Virtual reality, instrumental jam sessions, live chat-bot battles, and everything else you would – and wouldn’t – expect from an HR conference.

Hiring Success 18 EU is here! 250 Talent Acquisition leaders from around the globe – including yourself, perhaps – have landed in Berlin for 48-hours of thought-provoking interactive sessions and live demos on three main tracks, #Innovation, #Inclusion, and #HiringSuccess, that will delve into the most important topical issues in recruiting today.

With over 30 sessions to choose from in only two days, we thought it wouldn’t hurt to recommend a few!

Have you hired a refugee?

#Inclusion

Is your company interested in starting a program to hire refugees? The first step is empathy and understanding. Hear from actual displaced persons about what it means to leave behind the life you know and rebuild everything from the ground up. The second half of the session invites informational Scientists from Humboldt University to participate in a panel discussion to deep dive into the programs available to refugees now, and how your company could start building its own.

Unlock potential with augmented and virtual reality

#Innovation

Explore the burgeoning fields of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, first through art, then though recruiting. Josephine Ackerman COO & Deputy Global Head Art, Culture & Sports at Deutsche Bank gives a live demonstration of how her company uses AR and VR to bring artworks to life in contemporary art exhibitions they support. These new technologies allow an artist’s intention and historical context to come to the forefront of the museum experience without dense wall text. Using only a smartphone, a static image or text can turn into a rotating font of information. Learn how Deutsche Bank and others have begun to apply the same principles to job advertising, onboarding, and training.

Battle of the Bots

#Innovation

Watch the leading chat bots battle it out in a live face-off. Leading recruiting chatbots will have a face-off in a live battle. Ask these virtual helpers questions to test the limits of their natural-language processing, get to know their unique personalities, and see how gracefully they fail. Your vote determines the winner at the end!

Accelerate revenue with TA

#HiringSuccess

Stop looking at TA as a cost center. Learn how the recruiting team at Microsoft were able to accelerate revenue for Azure Cloud during their digital transformation with heir Director of TA for EMEA, Elke Jorens. This workshop shows how infusing data from market and funnel-analysis contributes to the bottom line, so you can apply that same expert methodology to a project of your choice.

Synchronicity

#Inclusion

Whether you are a practicing musician or haven’t picked up an instrument since the recorder, this session is for you. Join the MIT grad and leadership expert, M Baha in an interactive jam session that uses the principles of music to promote the tenets of diversity and inclusion in a business setting.

Inspire your Remote Workforce

#Inclusion

While the draw of global talent is great, managing remote teams is still largely unexplored territory. Which is why we brought in Beat Buhlmann, one of the few people in the world who have a doctorate related to managing virtual teams, and the current GM for Evernote.  

Buhlmann lays out the benefits of employing a remote workforce and then shows how to address the challenges these offsite teams pose,  from both a culture and a tech standpoint. Walk away with the tools to sell your board on remotes hires, and the know-how of how to engage them throughout their tenure.

Internal Career Pathing

#HiringSuccess

Companies unanimously recognize the value of employees who have experience in more than one department, yet these high performers remain an anomaly rather than a matter of course. The abstract promise of great return on investment (ROI) in hiring, never seems to be enough to push internal mobility initiatives to the top of the to-do list. So we bring you the director of people for Native Instruments, Laura Moreno Salinas, and the Director and Program Lead Accelerate One HR at Coca-Cola European Partners, Sanam Moayedi-Stummer to demonstrate the success of their internal career pathing programs and help you get started on your own.

Recruiting Startup Awards

#Innovation

Step into the future of TA technology with our Recruiting Startup of the Year Competition, where the newest and most daring startups in HR pitch it out on our main stage. The winner will receive €9,000 in sponsorship and an article about them written by a leading TA influencer. The contest began July 1st, when these fledgling startups leveraged the strength of their social network to be voted into the top five, who will now convince the expert panel at Hiring Success 18 they have what it takes.

Where technology and recruiting intersect, industry expert Lisa Hu sees room to rejig the status quo.

For most people, their daily interactions with Augmented Reality rarely extend beyond a few encounters with Pokémon Go players haplessly navigating crowded sidewalks and staring at their phone screens. However, according to John Hanke, CEO of Niantic, the creators of the popular mobile game, Augmented Reality will soon have widespread applications. For now, it is finding footing in the modern tech space.

“The potential for Augmented Reality is much bigger” he said to audiences at the GamesBeat Summit in California earlier this week, before he quoted Arthur C. Clarke’s adage, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Pushing the boundaries of technology requires testing, and for Hanke, the video game industry is the ideal space for experimentation, as gamers, Hanke claims, “are willing to put up with some glitches and imperfections in tech.”

For Lisa Hu, senior-vice president of Blippar, the front lines of the Augmented Reality proving ground are supermarket shopping aisles. To demonstrate, Hu launches her company’s new mobile app by aiming her phone camera at a bottle of Heinz ketchup.

The squishy receptacle of red goo springs to life: colorful animations, playful sound effects, pop-up recipe suggestions, all flitting in sequence across her roving screen. Her point being, that even the most unassuming – to say nothing of sickly delicious – everyday objects can trigger Augmented Reality interactions.

For the uninitiated, Augmented Reality (AR to the initiated) is a composite view of the real world and computer-generated visuals, sounds, or other information, brought to life on your device screen. 

First developed by the US Air Force in the early 90s, AR was designed to improve human performance in direct and remotely operated tasks. Now, companies like Anheuser-Busch and Fidelity Investments are experimenting with AR for consumer marketing and brand messaging. Given the relatively easy integration onto your smart device – a feat inconceivable in 90s consumer terms –  there’s been a resurgent interest in AR.

But is this trend-heavy fascination just another marketing ploy? Through applications like Blippar, consumers can pull interactive, custom digital content straight to their phones through the camera lens. While scanning objects in the grocery store aisles for hidden digital content seems like nothing more than marketing fodder, AR has proven to be hugely effective at engaging users. And by Lisa’s accounts, these interactions are genuine and insightful.

Sure, AR is ideal for targeting consumers in today’s digital age, but with much of the technology still unexplored, we may soon see AR play a role in areas as specific as talent acquisition and candidate experience. As it stands, AR has only just tapped into the commercial market, but Lisa, who spent the last five years working in the AR industry, sees great potential in recruiting alongside other promising tech like Artificial Intelligence.

From the candidate’s perspective, AR can connect them to businesses aligned with their career trajectories. “Companies can digitize brochures, advertisements; it can be anything,” says Lisa. “It’s a new way to learn about a company, and there’s value in that.”

For employers, AR offers the opportunity to engage with candidates, while also collecting valuable analytics about those with whom the tech interacts.

“We can track the journey of a candidate throughout different stages, from the interview process to hiring,” she explains. “You can create ongoing experiences throughout that journey for a candidate turned employee, and it can be dynamic.”

These experiences can be as simple as employee testimonials hidden in company literature, or, citing a recent example from Fidelity Investments, a ‘family tree’ composed of various company teams or departments, outlining their roles and functions to the overall business.

The biggest challenge facing Augmented Reality in the future? Misinformation.

“In the whole AR space there is a lot of noise,” says Lisa, breathing a sigh of slight disappointment. “You have all these different and great ideas being turned into products, but the problem is, there’s a bit too much conflicting information that might confuse people about what AR is.”

Lisa champions the notion that companies looking to implement AR must define their goal and purpose before implementation. Is your company targeting specific customers as part of a digital marketing strategy? Does AR allow your business to execute interactive campaigns with significant ‘wow’ factors? The answers to these questions will ultimately determine whether or not Augmented Reality can help your business.

Embracing AR as a means to achieve successful hires can be well worth the effort and financial investment. However, new technology does not guarantee business success without a clear sense of company brand and values. Even with new innovation, HR remains a ‘people’ business.

Companies that invest in AR without defining their business goals will not succeed, as technology only enhances existing strategies and structures; it does not create new ones.

“Technology can be one part of that,” she argues, “but what is it that’s going to make candidates feel a difference as to why they want to work at that company — Tech or no tech?”