidates, and with job aggregators like Glassdoor advertising estimated salary ranges in candidates’ search feeds, companies are much more likely to attract and convert candidates with an accurate salary range.

6. Hashtags. Stop it with the hashtags—you’re a grown-up
Job descriptions can feel dry, but it’s far better to err on the side of formality than feign cool, and using hashtags to convey a sense of playfulness. This doesn’t impress serious candidates. Even if you’ve been dying to trend #spreadsheets4lyfe, odds are candidates will take you less seriously if your job description reads like an Instagram caption. Make a strong statement with your company brand— it speaks louder than even the choicest of trendy hashtags. #tryharder