Ronan Mooney built the recruitment team behind one of the world’s largest tech conferences, and he’s here to share how pitching a company is a lot like promoting events for over 100,000 annual attendees.

Web Summit is an organization of more than 200 individuals focused on disrupting the conference industry with technology and data science, running a series of international gatherings across the world, with the flagship annual event held in Lisbon, Portugal. Assembling the workforce to power a global enterprise isn’t accomplished in a day, but for Ronan Mooney, Chief of Staff & Head of HR at Web Summit, this mammoth endeavor took under a year.

Mooney joined WS in spring of 2017, and since then he’s doubled the company’s headcount, hiring extensively for remote positions across the globe, helping Web Summit open offices in Lisbon, Hong Kong, and Toronto. But what goes into organizing tech conferences that attract Fortune 500 companies as well as the most innovative startups? We sat with Ronan Mooney to discuss how to pitch your company to candidates, the current state of recruiter marketing, and what motivates top-quality talent in today’s job market.

How do you pitch Web Summit to a global audience?

We don’t run our business like an events company. We run it like a tech company using a data-driven approach to make informed decisions, building our own technology to plan and execute events. When recruiting, we tell candidates about the challenges we face and how we’d like them to help provide the solutions.

What were some of the challenges in organizing Web Summit?

We are only ever as good as our last event. We have gone from running one event in Dublin to running four events around the world in fewer than five years. The 100,000 attendees we have come to our events because of the high quality we provide, and managing this is a constant moving dial, as new challenges evolve alongside amazing opportunities. We continue improving our planning and execution processes to our highest standards.

What advice can you give to other organizations when pitching their company?

Don’t ‘sell’ your company or role to prospective candidates. If you do, stop. Candidates have never been more informed about what our businesses are like to work in thanks to the internet, so set expectations and be transparent.

Run your TA strategy like you’re in a startup, by keeping a critical eye on your hiring rates and your salary levels. Make the hard choices on what your hiring focus is and how it impacts on your hiring plan. Focus on the consistent traits and values every hire should share, and get the buy-in from your internal stakeholders (not just the hiring managers) on the sourcing, screening, and closing process.

What is true today about pitching a company/event that wasn’t true a few years ago?


Talent has never had more choice on where and how they work. Companies don’t just compete to attract talent, but countries and even cities are factors as well. This is driving up the costs of talent acquisition, and requires employers to think beyond just increasing salaries and looking to areas such as career pathing, internal mobility, and work/life balance.

When pitching an event, attendees want to know that they will hear quality content, real thought leadership, real debate; that they will make meaningful connections. That’s the similarity between our events and our hiring strategy—we want to make a real connection based on shared views and interests with our candidate, to understand their views delivering quality and innovation.

How has recruiter marketing changed during your career?

People are finding jobs using their phones—uploading their CV to Indeed or signaling they are open to new opportunities on LinkedIn, and cherry-picking top opportunities. It has made candidates reactive rather than proactive in their search and we have to be smarter in how we market our roles to them, whether that’s in the job titles we use or where we choose to invest our marketing budgets.

The ‘passive candidate’ is a myth—all of us are on a spectrum of being actively open to new opportunities. There is zero evidence to support the idea that any of us are loyal to our employers to the point that we would not be open to a conversation with another company.

This fact should hearten and terrify us.

Getting your new hires up to speed takes time, but without a positive onboarding experience, many employees lose interest. Here are five ways to keep up the momentum—and engagement—in those first few days.

So, you sent an offer letter, the candidate accepted, and now you’re ready to sit back and congratulate yourself for a job well done. Your bit isn’t over just yet. You’ve still got to onboard. For new hires, the first few days are hugely important to their future work performance, their job retention, and their overall satisfaction. Research conducted by IBM found that when employees have regrets about accepting a new job, they are three times as likely to leave. However, positive employee onboarding experiences can be a crucial first step for everyone you welcome into your organization.

But before you drop a payload of paperwork on your new hire all at once, here are five ways to maximize your onboarding, and keep new employees happy and excited about their career decision.

1. Start Onboarding Before Day One

This one sounds like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at how many companies wait until the last minute—or the day of—to start onboarding a new hire. The fact is, the sooner you begin, the more up to speed your new employee will be before he or she starts. It’s important to consider your employer branding—if you’re giving new hires the silent treatment between the offer letter and their first day, you’re already sending them the wrong message. Personal touches like an email that walks them through their first day, a welcome pack with a personal note or card, or even a phone call from a manager, can help ease anxieties.

More pragmatically, the time before a new hire starts is prime to begin the dreaded paperwork process. No one wants to spend their first few hours, or days, sitting in HR working their way through a mountain of forms, so send them important documents such as employee handbooks, I-9s, payroll forms, and non-disclosure agreements beforehand. Even better, set up a portal that contains digital versions of important documents that employees can complete during downtime, or throughout the week, rather than in one long sitting.

2. Make the Process Cross-Departmental with Collaborative Onboarding

Pairing up your new hire with a seasoned employee to teach them the ropes is a tried-and-true method, but maybe it’s time to try a collaborative approach, which builds rapport with other teams much faster than one-on-one onboarding. It’s a challenge for any one department to know the answer to every question to arise during onboarding, so it makes sense to rely on each team for their area of expertise—HR knows compliance; management knows performance expectations; coworkers know the day-to-day, and IT knows how to get equipment up and running.

Social-media-manager app Buffer assigns every new employee three buddies during their onboarding—leader buddy, role buddy, and culture buddy—as a way to give “a variety of interactions within and outside of their core areas”. This allows them to see how their new role fits in with the larger company structure, and can lead the way to future collaborations between departments, especially if your new hire comes in with strong ideas for projects or improvement.

3. Arrange One-on-One Time with Direct Managers

According to a recent LinkedIn survey, which polled 14,000 global professionals about preferred onboarding techniques, 96 percent responded that spending one-to-one time with their direct manager is the most important aspect of their onboarding experience. Entry-level and veteran hires benefit from learning about their responsibilities and expectations, and it gives them an opportunity to lay a solid foundation for a key work relationship. Studies show that greater supervisor support in a new hire’s first 6–21 months result in greater job satisfaction, higher engagement, and quicker salary increase over time.

4. Set Expectations and Goals Early

Uncertainty about job expectations and performance goals is a new hire’s worst enemy, which is why steps like establishing a relationship between new employees and direct managers are crucial to a new employee’s success. According to LinkedIn’s survey, understanding performance goals was the second most important aspect of onboarding. Setting goals and communicating them at the outset allows new hires to evaluate their own progress during their first few months. A formal performance review will help keep new employees on target, and allow for any course correction early on.

It’s also important you listen to new hires’ understanding of the goals and expectations. Maintaining communication will encourage even the most timid of new hires to voice honest feedback about what is or isn’t working for them—and may point out problems in your organization you didn’t know were there. SHRM reports that 38 percent of employees felt that when leaders dismiss their ideas without entertaining them, they tend to lack initiative. Don’t underestimate or waste a fresh perspective by discouraging open communication and feedback.

5. Double-Down on Company Culture, Values, and Principles

Eighty-one percent of new hires fail due to a lack of cultural fit, so proactively broadcast your company’s culture by sharing content on the company’s social media channels, include new hires in meetings or events, or feature the company history in the employee welcome packet. Be sure that your company’s Employee Value Proposition, mission statement, and guiding principles are all aligned.

At Zappos, employees who complete the five-week course focused on the company’s culture and values are offered around $4,000 to quit if they feel like the culture is not the right fit for them. Why? The company knows that poor cultural fit will impact employee engagement and performance.

Turning new hires into lasting employees isn’t rocket science, but with a thoughtful approach to how you onboard, you can set up your organization—and your new coworkers—for both short- and long-term success

Detailed reporting is being phased out by dashboards, bringing new focus on key recruiting metrics and how to leverage them in the C-suite.

Modern organizations realize that data should lie at the heart of an organization’s decision making. As such, today’s talent acquisition leaders are expected to measure their hiring teams’ recruiting performance, compare against benchmarks, and make quantitative improvements. This means CHROs not only need strategies and tools for capturing and analyzing data, but they also need to understand what recruiting metrics and key performance indicators actually mean.

Building benchmarks can be a daunting task without prior experience working with data sets. The data doctors at Namely are experts at building benchmarks that generate useful, company-specific insights into company talent health. Find out the details of how they build benchmarking packages that give TA the ammunition they need in the boardroom.

Traditionally, human resource (HR) and talent acquisition (TA) leaders relied on admin-generated reporting for insights into metrics like time to hire, time to fill, and cost per hire. According to a recent webinar presented by The Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals (ATAP), practitioners are now moving away from text-heavy reporting in favor of visual KPI dashboards, with a renewed focus on summarizing important data and effectively communicating it to the right people so they can make better decisions. ATAP polled webinar attendees and discovered that 50 percent of TA practitioners already have a dedicated dashboard at their organization. For organizations that currently do not have a dashboard, 38 percent are actively planning and/or building one.

When using KPI dashboards, ATAP argues that TA leaders should shift their attention towards metrics that truly matter to their businesses. For most organizations, important metrics to consider fit within the framework of cost (Hiring Budget), speed (Hiring Velocity) and quality (Net Hiring Score)—what we at SmartRecruiters call Hiring Success.

Identifying these metrics is an important first step, but how can TA leaders create Hiring Success at their organizations? ATAP stresses the importance of reinforcing cultural practices surrounding data interpretation and integrity to maximize the impact of KPI dashboards. In turn, these efforts will strengthen TA’s presence in C-suite conversations and critical business decisions.

Data Interpretation

Traditional reporting offers a high degree of detail but also requires substantial analysis for interpretation. As a result, even though everyone may have access to the same report, their understanding of the data can differ greatly. Providing context to help stakeholders understand the data is necessary, and KPI dashboards offer a more digestible summary of important metrics in a way that our brains can easily understand (50 percent of the human brain is devoted directly or indirectly to vision).

More important than the numbers, however, is education and communication. Every TA team needs to establish benchmark performance metrics and educate stakeholders on normal variations in the data. TA leaders are responsible for helping recruiters and HRBP understand the dashboard mechanics, how it works and why it matters in order to foster a data-driven culture at work. Put another way: TA leaders should focus on behavioral training rather than the dashboard itself.

Data Integrity

“If it’s not in the ATS, it didn’t happen,” says webinar host Kristy Nittskoff, Founder of Talent-Savvy, a recruitment strategy optimization consultancy. Implementing a single system of record is useless if employees work outside of it. Encouraging employees to log all hiring actions in the ATS in order to track and measure accurate data is critical. Moreover, KPI dashboards use data from the ATS to build out metrics, and incomplete data can skew the results, leading to inaccurate interpretations, poor business decisions— or, worse, violate compliance laws, which currently cost US companies an average of $222 million annually.

Recruiters, admins, and other ATS users are ultimately responsible for logging complete and correct information, thus mitigating problems associated with dirty data. How important is clean data? According to one study, a strong organization that uses clean data can generate up to 70 percent more revenue than its average counterparts. Otherwise, it’s garbage in and garbage out.

Impact of Data

The primary purpose of collecting data is to inform business decisions. More high-quality data translates into insights around whether or not a current talent acquisition strategy is working. TA leaders can then iterate, update, or revise processes according to what the data suggests.

SmartRecruiters sent customers a recruiting ROI survey last year and gained key insights into critical metrics surrounding candidate experience, hiring manager engagement, recruiter productivity, budget, hiring velocity, and quality of hire. These metrics demonstrate the measurable impact TA has on an organization and reiterate the importance of data as a powerful negotiation tool.

Given the right leverage, data can support requests for more resources or headcount for talent acquisition. Alternatively, data can protect TA teams, pinpointing problems with the hiring process that exist outside of TA’s control. For example, if data shows hiring managers are unresponsive, thus hurting the organization’s hiring velocity, it’s likely not TA’s fault.

Data Culture is Key

LinkedIn’s Global Recruiting Trends 2018 found that 50 percent of hiring professionals rank big data as a major part of their strategy, but TA leaders have long struggled with finding simple and effective methods of communicating performance metrics to executive leadership. Recruiting KPI dashboards signal a change in how TA can prioritize the data that truly matters to their organization, and how to present the information to important stakeholders in an impactful way. These tools, combined with a strong data culture in the workplace, best prepare TA leaders to enter the C-suite with data-driven confidence.

This year’s contestants represent the most diverse mix of global startups to date—here’s what you need to know ahead of their pitch presentations at #HIRE19

In recent years, the TA industry has seen a proliferation of recruiting startups rising to meet the demands of hiring teams seeking top talent. Many of these startups are small rooms full of people, all working on an idea in the hopes of moving fast and breaking things. While a vast majority of these budding companies will fail, those successful few must demonstrate exceptional innovation and purpose.

As part of SmartRecruiters’ mission to help businesses achieve hiring success, we want to highlight those scrappy startups offering truly unique products and services for hiring teams worldwide. Now in its third installment, the Recruiting Startup Awards returns to Hiring Success 19 – Americas, February 26–27 in San Francisco.

At the outset, over 140 startups leveraged their business and social networks to earn votes. Soon, the top five with the highest number of votes will fly to San Francisco to pitch their business in front of 1,200 CHROs and recruiting leaders—which will walk away with $10,000 in sponsorship and press?

Previous RSOTY winners include Honeypot.io, an e-staffing company focused on software developers, and Enboarder, an intuitive onboarding platform that helps candidates hit the ground running. This year’s finalists run the gamut from chatbots to pipeline automation services, and hail from the UK, Canda, Australia, and the US.

Get to know the 2019 Recruiting Startup Awards finalists below, and be sure to watch them deliver their pitches on the final day of Hiring Success 19 in San Franciscos—see full agenda here!

1. Candidate.ID

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.

2. Jobiak

Jobiak created the industry’s first AI-based recruitment marketing platform designed for Google. In a few clicks, recruiters, TA teams, and HR professionals can quickly and directly publish job postings to Google for Jobs. Jobiak makes it easy to post jobs by eliminating any coding or complicated HTML edits from the advertising process thanks to its advanced algorithms and machine learning functionality.

With over 70 percent market share, Google is the world’s most popular search engine by far. Additionally, Google captures 80 percent of all mobile traffic. With this in mind, Jobiak puts forth the following stat: 73 percent of jobseekers begin their search on Google, but the majority of them never see your company’s job ads.

3. GoHire

GoHire leverages text messaging, Facebook Messenger, and chatbots to help organizations reach more candidates at the right time while also automating recruiting workflows. These optimizations help GoHire clients generate as high as 500 percent increases in applications, and significantly reduce the amount of time spent on pre-screening candidates.

GoHire was founded during the height of the TA industry’s focus on social media recruitment strategies, with founders Jonathan “JD” Duarte and Mike Lam seeing the opportunity to combine innovative technology with the preferred communication channels of today’s jobseekers.

4. Vervoe

Vervoe decided that candidates should be evaluated on their merit, not their background, so the company built an AI-powered skills testing platform to improve the quality of candidates in the hiring pipeline.

Companies can test applicants’ skills and attitude with customizable assessments that mimic real-world scenarios, and the Vervoe AI automatically scores, ranks, and recommends the best candidates for the position. Vervoe claims that it can help businesses identify the best talent at under $100 per hire.

5. VanHack

Globalization has allowed more companies to expand into new markets and geographies, but staffing new offices can be challenging. Enter VanHack, a growing community of over 180,000 software developers, designers, and digital marketers seeking jobs abroad. VanHack believes in building a borderless world where careers are not restricted to a particular office, city, or country.

More than simply connecting jobseekers to opportunities, VanHack also works with employers to find talent for hard-to-fill roles like senior data scientists, machine learning experts, DevOps, and more, while helping facilitate visa and relocation processes for selected candidates. According to the company’s website, 90 percent of all jobs posted on VanHack receive qualified applicants in less than 24 hours.

Today’s job seekers are strongly motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose, and recruiters who make these ideas tangible to top candidates stand to win.

Talent acquisition professionals who understand how top talent thinks are in the best possible position to recruit them to their organization. Today’s job candidates have more opportunities than ever before, and while the majority of them are passive, 90 percent are open to discussing new work opportunities.

With the war for talent at a fever pitch, how can recruiters distinguish their company from competitors? Exceptional hiring teams are beginning to think like marketers, and treating candidates like their customers. To that end, TA professionals are packing job opportunities in a way that puts more focus on candidates’ wants and needs.

Once the money is off the table, candidates are mainly interested in the type of work they will do, the impact it will have, and how it fits into the company’s overall mission. Keeping these factors in mind, recruiters must then frame discussions about new work opportunities around them.

Here’s how to discuss three selling points recruiters often miss in a way that resonates with today’s high-quality talent.

1. The Position

Sure, outlining the role’s responsibilities and expectations feels like a given, but positioning the role in a larger context than the day-to-day grind will help make any position become more attractive to candidates. Explain how the job makes an impact on the company, or potentially the industry as a whole, choosing to focus on purpose rather than compensation or benefits during the first few conversations.

Salary is often the single most deciding factor for candidates to switch jobs, but research suggests greater income brings more happiness only up to about $75,000 per year before it runs out. We quickly acclimatize to greater income, causing it to lose value, which is why intrinsic motivators like company fit and career growth opportunities are crucial.

2. The Company

Candidates want to see culture in action. Think about all the ways your Employer Branding is showcased across different channels. Does your company career page still have stock photos? Over half of all candidates look at company websites for their first line of research before applying, so including photos and video of actual employees sharing their experiences are powerful content. Does your organization’s social media presence and email messaging align with the values that you want to promote? How is the work-life balance among employees? Do the candidate’s interests align with the company’s values?

Top talent often has more than one offer to consider, so recruiters need to demonstrate what makes their company unique from competitors. As brand ambassadors, recruiters are tasked with explaining the company’s mission and vision in a compelling way, so they need to not only have a thorough understanding of what makes the organization’s core product or service it’s strongest selling point, but also how the candidate can directly impact it.

3. Career Growth

Flat hierarchies, project-based work, and the constant demand for new skills have caused many to rethink the traditional career ladder concept, but career growth remains one of the top three reasons why candidates accept offers. What’s more, over 56 percent of candidates choose to stay with their current employers because of opportunities to challenge or improve their skills.

For candidates, a job offer might be a huge life decision, so it’s crucial that they understand the company structure, and know how to locate the services and resources available to them for advancement. Giving new hires the opportunity for growth demonstrates that you want them to succeed in your organization.

Recruiters are increasingly turning to technology solutions to automate certain steps of the hiring process, freeing them up to spend more time on “human” functions like understanding what motivates candidates. When approaching candidates with work opportunities, it’s important that recruiters frame their discussions about the role, its responsibilities, the company, and the candidate’s future around their wants and needs. Not only does this give candidates the best possible experience, but it is the best way to set them up for success.

Nowhere are the stakes higher for recruiters than in the military. Find out how these TA pros hit 70 thousand hires in a year, and why your team should start practicing drills.

Though they may not be actively engaged in combat, Army recruiters have one of the toughest jobs in the military. In 2018, US Army recruiters were tasked with enlisting 70k new recruits by the end of the fiscal year. With the Pentagon working to boost the number of active service personnel to 500k by 2024—a five percent increase over current numbers—these quotas are will only increase in the coming years.

With unemployment at record lows, the US Army has revamped many of its traditional recruiting practices in order to hit these ambitious goals. Many of these same strategies can also be useful to recruiters hiring in the private sector, as the current talent shortage affecting industries from tech to healthcare present similar challenges. Here are four Army recruiting strategies that civilian recruiters can learn from.

1. Proactively Recruit through Community Engagement

Sergeant First Class Duggan Myron has a saying: “First contact, first contract.” It’s no secret that high schools are one of the top sourcing-channels for military recruiters, but Myron takes a more proactive approach to finding potential recruits. He contacts faculty, teachers, and guidance counselors ahead of the school year to build rapport, creating channels of communication so that students who have questions about joining the service, or perhaps need career advice, are directed to recruiters for more information.

An effective method for recruiters—military or otherwise—to reach the people they want to hire is by being actively involved in their communities. For Army recruiters, this means participating in community events, sports games, and school functions to demonstrate they aren’t simply robots looking to fill quotas. Perhaps your company would consider sponsoring a youth sports team, or throwing a block party.

Communities aren’t always geographical; it’s about identifying the places where your ideal hires come together—online forums or networks, colleges, professional groups—and nurturing them. CRM solutions top the list of 2019’s best recruiting tools for enhancing sourcing so that recruiters can attract and hire great talent ahead of demand.

2. Sell Your Organization’s Purpose

After the US Army switched over to a volunteer model in the wake of the Project VOLAR during the 1970s, they began promoting careers within the military. They currently offer 150 different career paths in fields like engineering, law, and medical, as well as unique roles like band officer or culinary specialist. For many, enlisting in the Army is a way to learn vocational skills, travel, and earn a steady income not available elsewhere.

When talking with potential recruits, Army recruiters spend time figuring out what motivates them, and how to tailor their message to best suit that. “You can’t just tell a recruit everything he or she wants to hear,” said Myron. “You’re more of a life coach.”

According to research from CECP, a coalition that promotes greater corporate social responsibility, organizations that care about social good retain employees 23 percent more than organizations who don’t. Greater employee retention means happier, more engaged, and more productive employees, with fewer open positions.

Get to know your candidates and find out what they want in their career path in order to best sell your organization’s benefits and purpose.

3. Be Honest and Upfront

“The best message to get through to somebody is harsh reality,” said Sergeant First Class Joshua Morrison, and with thousands of US troops currently deployed in conflict areas like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, the Army doesn’t want disillusioned soldiers or early washouts to find out after they enlist that this isn’t the right career path for them.

Managing expectations is a daily routine for recruiters, and is hugely important when speaking to candidates. Today’s workers have fewer qualms about leaving a job if they feel the responsibilities or culture was misrepresented. In fact, 17 percent of employees quit within their first three months of starting a new job, eating up company time, resources, and creating a poor company image.

4. Focus on Recruitment Marketing that Truly Resonates

Gone are the days of patriotic Army posters featuring a sincere Uncle Sam pointing at the reader. At the time, the call to serve one’s country in times of war were enough to drive new enlistment, but that strategy doesn’t work with today’s recruits.

In 2015, the Army Marketing and Research Group partnered with McCann Worldgroup to roll out “the Army team” campaign. These 60-second, black-and-white commercials focused on the many aspects of service and sacrifice, while highlighting the virtues of enlisting. No longer focused on the individual, the language used in these ads is more inclusive and pluralistic, and has since established a major presence on social media through hashtag and veteran outreach efforts.

“Research has shown that Gen Z is all about making a difference,” said James Ortiz, director of marketing at the Army Marketing and Research Group, “a difference for family, for community, for their country, for the world.”

Today, the US Army is heavily invested in employer branding, and its efforts to reach recruits goes beyond simply pointing a finger. Modern companies who want to attract and hire the best talent need to find ways of presenting compelling messaging accompanied by a candidate-facing brand that showcases why their organization is where today’s candidates want to work.

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.

Check out some of the funniest, most cringeworthy encounters with nightmare candidates that these recruiters will never forget.

Recruiting is all about people, and people are hilarious. Nothing like the pressure of a job interview to bring out the most awkward, silly, and mystifying behavior in all of us. So, while we often celebrate the victories—perfect referrals, nailing your LinkedIn search on the first try, the candidate saying yes as soon as they are offered the job—let’s take some time to share of the most comical interactions that the internet has to offer. Spoiler: it includes rollerblades.

Every recruiting vet has one of these stories, so buckle up and see if your experience compares to these hapless interviewers who had no idea what they were getting into.

1. User “Enron_F” shares a story from a former professor who had to choose between the lesser of two bad candidates…

“A long time ago his department was looking to hire a new junior assistant professor. They had narrowed it down to two highly qualified guys, both fresh out of grad school. They knew they were going to hire one or the other. As a final step of the process, they decided to take both of them out to dinner separately.

The first guy is cordial throughout the whole thing, seems to get along with everybody just fine. Then, at the end of the meal, he picks up his empty plate and licks the whole thing clean. Like, tongue flat against the surface of the plate, covering every inch of it until it’s clean. In the middle of a nice restaurant. Then he sets the plate down like it was the most normal thing in the world. Everyone just stares at him, and then awkwardly try to just wrap things up. Afterward, they laugh about it to each other— what a bizarre and unnecessary way to throw away a near clinch on a good job opportunity.

So they take the second guy out, almost just a formality at this point. Again, everything is fine, he’s polite, seems perfectly qualified, seems to know the right things to say. Then, at the very end of the meal, they ask him if he had any questions for them. He pauses and thinks for a moment, then asks, “So what is the student-teacher dating policy?”

Afterward, the other professors are sitting around together when one of them says, “Well, looks like we’re hiring the plate licker.”

2. User “notagoodboye” recounts a time when a candidate clearly didn’t do his research before the interview…

“I was doing a tech screen phone interview, and you could tell the guy was googling his heart out every time we asked a question. He would say, “Hmmm, let me think about that for a second.” The background ambient noise would cut off, and then cut back on a second later, and he’d start reading off stuff from the top Google result.”

3. User “kramblin” has a short dialog about why screening candidates is a good precaution for employers…

“Do you guys drug test?”
“Yes, we do.”
“For like, ALL the drugs?”
“Yes.”
“Ok. Thank you for your time.”

And then he got up and left.

4. User “MichaelTheElder” shares his encounter with a candidate he dubbed “The Candy Man”…

“The interview was for an entry-level retail position. I called him in for an interview, and after introductions, brought him up to the company break room. He looked like a kinda sketchy individual, wearing a beat-up black cap and what looked to be a dirty hoody. I didn’t think too much of it because: a) I did call him in on shorter notice, b) I don’t like to judge a candidate solely on how they look, and c) it’s retail—what do you expect candidates to look like?

I excused myself for 30 seconds to check in on my trainee, and when I came back the candidate looked a little uncomfortable.

Not thinking much of it we start the interview asking the standard questions about what he’s done previously, why he wants to work here, etc. I notice he continues to look uncomfortable and it almost looks as though he’s hiding something in his hands. I eventually ask if there’s something wrong I can assist with and he comes clean.

He explains he has a fistful of candy (jelly beans in this case) and he’s not sure what do do with them. I’m a bit gobsmacked and have questions which I wish I would have asked. Where did he get this candy? Why did he think it was a good idea to eat candy in an interview? What was he going to do with this candy?

As I tried to articulate a response he exclaims, “I know!” and proceeds to shove the entire handful into his mouth. And this isn’t a couple of jelly beans. This is a massive handful of now sweaty, sticky candies that he has just thrown into his mouth. And he starts chewing. And chewing. His hands are stained and he’s really working his jaw due to the sheer amount and chewy nature of them. I swear 30 seconds pass before he finally gulps them down and asks calmly, “You were saying?”

The interview did not continue much longer than that, and unfortunately, the candy man did not get a job with us.”

5. User “PsychohistorySeldon” on why a candidate’s mode of transportation to the office is important…

“Candidate arrived in rollerblades. Stayed in rollerblades the whole interview. He used the word “blade” instead of “walk” or “go” for the whole interview. Can’t tell if I was being punk’d.”

6. User jenjen2317 recalls a candidate who could have picked up a few pointers about phone etiquette…

“We had a guy come in for an interview, and he showed up a full 40 minutes prior to his scheduled interview. One room office shared by three people, so there’s no good place for him to wait. I said you can go to the coffee shop next door and come back at the scheduled time. He said, “No, I’ll just wait here—I have a phone call to make.”

He proceeds to have a very loud phone conversation in our one-room office. When it was finally time for his scheduled interview, he was still on the phone, and actually shushed me, saying, “I’M ON THE PHONE.” Ten minutes later he was ready to be interviewed. Not even sure why we proceeded with the interview, but it was over quickly and his resume was in the recycle before the door even closed.”

7. User “gardenmarauding” shares a time when a video interview ventured into absurdity…

“I was hiring in pharmaceutical sales, and during a large drug launch, the company was hiring almost 200 people nationwide.

Because of this, the first step was a phone screen, then a video interview with the hiring manager, before flying candidates out for the final, panel interviews with five individuals (VPs of HR and Sales of each region, and Sales Directors for those territories).

Because of this, we were very strict with the interviews and who moved forward, which means it REALLY sucked when a guy went into his final panel interview and started doing magic tricks.

Very seriously, he started pulling flowers from his sleeves, and he tried to “vanish” an interviewer’s coffee, but ended up spilling it everywhere instead.

In that same round of hiring, we also had an individual who did his video call from his coffee table (he sat on the floor) and he had someone ring his doorbell. From the conversation with the hiring manager, he asked politely if he could go answer the door in case it was an emergency. She said, “Sure”—no big deal—and the guy stood up, flashing his tightie whities.”

8. User “tybrromian”, on why recruiters should spend more time scanning resumes for errors…

“I once saw a resume that stated they were a “valid Victorian”. Either they were trying to say they were top of their class or that they were a genuine person from 19th century England, neither of which were true.”

How one Wall Street bigshot found himself in prison, and the company he launched after his release connects the formerly incarcerated with second-chance jobs.

Approximately one in three American adults have criminal records – that’s 70 million people, and nearly 75 percent of them are still unemployed a year after their release. With few prospects to cover basic expenses, many ex-offenders return to illicit activities. Unable to make ends meet, an overwhelming majority (89 percent) are unemployed at the time of their re-arrest. The stigmas surrounding people with conviction histories systematically exclude them from countless job opportunities, and the current state of affairs shows little sign of improvement.

Back in the late 90s, entrepreneur Richard Bronson found himself in a prison cell, wondering how he would turn his life around. A few years following his release, Bronson became the founder and CEO of 70 Million Jobs, the first national employment platform for people with criminal records.

Seeking to provide second chances for the one in three Americans with conviction histories, Bronson sees his company as providing “double bottom line returns”, doing massive social good as well as building big, profitable businesses.

To understand more about how 70 Million Jobs came to be, we talk to Bronson about his transition from prison cell to the C-suite. This is his story.

Twenty-two months into my sentence the anxiety kicked in. I was sitting on my cot in a federal prison with eight weeks left on my two-year sentence for securities fraud, and my impending freedom made me feel only one thing: dread.

I began working on Wall Street in the early 1990s, and after working at several of the largest investment banks, I made a career pivot into a small brokerage firm on Long Island, Stratton Oakmont. You may know this company better as the infamous Wolf of Wall Street firm. I did so well there I quickly became partner.

My ambitions were greater than Stratton Oakmont, and after a year I left to found my own financial services firm. Our success was swift; in 18 months, I had 500 employees, and was generating $100 million in annual revenue. I was getting very rich very fast.

As portrayed in Wolf of Wall Street, our success came from conducting business the wrong way—the illegal way. I knew my behavior was wrong, but I told myself “everyone’s doing it.” I wish I could say it was a mistake or they got the wrong guy, but none of that was true. I was guilty of securities fraud. So, despite having paid everyone back, I was still—rightfully—punished with a prison sentence.

I came out of prison destitute and nearly homeless—thank God for a sister and her couch. I wanted to put the past behind me and live an honest, productive life. However, accomplishing this proved more daunting than I ever expected. Old friends deserted me and new acquaintances feared I was “radioactive”. Once they learned about my incarceration, many kept me at arm’s length. Over the next several years I went from one bad situation to another. I thought I fully learned the lesson of humility, having scrubbed toilets for hundreds of inmates, but class had just begun.

I eventually ended up working at Defy Ventures, a prominent non-profit in the reentry space. I loved the opportunity to help my brothers and sisters as they struggled with their transition to freedom. It was deeply rewarding work—very good for my karma—but over time I became convinced that reentry was ready for disruption, specifically with a for-profit approach.

So I launched 70 Million Jobs, not knowing if large, national employers would be willing to pay to access our large community of job seekers. We got our answer almost immediately: while we don’t sell them all, the vast majority have been highly interested in our work, while many have discovered that hiring folks with records is not only a great way to fill jobs but also a powerful step in asserting their leadership as fair-chance employers.

The real heroes are our job seekers. Studies show that many of them become an employer’s best hire. For the simple fact that they have few alternatives, they know they have to perform well to retain their job. And they know that their employer took a chance in hiring them. So, unlike many in our workforce, they typically reward their employer with greater retention. Great performance and retention is a home run for any HR professional.

Don’t lose great talent to the competition because of bad recruiting software—here’s why your hiring team needs a TA solution that makes no compromises.

Recruiting is changing on a fundamental level. Today, 36 percent of the US workforce currently freelances, and reports project this figure will grow to over 50 percent within the next decade. Conversations about the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning replacing human jobs are at the forefront of our social consciousness, and recruiting is becoming exponentially more difficult in this economy.

Traditional sourcing channels are no longer yielding the quality candidates they used to, and truly exceptional talent is not actively seeking new work opportunities, though 82 percent admit they are open to them.

As a result, recruiting is shifting from a reactive function into a proactive one, with a greater focus on candidates. Attracting passive candidates requires your company brand to stand out from others, your job offers to be highly competitive, and your recruiting practices to be fast-moving and engaging. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is through feature-rich recruiting software.

The recruitment market is currently worth over $215 billion worldwide, and at a projected growth of 5.6 percent over the next few years, is estimated to be worth over $330 billion by 2025. Today’s market vendors offer talent acquisition suites and recruitment technology solutions to organizations at the enterprise, SMB, and startup level. With so many offerings available in the market—HCRM, ATS, CRM—it can be difficult to wade through the alphabet soup to decide which solution will work best for your organization.

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) systems are top choices for recruiters; however, many believe that they don’t need CRM if they already have an ATS. In reality, top recruiters rely on a solution that offers both CRM and ATS in one platform, as each focuses a specific function within the hiring process.

But what’s the difference between an ATS and CRM? And why should you use both in order to source, attract, and hire the best talent?

What is an ATS?

An ATS is a type of recruiting software that facilitates and optimizes the hiring process. It acts as a repository where recruiters and hiring managers can create and post job openings, collect and organize applications, and screen, evaluate, select, and move candidates through every step of the hiring process in one platform.

What is CRM?

A CRM system is designed to strengthen relationships between potential candidates and recruiters so that recruiters can use these candidates for future job openings. In this way, CRMs are considered part of Recruitment Marketing strategy, allowing TA professionals to create talent communities and deliver targeted messaging that helps build and nurture relationships with passive talent. That way, when it comes time to fill a rec, recruiters already have a pool of vetted candidates from which to choose.

What’s the Difference Between an ATS and CRM?

CRM systems work to scale a recruiter’s sourcing efforts by attracting passive candidates ahead of demand. Meanwhile, ATSs are built to make selection and hiring as streamlined as possible by eliminating unnecessary administrative tasks and improving the three most important hiring metrics: hiring velocity, hiring budget, and net hiring score.

In other words, an ATS is a workflow and compliance tool for managing applicants, while a CRM system is a pool of all passive and active candidates, as well as previous applicants already in your system. A bad ATS does little more than execute repetitive functions, meaning recruiting teams waste time on non-value added tasks rather than focusing on strategic initiatives.
Here are some signs that your ATS is not fully optimized with CRM:

• Multiple entry fields that require manual input
• Candidates are categorized by their current jobs or work rather than their desired work.
• No way to evaluate the candidate-recruiter relationship (i.e. measuring the candidate’s level of activity or engagement)
• No ROI (time to hire, cost per hire, quality of hire are still low)
• ATS functionality is mostly administrative work
• Hard-to-fill positions remain open for months

Why Integrating CRM With an ATS Makes Sense

Today’s candidate-centric work economy means that companies need to be aware of candidate experience now more than ever, and technology solutions that prioritize this will be critical for the success of talent acquisition leaders. Between 70 and 80 percent of recruiting happens during the pre-applicant stage, so delivering the right messaging to the right people at the right time gives companies an advantage when attracting top talent in today’s ultra-competitive market.

This can only happen when hiring teams leverage a powerful and comprehensive TA suite that seamlessly integrates CRM with an ATS in one platform. Recruiters who maintain their talent pools with CRM systems can make better, data-driven hiring decisions. And because CRM nurtures strong relationships with past, current, and future candidates, speed and efficiency are built in when it’s time to hire, making the applicant’s journey through the ATS a better experience.

With the right tools for the job, all recruiters can make great hires that drive business growth. As future industry trends emerge, the technology solutions designed to meet these demands will evolve in response, and recruiters who stay on top of what today’s exceptional candidates value will be in prime position to hire them.