The second annual European Hiring Success Conference launches with TA leaders from top brands like Uber, LinkedIn, and N26.

The Hiring Success conference returns to Europe for an electric gathering in Amsterdam with the top brands and leading voices of recruitment today. Over 350 attendees will join SmartRecruiters, canalside at the Compagnietheater for two days of interactive sessions and top-tier networking at Hiring Success EU – Amsterdam September 10-11, 2019.

Across three stages, over 80 talent acquisition (TA) experts from leading brands like LinkedIn, Uber, and N26 will discuss the most topical issues in recruiting. Conference-goers can curate their experience by following the three tracks of inclusion, innovation, and hiring success.

“Hiring Success is a superb event series. It’s so good, it’s become a movement,” says Hung Lee, CEO at WorkShape.io and Curator of Recruiting Brainfood. “Think: hiring best practice, cool product updates, a clear theme of diversity and inclusion, and a great community of TA folks. I don’t exaggerate – it’s a life-affirming event.”

Hung will be there! Along with many others. Today, we take a moment to meet some of the leading voices in today’s TA space who will be joining us in Amsterdam! #HireEU

Maarten Bokhoven – ABN AMRO Bank N.V.

Head of Employer Branding, Sourcing & Community Management

With the personal mission statement that begins with “I want to move people, and make people move, ” Maarten Bokhoven is passionate about driving business results, but it doesn’t end there, he also wants his team members to achieve their personal goals. For this sourcer, investing in people is more than a turn of phrase – it’s a mantra. Maarten attacks employer branding with vim and creativity, constantly looking for new ways to strategically position his organization in the competition for top talent.

Véronique Bourée – LinkedIn

Senior Lead Benelux Talent Solutions

When it comes to leadership Véronique Bourée likes to say “people should be at the heart of any organization. Put them first, and exceptional results will follow.” As an executive with more than 15 years of professional experience, Véronique has developed a passion for HR tech and TA. She enjoys complex business challenges and winning trust. Recognized for her ability to get results with a “twist” as well as strategic positioning, this global TA leader appreciates how the ‘glocal’ economy is pushing recruiting forward.

Noor van Boven – N26

Chief People Officer

With 15 years of international HR experience, Noor van Boven focuses on building, scaling and transforming companies into successful enterprises. Noor is the chief people officer at N26, where she is responsible for building the organization while maintaining a high employee experience and guiding the company through hyper-growth in a healthy way.

Before joining N26, Noor was the VP of people at SoundCloud and led the recruiting, talent, and organizational development initiatives at TomTom worldwide. Her passion for travel, coupled with work opportunities from respected international employers, has allowed Noor to live across the globe, including New York, India, and Germany.

Anna Brandt – Uber/ Brandt Talent Solutions

Head of Talent Acquisition

Anna Brand is the founder of Brand Talent Solutions, a hands-on consultancy that helps organizations scale their TA efforts for maximum results. In her latest venture, Anna is zealously jumping on board with Uber Netherlands as the new head of talent acquisition to help these this ride-sharing app take community operations into overdrive.

Prior to Uber, Anna worked with top brands like N26, TomTom, and Zalando. While her experience may be varied, the one constant has been helping tech organizations scale, whether by coaching global recruitment leaders, offering workshops and training, or providing interim management during transitions.

Johnny Campbell – SocialTalent

CEO, Founder, and Sourcer

Johnny Campbell is the CEO and co-founder of SocialTalent, where he leads product and content. The startup established in 2010 is the world’s most popular learning experience platform for hiring, helping over 500 companies hire more than one million people in 2018 alone.

You may recognize Johnny as the MC for previous Hiring Success conferences both in the US and Europe, as well as his active social media presence. When he’s not out “chasing global domination”, he’s busy raising his four boys (so you know he can handle anything)!

Simon Roberts – Siemens

Head of Talent Acquisition, UK&I and Nordic Countries

Simon Roberts is a TA leader who’s all about looking to the future. He’s passionate about agile strategies that make positive impacts today and tomorrow. He likes to call Siemens “a collection of over 348,000 minds building the future, one day at a time.” For this head of TA, it’s all about collaboration: only through coming together can people solve big problems and make the world a “smarter” place.

Hayke Tjemmes-Aalders – Wehkamp

Recruiter

Responsible for product and marketing positions at Wehkamp, Hayke Tjemmes-Aalders is all about building extraordinary teams who are ready to push the boundaries of eCommerce.

Hayke’s mantra? “Learn. Laugh. Lead.” As a boots-on-the-ground recruiter, this TA practitioner understands the nuts and bolts of finding the best talent, from quantifying the quality of the candidate experience to designing relocation programs – and driving it all with big picture data and analytics.

Check out the full agenda here and make sure to take advantage of early bird pricing until June 14th!

Talent Acquisition leaders flock to Amsterdam for the second annual European event, here’s why!

Hiring Success EU returns, this time in Amsterdam. Over 350 attendees will join SmartRecruiters to define the future of recruiting September 10-11, 2019 canal-side at the Compagnietheater.

During two days of interactive sessions and networking, conference-goers will explore topical issues in recruiting with 80 expert speakers from top tier brands like Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and Twitter. With three stages and 30 sessions, attendees are sure to find the content they need to achieve hiring success.

“Hiring Success is a superb event series. It’s so good, it’s become a movement,” says Hung Lee, CEO at WorkShape.io and Curator of Recruiting Brainfood. “Think: hiring best practice, cool product updates, a clear theme of diversity and inclusion, and a great community of Talent Acquisition folks. I don’t exaggerate – it’s a life-affirming event.”

But don’t just take Hung’s word for it, here are 8 of the best reasons why HSEU is the must-attend recruiting event this year.

Check out the full agenda here and make sure to take advantage of early bird pricing until June 14th!

1. Exceptional Speakers

The Hiring Success Conference is all about the amazing speakers who inspire and inform. Last year, Hiring Success EU – Berlin was lucky enough to welcome leading practitioners like James Purvis (Head of HR, CERN), Sanam Moayedi-Stummer (HR Director & Program Lead, Coca-Cola European Partners, and Elke Jorens (Director of Talent Acquisition, EMEA Microsoft).

2. Network with industry leaders.

With TA leaders, analysts, hiring practitioners, and industry thought leaders in attendance, conference-goers have the opportunity to make meaningful connections. Networking is an important dimension to any in-person event, which is why every Hiring Success Conference features a Smarty Party where everyone can relax, discuss learnings, and meet new people. Last year, attendees enjoyed a night at one of Berlin’s top night clubs, complete with a marching band and ariel acrobats.

3. Three topical tracks to guide your learning adventure.

The Hiring Success Conference is built around three proven tracks to meet practitioners at their point of need:

Innovation. Understand the latest recruiting tech and see how these digital tools will actually affect you and your practice.

Diversity & Inclusion. Stories of success and inspiration from hiring practitioners that will help you create the business case for a diverse workforce and inclusive work culture.

Hiring Success. The case studies and hiring hacks from practitioners who have #BeenThere and know your pain points.

4. Explore the latest diversity and inclusion initiatives.

A new topic experts will discuss this year is ‘candidates with resume gaps’. Whether the sabbatical was to travel the world, care for a loved one, raise children, return to school, or heal from an illness, applicants shouldn’t be dismissed as ‘irrelevant’ upon their return to the workforce. In this interactive session, recruiters will learn strategies for successful workforce reintegration.

5. Dive into the best practices of tomorrow.

The Hiring Success Conference is a great chance to get out of the company silo and learn from other practitioners; this is especially the case with analytics. When starting a people analytics program, it’s hard to benchmark data without anything for comparison. Ever wonder how effective posting jobs vs events vs referrals vs database sourcing is at attracting top talent? All these questions will be answered in a participatory session, and everyone will walk away with a sourcing-spend plan.

6. Stay abreast of innovation in recruiting tech.

The Hiring Success Hackathon makes its European debut at the Amsterdam conference. Teams will have 24 hours to produce an original add-on to the SmartRecruiters platform and attendees will vote to decide the winner.

At Hiring Success19 – San Francisco Optimizely swept gold with an app that solved for task completion lag time, but who knows what imaginative hack will impress in Amsterdam?

7. Location, location, location.

Jerome Ternynck, CEO and Founder of SmartRecrutiers put it best when he said: “Amsterdam speaks to the future of recruiting. This lively city is on the avant-garde of tech adoption, where global talent flocks, and people-centric innovation abounds.”

8. See Winston dance again!

Who can resist Winston’s killer dance moves?  SmartRecruiters’ very own Smartian is (without doubt or prejudice) one of the greatest mascots of all time.

via GIPHY

Need some inspiration? These Talent Acquisition resources are chock-full of knowledge and personality!

In the last five years, the recruitment industry found itself undergoing an exciting renaissance. A profession no one ever wrote books about is now smack dab in the zeitgeist, directly affected by both cultural movements (like #metoo) and technological advancements (such as AI and social media trends).

The human capital management (HCM) market is projected to grow to $22.2 billion by 2023, up from $13 billion in 2016. All this growth means the tools and practice of recruitment and HR will evolve at a rapid pace, and practitioners can’t rely on the grapevine to keep abreast of the latest news.

Fortunately, there are a plethora of recruiting podcasts, blogs, newsletters, online communities that keep pace with the industry goings-on. The following list is just a few of our favorites – seriously, there’s so many out there! We chose these because they are engaging and keep us coming back every day!

Feel free to tag us @smartrecruiters with ideas for our next edition.

1. Recruiting Brainfood

Longtime recruiter and industry influencer Hung Lee created the weekly TA newsletter, Recruiting Brainfood, back in October of 2016. Over 127 editions later (and 10,000+ subscribers), Recruiting Brainfood is now a community for hiring practitioners worldwide, with the largest concentration in the UK, but quickly spreading. (US folks can gain workplace street-cred by introducing this resource to colleagues.)

Subscribe to the newsletter for a manually curated collection of articles, interactive polls, and jobs relevant to the talent industry; or, join the Facebook group for community chats, live stream Q&As, and video interviews.

What makes this community special is how active the audience is in polls and conversations. This may have something to do with the host, Hung Lee, who has made a concerted effort to break the fourth wall, acknowledging new members and never letting a comment disappear into the internet void. A personal example, when I joined the Facebook group I was prompted to fill out a survey about the newsletter. I jotted down some thoughts (largely positive), and a couple of days later Hung followed up on my minor layout suggestion. Now, that’s engagement!

2. Recruiting Subreddit

Reddit is mainly known for memes and casual trolling, but it’s so much more than that! The annals of Reddit unpack practically every subject known to humanity. Whatever interests you, there’s likely a subreddit of people who care about it just as much (or more), and recruiting is no exception.

The Recruiting subreddit is a great forum to get feedback or ask questions. One newbie crowdsourced goals for their first quarter on the job, another for tips on no-show candidates. These – and generally all inquiries – were met with many specific and encouraging answers – proving that the internet can be a nice place sometimes!

3. HR Open Source

HR Open Source is kinda what it sounds like. In its own words, they are “a global community of practitioners who believe collaboration is the key to preparing their organizations for the future of work. Simply put, [they] make it easier to access peers and resources needed to thrive. at zero cost.” Practically, this means you join the community via their website or Facebook, and then you can share/read case studies or ‘Sparks’ (the site’s adorable name for abridged case studies), participate in surveys, talk to your peers, and even buy some cool merch.

Founded in 2015, the people behind #HROS (that’s how you should search their posts on Twitter) are two impressive recruiters you may have seen on the conference circuit: Lars Schmidt, founder of Amplify Talent, and Ambrosia Vertesi, VP of people at Duo Security. One great asset from this resource is their latest Future of Work Report. The data they collected from actual practitioners about how their teams are interacting with tech and allocating budget was extremely enlightening, and unique in that it wasn’t just spectator commentary.

4. HR Girlfriend

HR Girlfriend is a professional network for women working in HR, where members can find professional development and certifications, events, and industry job postings. Anyone can peruse the website and learn from their Real Talk Blog. For those folks in the US, HR Girlfriend regularly hosts and attends events, so you can catch up with the Girlfriends in person.

The Q&A section of their blog is a personal favorite. The questions are real and relatable, and the answers are super detailed without being long-winded. I should also mention that the advice comes from real HR practitioners. Last week’s question tackled how to handle a scenario where an employee complains about a coworker showing them an inappropriate photo. The reply included a step-by-step procedure as well as additional resources.

Sana’ Rasul, Chief Girlfriend, HR consultant, and cybersecurity expert, says of the group, “If I could sum up why I’m committed to the HR Girlfriends community it would come down to because we are ‘….in this together.’”

5. Evil HR Lady

The title in and of itself makes this blog worth reading. The eponymous ‘Evil HR Lady’, Suzanne Lucas picked the name to challenge the prevailing stereotype that HR folks are rigid and spitefull corporate goons. Her blog seeks to “demystify” HR, revealing there’s usually a lot more going on behind the scenes than the employee general population, or even management, know.

Susanne posts a mixture of relevant articles from around the web, original content, and other resources, like webinars. Visit her blog or subscribe for the latest in your inbox.

6. Ask a Manager

You will get sucked into this Q&A blog! The questions range from ‘what should I do when I hit a coworker’s car in the staff parking lot?’ to ‘how do I handle misuse of sick leave?’, and much more. Every time I visit Aks a Manager, we can’t stop scrolling.

Alison Green started this website in 2007, and since then has written a book and launched a podcast covering all things management. The blog isn’t specific to HR and Recruiting, yet many of the questions cover relevant material. And, with three or more posts a day, there’s always something new to read.

7. The Lorne Epstein Show

Lorne Epstein is a recruiter and author in Washington DC, where he’s hosted his weekly radio show/podcast since 2016. The Lorne Epstein Show covers a diverse array of HR and Recruitment topics, from in-depth interviews with industry thought leaders like Lou Adler, to nuts and bolts how-tos of salary laws, to expounding the world’s most adventurous jobs – don’t you want to know what it’s like to be an FBI bomb investigator?

This podcast definitely has an ‘inside baseball’ feel, which is great for those of us who care about the proverbial baseball (in this case, HR and recruitment). So, if you get excited about the latest developments in the industry but are sick of the glazed-over look in your friends/partner’s eyes when you start on a future of work rant, this is the place for you!

8. Constangy, Brooks, Smith Prophete LLP Blog

Learn from experts with real employment litigation experience. Everyone has an opinion, but these are the opinions that really matter when it comes to legal issues at work. Of course, reading a blog does not count as actual legal counsel, it’s a place to stay abreast of the latest legislation and best practice.

The Constangy Blog focuses on US workplace law, though some subjects will be internationally relevant. That’s not to say that it’s all dry legalese – that couldn’t be further from the truth. Their contributors also offer editorials on topical issues like the movement for a $15 minimum wage and think pieces on historical work practice, like Radio Corporation of America’s HR guidelines for supervising female employees written during WWII.

9. The Chad & Cheese Podcast

To quote the hosts, Chad & Cheese is “HR’s most dangerous podcast. Lock your doors and hide your kids. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right in the face!”

The latest industry news with a healthy dose of snark – what’s not to love? The show listens like classic morning radio with irreverent attitudes and frequent sound effects, which is a nice change of pace for an industry known for buttoning up. Enjoy, but headphones a must if you are at work or around kids.

10. Hiring Success Journal

Forgive the shameless self-promotion, but we couldn’t resist. You already know about the Hiring Success Journal if you are reading this, but did you know that we have a weekly curated newsletter that delivers our latest articles straight to your inbox. Signup here for the latest recruiting stories, industry deep dives, and how-tos that will level up your TA practice.

Ahead of Sourcing Success 19 on April 9th, experts from Recruitics, SmartDreamers, SmartRecruiters, and VONQ share strategies to win over today’s candidates.

Sourcing is defined as the early stage of the recruiting process in which recruiters – or specific ‘sourcers’ on larger teams – discover and reach out to candidates. Think of it like cooking, the better your ingredients, the better the meal at the end (controlling for skill, of course). Recruiting is much the same, you can save time and money while boosting the quality of hire if your team is sourcing the right candidates from the get-go.

Yet, sourcing the right candidates is a little more complicated than a trip to Whole Foods. As harrowing as the lunch rush can be,  –sourcers must define candidate personas, create campaigns, and nurture talent pools in a marketplace where attention is scarce and innovation is a must. Maybe one day your candidates are all on SnapChat, but that won’t be the case forever; sourcers are always on the lookout for the next channel or medium to capture their audience.

That’s where the experts come in! We talk to four Talent Acquisition leaders about their top hacks – all of which can be implemented today!

For more inside sourcing tips, be sure to register for our free online conference Sourcing Success 19, happening Tuesday, April 9, 2019 – 8 am PT | 5 pm CET

1. Make Sure Your Sourcing Fits Into the Overall Recruiting Strategy

Recruitics – Emily Tanner, VP Marketing

“One thing that will improve your overall sourcing initiatives is to ensure that sourcing is aligned with a larger recruitment marketing strategy and not just a standalone effort. Sourcing is just one piece (a critical piece) of a much larger picture that includes employers branding and candidate experience among other things. This is the best way to reach all types of talent (active, passive, and open job seekers) in order to attract and hire the best candidates.”

2. Run Remarketing Campaigns on Facebook and Instagram

SmartDreamers – Adrian Cernat, CEO & Founder

“Both Facebook and Instagram have an impressive set of options for advertisers, and savvy recruitment marketers are already integrating this functionality into their overall strategies. In particular, we recommend using “remarketing” campaigns, which let you show your ads only to users who have already interacted with your brand online. By doing so, you can make sure that you’re reaching the right audience with content targeted specifically to those users who already have some awareness of your employer brand. Since you know that these candidates have already reached the awareness stage in the candidate’s journey, you can confidently show them conversion-stage content and be certain that you’re not wasting your impressions. These users might be more overt in their interest in your business, and could be more receptive to a call-to-action encouraging them to apply to a specific job.”

3. Embed UTM Parameters in Your Landing Pages

SmartDreamers continued…

“Step one: pick the pages on your site that signify a conversion, typically the “thank you” page that follows a successfully submitted job application or otherwise entered your applicant funnel. Next, insert UTM [Urchin tracking module] parameters into the source code for those pages to enable tracking. With these codes in place, you can begin visualizing the journey that each candidate takes through your application process. This means that you can pinpoint each application to a specific campaign or CTA [call to action], while learning whether the applicant reached your site through email, social media, organic search, etc.

“Then, you can use this data to establish a baseline average for how well a typical piece of content should convert leads, and track the variations across different platforms. In doing so, you might, for example, find that your email subscribers are more likely than average to click on CTAs, but less likely to follow through to the actual application. Thus, you can take steps to optimize your email content to better direct users towards applying. “

4. Define What an Active Talent Community is for You

SmartRecruiters – Sarah Wilson, Head of People

“Without strategic campaigns, a talent community is just a dusty email list. Make sure you are nurturing candidates consistently with relevant information (a CRM really helps with this). Have your team define what an active talent pool would look like to them with deliverable KPIs attached, like decreased time to hire or increased number of qualified candidates.”

5. Create an Analytics Dashboard

VONQ – Marlies Smeenk, Head of Marketing

“Want to know how many people visit your career page, click on specific vacancies, or leave your page before filling out the application form? Do you also want to see where your candidates come from? The answer should be yes!

“Then make sure you track their complete candidate journey (from career page to vacancy text, from application form to the thank you page) you need to track the whole recruitment process – all the different steps. To see all these insights on your recruitment analytics dashboard, add tracking codes to your links. This way, you take the guesswork out of your recruitment marketing process and steer your own success. “

New research says the skills gap is the product of low unemployment, but this new report may be missing the point.

Earlier this year a report from American Economic Association spurred articles by the Washington Post and Vox triumphantly proclaiming the ‘skills gap’ to be solved – since it never existed at all.

The response to these articles on Twitter was mixed, with one economisttweeting, “Every time you hear someone say ‘I can’t find the workers I need,’ add the phrase ‘at the wage I want to pay.’” At the same time,  many recruiters simply retweeted the stories for conversational fodder without committing to an affirmative or negative stance.

Economic analysis and predictions are esoteric practices, and the public doesn’t seem too surprised when pundits get it wrong, so the news of a labor crisis — given credence by the Obama administration and the US Chamber of Commerce — being totally discredited disappeared by the next day’s news cycle.

We couldn’t let it go. We reached out to SmartRecruiters followers in a casual Twitter poll, and 60 percent of respondents named ‘skills shortage’ as their top sourcing challenge. Granted, our sample size was certainly not large enough to make a claim, either way, but it did make us take a closer look at the American Economics Association study, and — as you may have guessed — there’s more to the skills gap than ‘true or false’.

It seems that when the US Chamber of Commerce and then-President Obama talk about the ‘skills gap’, they’re referring to the digital transformation making many laborers obsolete, but when American Economics Association talks about the ‘skills gap’, they’re talking about the degree and skill inflation within job ads.

The thesis of the research from Alicia Sasser Modestino, Daniel Shoag, and Joshua Ballance argues that when unemployment rises, employers can be choosier and require more skills from candidates. Thus the skills gap is a self-perpetuated, non-emergency resulting, in large part, from the financial crises of 2008.

Indeed, the analysis of over 36 million job ads from 2007 to 2012 does show a significant uptick in skill requirements. For example, jobs that previously required a high school education minimum began asking for candidates with four-year degrees. Employers acknowledged this phenomenon as a conscious decision in the report, saying, “the recession is a wonderful opportunity to acquire top talent.”

The question still remains, does this report show the skills gap is a lie? If we look at it from a digital transformation perspective, then no. This digital transformation skills gap, cited by the White House and the US Chamber of Commerce, is about a shortage of IT skills, a shortage which is still very real.

According to a 2018 Statista report, the largest deficits in tech are in Big Data/ Analytics, Technical Architecture, and Security/Resilience. And, it’s not just tech companies that need IT workers, as IT skills are necessary for any business to compete in today’s economy. Even the mom and pop store on the corner needs to consider web presence and data security.

So, if neither is wrong what does this report really tell us about today’s talent economy. We turned to Sarah Wilson, head of people at SmartRecruiters, for some practitioner insight into the conundrum.

Is there actually a skills gap?

It is accurate to say when the unemployment rate is higher and the candidate pool is more plentiful, companies become more choosy and require more experience and education. However, when people refer to a skills gap, they usually are talking about technical skills.

The skills gap in the tech space is ongoing, especially with emerging technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence. In many areas, technology is advancing faster than the workforce.

I think as more and more new tech emerges, companies (especially large ones) will need to figure out how to upskill their existing workforce because allowing them to become obsolete isn’t a sustainable business model. I see a trend of accountability on the part of the business to provide opportunities for development.

Do recruiters have an exaggerated view of the skills gap?

The tools that we as recruiters traditionally used to engage talent aren’t delivering like they used to. Now that almost every company has a LinkedIn recruiter license, any quality candidate is inundated with in-mails and emails about new job opportunities.

Just as employers take advantage of high unemployment, candidates can be choosier when unemployment is low. Recruiters need to be creative with how they find and connect with talent pools that might even involve sharpening up their tech skills.

Jerome Ternynck and Tracey Allison join Lorne Epstein on his eponymous podcast for a frank discussion on the challenges of today’s talent economy.

“The war for talent is over and the candidates have won,” says Jerome Ternynck, CEO and founder of SmartRecruiters, as he sits down with Tracey Allison, Director of Global Talent at Avery Dennison, on the latest episode of the Lorne Epstein “How To Capture Talent In Today’s Candidate-driven Market”, recorded at Unleash Amsterdam 2018. Far from taken aback, Lorne and Tracey laugh in agreement.

“[Recruitment] today is about how you attract talent to your organization,” says Tracey. “You are marketing candidates and bringing talent in, rather than, ‘I have a job – who wants to apply?”

During the next hour, the three experts discuss the needs of today’s talent practitioners from both a strategic and technological perspective, with stories of personal challenges they’ve faced in the field, from diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives to getting a seat at the table. Listen now for the full scoop and check out the top 5 takeaways below.

1. HR technology is a must.

“Why does everyone have great tech except recruiters?” Jerome asks.”Sales, Accounting, and Marketing software are all par for the course, yet people balk at allocating budget for Recruiting systems. Recruiting is a digital function now, and they need the right tools to be successful.”

2.Don’t force candidates to fit your mold.

“It’s about engaging the right way,” says Tracey. “We need to stop ticking boxes and go after talent. Right now, we should be driven more by the individual candidate and how they can be successful – which will really be your department’s ROI – versus just filling a job.”

3. Engage hiring managers, they are your friends.

“The relationship between recruiters and hiring managers is, in many ways, a broken one,” says Jerome. “It doesn’t get supported through technology, which should be the enabler. At the end of the day, hiring managers and recruiters both want to find great people. If you put them together in one place where they can actually work together then suddenly you don’t have the dynamic where hiring managers are the customers and recruiters are the service center. Instead, it’s a shoulder-to-shoulder partnership where recruiters feed the pipe and hiring managers close the deal.”

4. Sell a lifestyle.

“In a candidate-driven marketplace, getting the message of what life is actually like at a particular organization is extremely important,” says Tracey. “More and more, the lines between work and life are blurred, and it’s all about the experience.”

5. D&I every step of the way.

“First, you have to go the extra mile to source candidates from underrepresented groups,” says Jerome.  “And it’s not good enough to do a regular sourcing effort, and then say ‘oh well, only white guys applied, not our fault’. You have to actively go and source people that are underrepresented. Diversity is critical to business success in every organization. Second, you gotta make sure that once you have that diverse talent coming in, that they’re not being discriminated against. Which, in recruiting, means having some objective criteria to rate these candidates throughout the interview process.”

Learn more about creating an interview process that discourages bias in the full episode, alongside other awesome learnings including examples from Tracey on how TA can be a strategic partner for business success.

The sun sets on our final day, and here are five learnings we’re taking with us from day two.

Riding high off the carnival treats from the last night’s SmartyParty, Hiring Success 19 attendees braved another misty morning in San Francisco as they congregated at Pier 27 for day two of panel discussions, breakout sessions, and the highly anticipated Hackathon and Recruiting Startup Awards ceremonies. Day one set a high bar for exciting content, but the crowd appeared ready for a second round after fueling up at the fresh donut bar. How could day two top yesterday’s activity?

Day one of Hiring Success 19 saw SmartRecruiters announce the launch of its new corporate social responsibility (CSR) program – Reverse Recruiting. This three-pillar approach to CSR includes SmartRecruiters donating one percent of the company’s equity towards a future foundation, making best-of-breed recruiting tools available to non-profits of all sizes through free and discounted products, and hosting Reverse Recruiting weeks across all global offices four times annually. And, for this last part, SmartRecruiters wants to invite you and your company to join in.

Learn more about Reverse Recruiting, and how to host your own event, here!

Now let’s turn our attention to today’s events to revisit the best reveals and takeaways for Hiring Success 19 – Americas.

1. New Hiring Success function to support customer achievement

Hiring Is Success laid out SmartRecruiters’ 2019 product roadmap, as well as a vision for the future of TA!

With the announcement of Rebecca Carr as SVP of Hiring Success comes a new branch of SmartRecruiters, staffed by TA experts (all of whom have previously held high-level positions in people functions) who will provide SmartRecruiters’ programmatic support in the areas of awareness, transformation, acceleration, and optimization.

Here’s what this support will look like on the ground:

Awareness – Business engagement around the metrics that matter, where the business needs to be, and how it will get there.

• Business Audit
• Implementation Success
• End-user testing and analysis

Transformation – Setting realistic goals for change in alignment with desired performance metrics & developing programs to support it.

• Product success
• In-product education
• Candidate and user Surveys

Acceleration: Differentiating against the competition with innovative programs, new technologies, and aggressive performance goals.

• Pilot programs
• Local events
• Business apps and integrations

Optimization: Consistent re-evaluation of existing processes and technologies to ensure your business is staying current against the market and competitors.

• Expert Workshops
• Hiring success dashboards
• Process and Technology Certification

2. What are the concrete actions you can take to turn good intentions into results when it comes to gender equality?

Gender Inequality offered solutions and insight into the microaggressions women experience through the hiring process and within company culture…

“It’s important to keep the channels of communication open, especially with the hiring manager. Keep explaining and re-explaining the actual needs of the role and how those need could be addressed by a diverse group of candidates.” – Sarah Blackmore

“Examine corporate values and how they apply to marginalized people. If you have a corporate value that says ‘assume good intent’, that value might tell someone that they have to assume that this person with more privilege is making a mistake for the first time.” – Margarett Quigley

“Having lived most of my life as a white male I never thought about privilege until my transition. Now, as a woman, I’ve lost my male privilege, I see that people generally treat gender equality as a woman’s problem, not as an everyone problem. People want to be themselves as at work, but women find it hard to simply do that.” – Joanne Lockwood

3. Optimizely sweeps gold at the 2019 Hackathon

Three teams locked themselves in a room for the last 24 hours to build on top of SmartRecruiters’ APIs for the grand prize of $5000 in this year’s Hackathon.

While each team competed admirably, Optimizely took the grand prize with Action Center, an app that solves for task completion lag time.

Right now, Hiring Managers have to search flooded inboxes for buried at-mentions, but what if all hiring tasks were in a dashboard that they could easily click into via mobile – resolving tasks in moments of free time throughout the day? Action Center does just that. Now, hiring managers have access to a task dashboard on the SmartRecruiters mobile app homepage where they can easily click into tasks and send digital nudges to other members of the hiring team to do the same.

4. Be a recession-proof recruiter

Matt Charney talked the long game in Recruiting in a Recession. Economy and labor trends are cyclical, and just because we aren’t in a recession now doesn’t mean there isn’t one coming. So, how should recruiters make themselves critical to business success in fat times so they stay competitive in the lean? Here’s the short answer…

• Treat recruiting like business school: ask many many questions.
• Make your hiring managers happy. Most recruiters rate their performance as stellar, while most hiring managers rate their recruiters as subpar – bridge that gap!
• Measure the metrics you, as a recruiter, control.
• Don’t spend budget just because you can – make sure it will affect P&L positively!

5. Recruiting Startup Awards

Over 100 recruiting technologies competed for a chance to pitch their products on the  mainstage, but five finalists got the chance to pitch to the entire Hiring Success 19 audience.  This was a moment to celebrate innovation in TA, and, after deliberation from an expert panel of judges – as well as the audience – Candidate.ID took gold.

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.

***

Thanks so much to all our attendees, and we hope to see you next time at Hiring Success 19 – Europe!

SmartRecruiters announces a new corporate responsibility initiative (CSR), and three other moments worthy of a mic-drop.

This morning, merry conference-goers were greeted by a classic case of San Francisco rain and fog. Is it any surprise that the number one tourist purchase in San Francisco is sweatshirt? However, damp environs proved no match for attendees’ giddy spirit or the palpable enthusiasm of a giant dancing alien named Winston the Smartian, SmartRecruiters’ brand new mascot.

The revelries began at the crack of 7:30. As conference-goers rolled into Pier 27 and began catching up over delicious cups o’ quiche, they couldn’t help but notice our friends at G2 crowd collecting surveys from SmartRecruiters customers. For every completed survey, SmartRecruiters made a $10 donation to Defy Ventures, a non-profit organization providing career training and mentorship for formerly incarcerated people in the US. Forgive the shameless plug, but it’s for a good cause, people!

But, enough of work. The sun is setting on our first day at the conference, and we’re all headed to the Smarty Party carnival, so let’s take a moment to recall some of the top moments of our first day at Hiring Success 19 – Americas.

When SmartRecruiters announced a new CSR: ‘Reverse Recruiting’ Invites Hiring Success Community to Give Back.

In the opening keynote by Jerome Ternynck, CEO and founder of SmartRecruiters, attendees learned about the launch of a new corporate social responsibility program, Reverse Recruiting!

This CSR goes well beyond the SmartRecruiters business. It starts with SmartRecruiters pledging one percent of their equity towards a future foundation. SmartRecruiters also wants to ensure non-profits have access to top-level hiring technology through free and discounted services for organizations of all sizes, and ends with everyone (including your company) getting involved with Reverse Recruiting!

What is Reverse Recruiting?

On Reverse Recruiting days, recruiters no longer work for their companies — they work for candidates. They invite rejected candidates and previously overlooked talent to review their resumes, conduct mock interviews, offer suggestions, and assist struggling candidates in their job search. And guess what? Managers are invited as well! What a great way for everyone to give back.

SmartRecruiters will participate in Reverse Recruiting days once a quarter in all of our global offices, and the hope is your office will consider this as well. Sign up to learn more and receive a toolkit with all the materials you need to host your very own Reverse Recruiting session.

How to ‘backtest’ your hiring practice like the folks in finance do.

In today’s Select track, Are Purple Unicorn Hires Repeatable, Robert Coombs, CEO of Head of Business Operations at CredSimple, talked algorithms. It’s a word we hear a lot, and before today this author defined it as ‘the magical computer thing that figures stuff out for us lowly humans’. Now I know it’s actually as simple as a set of rules we use to problem solve. A low-tech example of an algorithm is a recipe. We can reasonably expect chocolate chip cookies when we put the right ingredients through the right preparation and cooking steps, but let’s get more specific.

An algorithm, whether it be for cooking or financial gains, has several elements in common:

• Inputs –  The thing that is applied: data, ingredients, historical trends,
• Outputs – The thing that comes out: transactions, delicious cookies, great hires
• Definite –  Clear, unambiguous, and feasible
• Finite – Must have an endpoint
• Effective – Similar inputs yield similar desired outputs

So, let’s look at a recruiting example. Take one of your really successful hires, and let’s reverse engineer the process to see if your recruiting algorithm is effective. This is called ‘backtesting’.

We took the example of Roy Baladi, head of the marketplace for SmartRecruiters. Say we want to test effective keyword searches — we look at the job description and start pulling keywords to search for candidates. Again and again, Roy’s name does not show up in the shortlist. What does this tell us? Maybe we need to revisit the job description (i.e. our input) and revise our wording to be more relevant towards the role.

Some people call this process ‘dogfooding’, which basically means internally testing your external processes to see if they are indeed effective. Have hiring managers test this on themselves to increase empathy and produce more accurate job descriptions!

Three recruiting lessons from teachers, that are scalable for your TA function.

Speaking on the Attract track, Brian White of the Auburn-Washburn Unified School District 437 asked everyone seated at the session Get Ahead of Seasonal Hiring Challenges to close their eyes and think of a teacher who made a positive influence in their life. For most attendees, it didn’t take long for inspirational educators to come to mind. Whether it was the math teacher who sat with you until multiplying fractions finally made sense, or the tutor who helped you master the past perfect in Spanish, the examples are practically infinite.

When we are asked to think of similar moments with recruiters, the examples are far fewer. So what can TA take from teachers’ best practices to boost candidate experience?

1. Learn what’s important to the student. The most effective teachers find out what motivates their students, what they care about, and use that knowledge to inspire learning.
2. Learn to communicate based on the individual. For teachers, this can mean catering to different learning styles. Brian’s team used this advice to create a texting line for job inquiries and implement a chatbot.
3. Understand the student is more than a number. Even with the incredible volume of students teachers interact with every year, they think of each one as an individual person. For recruiters this can be as simple as including a personal detail their outreach to show talent they really care.

The biggest myth is that anyone is normal.

In today’s hire track, during Mind Mix: Neurodiversity at Work’ Sara-Jane Harvey, an autism advocate who also is on the spectrum herself, helped our audience understand the prevalence and value of neurodiversity in our society.

The biggest mental health myth is that there is indeed a “normal”. Normal doesn’t exist. If your mind is a computer, then the way you process information is your operating system, and just because your computer doesn’t run Windows doesn’t mean it’s broken.

There’s no need to be ‘realistic’ when setting goals.

In today’s closing keynote, Colin O’Brady, four-time world record holding endurance athlete, reminds us how crazy his goals seemed when he first set them.

When Colin told his mother from a hospital bed in Thailand, where he was recovering from third-degree burns covering a quarter of his body, that he wanted to train for a triathlon, she didn’t say, ‘let’s set a more reasonable goal.’ Even with doctors saying Colin may never walk normally again, his mother took him seriously, and immediately got Colin small weights to start training.

Eighteen months later, Colin entered the Chicago marathon — and won! He continued to set outrageous goals, and continued to check them off like items on a grocery list. Climb the seven highest peaks in the world in a record-breaking 132 days – check! Be the first to cross Antarctica solo and unaided – check!

“I don’t think everyone wants to go walk across Antarctica,’ said Colin, ‘but I know that people certainly have challenges in their life. Everyone has reservoirs of untapped potential inside of themselves and can achieve really incredible things.”

From her unique perch in TA marketing, this CEO has an unparalleled view of the industry that you’ll want to see!

HR tech marketing is a pretty small niche to land on but for Maren Hogan, CEO and Founder of Red Branch Media, it just made sense. This “dyed in the wool” marketer was introduced to the burgeoning world of talent acquisition (TA) through her spouse, who was starting a recruiting agency back in 2008. Though that year turned out to be a most inauspicious time to start a company – need we recall the Financial Crisis of 2008 – the adventure did set Maren on her path towards becoming one of the leading experts in the HR and Recruiting Tech industry.

She laughs while reminiscing how Red Branch Media was intended to be a small-scale operation that would allow her to tweet from the couch. However, demand proved otherwise, and eight years later Red Branch has become a full fledged agency with 50 employees and presence at most major TA events.

Now, Maren brings her expertise to Hiring Success 19 – Americas, February 26-27 in San Francisco both a judge for the Recruiting Startup Awards and as the host of her own session, The Innovation Quadrant: How to Align You with Your Company. We talk with her today about what she has in store for us at the conference, and the role of brand in sourcing.

Can you give us a preview of your session?

My session, The Innovation Quadrant: How to Align You with Your Company, comes from my deep interest in what drives innovation within companies. I began looking at different types of innovation and building a quadrant for companies and individuals to map themselves based on the Global Innovation Index.

In our 30 minutes together, I’m going to give a simplified version of the innovation questionnaire I’ve developed, and attendees will grade themselves on a scale of A-to-D in each of the four quadrants: management, leadership, inspiration, and individual contributor.

You’ve said recruiters need to sell a job brand – not just employer brand. Could you explain the difference between the two?

Anyone who has worked at a large company knows the culture will vary in different departments, branches, or teams within the company and that’s why it’s important to get specific.

On a super high level, employer brand is the company’s value proposition and culture. I think of it as the promise a company makes towards all levels of its employees from VP to janitor. On the other hand, the job brand will speak to the unique culture of a group within the company, and the responsibilities of the role. It’s something that you have to work more closely with the hiring manager to figure out, including understanding what type of person does well in that role.

Why is it so important to get so specific when it comes to brand?

Maybe it’s my Omaha sensibility, or just my marketing standpoint, but it doesn’t make sense to me that a company would make a commitment to hiring someone without being sure they were the right person for the job. The average salary in the US is about 62k. That’s the cost of a house here in Omaha. I wouldn’t make that investment without being sure.

Talk to me a little bit about some new sourcing channels.

Obviously, sourcing channels are always evolving, the ones that were new and innovative a couple of years ago are no longer as relevant today. When I try to discover new sourcing channels, I put myself in the candidate’s shoes. Who am I? Where do I hang out, in person or online?

When people think sourcing, they generally think ‘online’, but sometimes it works to go super old school. I had one client sourcing college students and what worked there was posting signs in bar bathroom stalls.  

Another sourcer I know just kept a pile of candy on her desk and gave out a piece to anyone who delivered a name and number. It honestly worked more effectively than any $100 referral bonus program I’ve ever seen… I guess because of the immediacy?

It just depends on who you’re looking for aka your ‘candidate personae’ and where that personae will be.

You talk a lot about candidate personae, is creating candidate personaes something that is becoming more popular now?

Anecdotally I would say yes. I’ve been talking about candidate personaes for over five years now. It used to be when I asked a group who had candidate personaes for their job no one raised their hand, now almost everybody does.

Hear more from Maren Hogan on why she’s coming to Hiring Success 19 – Americas in her video below!

Meet the recruiting strategist who’s sought talent for the likes of NASA, ahead of her session at Hiring Success 19 – Americas, February 26-27 in San Francisco.

Kimberly Jones isn’t afraid to point out the obvious: if a company cares about diversity and inclusion (D&I), they can make it happen. She prides herself on speaking the truth about talent acquisition (TA), and that’s exactly what you will get in her session “Truth About D&I Strategy & Results” at Hiring Success 19 – Americas, February 26-27 in San Francisco.

After working with name brands like GE Aviation, Raytheon, and NASA, Kimberly founded her own recruiting firm, Kelton Legends LLC, in February of 2017. Kelton Legends is a multidimensional TA consulting agency that helps organizations create aligned business and hiring strategies with meaningingful D&I initiatives. Jobseekers can also turn to Kelton Legends if they are in need of career advice or coaching.  

Kimberly has always had a penchant for math and science, and to satisfy what she calls her ‘inner nerd’, she’s been drawn to HR at aerospace and defense contractors. Working with these brain trusts has left her with some great stories. We talk with her today about how she ended up in the South Pole, and what it’s really like to work for NASA.

Most recruiters don’t find themselves in Antarctica. How did you find yourself there?

I was working as the diversity recruiting manager for Raytheon Polar services. Raytheon is a defense contractor, and the Polar services team worked primarily for the National Science foundation, staffing all program positions from Denver, Colorado to Antarctica.  

At that point in my career I was ready for anything, so I told my leadership team to give me the craziest assignment they had. That’s how I ended up at the South Pole. Another part of it was practicing what I preached. Our team was making a lot of changes to boost retention efforts, so I needed to experience the working environments I was selling.

So, when the season opened back up [October through February the ice breaks up, allowing ships to pass while the 20-hour-a-day sunshine brings out the local flora and fauna] and there was an opportunity to visit the Antarctic stations I was like, ‘sign me up!’

I spent six weeks in Antarctica, most of that time at the main station, McMurdo, but also venturing to the South Pole for three days. That trip was one of the most fantastic experiences of my life!

What’s the pitch for getting people to relocate to Antarctica?

Surprisingly, it’s not that hard to convince people to travel to the bottom of the earth. The real challenge is getting the right mix of people.

What’s the mix of people you are going for?

At that point, Raytheon was the primary contractor for the National Science Foundation. This means we were recruiting science support and lab technicians, but there were many other roles to consider. We needed engineers, maintenance people, construction workers, carpenters, housekeepers, firefighters, cooks, doctors, nurses, electricians, and even hairdressers. It’s a small village, so every role has to be filled.

You will be conducting a session called “Truth About D&I Strategy & Results” at Hiring Success 19 – Americas, can you tell us more about that?

If the business is a cake, people tend to think of D&I strategies as frosting – nice to have but not necessary. What I want people to understand is that D&I strategy is more like the eggs, i.e. critical. Try baking a cake without eggs; you end up with a flat cake.

During my session, I am going to show everyone how to integrate D&I strategy directly into what they do everyday. This will impact engagement, candidate pools, interviews, and ultimately the new hires. When attendees leave this session, they will have a template for D&I strategy to take back to their organizations that has been successfully operationalized in multiple businesses already.

The slide deck and resources I will provide lay the foundation for a comprehensive D&I approach, and by substituting some of the information within the presentation, could easily be applied to another business.

What’s the biggest obstacle for D&I programs?

Recruiting isn’t rocket science. Believe me, I’ve recruited rocket scientists. It really only takes a commitment; if your organization is committed to D&I it’s very achievable.

McKinsey & Company found that companies in the top 25 percent for racial and ethnic diversity are 35 percent more likely to financially outperform industry competitors. So, anyone not deliberately working to make their organization more diverse tells me they’re not interested in being a competitive business.

Companies will boast about revenue, safety, and quality measures. Yet, in the areas of diversity, somehow people get so comfortable with mediocre.

You probably get this question a lot, but what was it like recruiting for NASA?

I can remember my first day of interviews. I remember seeing the NASA sign and getting goosebumps. My mission was to help the organization evolve. It was a big task, but looking back I am proud. NASA is one of the many organizations where the workforces is mainly white males. We even had one engineering group call themselves ‘stale, pale, and male’.

That first year I had some very high deliverables, including implementing an new application tracking system amidst a culture that was operating in a very insulated way. The fantastic and hard thing about being around some of the brightest minds in the world is that they will challenge you – they are aren’t afraid to articulate their concerns.

I had to consider their perspective, show them that I was an expert in my field, and demonstrate that even if I was doing was different, I would never do anything to undermine our competitive advantage.

I will say I burned calories for sure while I was there. There were days where I was pushed to some very extreme limits, professionally and emotionally, and on those days I would actually go sit in the space operations facility viewing gallery to watch all of the data beaming in from all over the universe. It kept me grounded in my mission, seeing these satellites that had been built and launched over 50 years ago, still functioning exactly how they were designed and engineered to work.

The word I will use is awesome – NASA is awesome.