“You are who you hire.
So who will you be in 5 years? Or in 20?”
Last night marked the Berlin (and debut) edition of our SmartX gathering, a global series of events dedicated to all things HR Tech. SmartRecruiters CEO, Jerome Ternynck, VP DACH, Michael Lazik, Director Product, Hessam Lavi and I were delighted to welcome over a hundred guests. Against the towering backdrop of Jonas Burgert’s enormous artwork at Blain Southern Gallery, we were set for an evening of delicious drinks and food and discussions of one of today’s biggest challenges – connecting people to awesome jobs.
Just consider the numbers for a second: the average lifespan of a Fortune500 company is now down from 75 years in 1955 to 15 now. In 2020, the demand for highly skilled digital natives in the US alone will exceed supply by 40 million. The bottom line is this – only those organizations that are able to win the best talent will succeed in these fast-changing times. At least to me, personally, this is a challenge that spurs me on every day.
It was simply amazing to see, last night, that so many others share the same interest – and were curious enough to hear and talk about SmartRecruiters’ approach to solve this challenge! What excited me the most about yesterday was the diversity of attendees – from enterprise size C-suite members to startup founders to thought leaders, each echoing the same excitement about HR Tech – which may seem, to those not in the field, perhaps a little nerdy (I’ll readily admit that it seemed that way to me when I ventured into HR Tech four years ago when co-founding Jobspotting, the company we sold to SmartRecruiters this last January!)
Along with the opening of SmartRecruiters’ Berlin office last month, last night was a real reminder of our shared vision and its relevance. Together, Jobspotting and SmartRecruiters optimize the entire recruitment process: SmartRecruiters was conceived by Jerome after four years of R&D work as a user-friendly, scalable ATS – covering all the steps between receiving an application to making a successful hire. With the integration of Jobspotting’s recruitment AI next October, together we will be able to start right at the beginning of the recruitment process for our candidates – providing intelligent, multi-channel matching of jobs and talent based around required skills as much as soft factors (e.g. company culture). Jerome put that shared vision into words over dessert last night: “It’s great to create one job for one person. But what we want is to create millions of jobs for millions of people.”
I do hope you will stay with us on that journey and come and share your thoughts at our next events, in an email, or wherever else we might meet!
Click on the image below to view our complete gallery. Cheers to Hiring Success!
