A Recap of The Hiring Success 17 Conference

As soon as I heard Jerome Ternynck talk about creating a Hiring Success movement in his opening keynote, and reminding us that we’re all in this together, I knew that we were going to have a great two days. And I was right. This conference is about a community of recruiters, leading the effort to drive hiring success.

This week at Hiring Success 17, we were so lucky to meet and talk with hiring professionals from around the world. With over 400 thought leaders, recruiters, vendors, and hiring managers all talking about how they manage recruiting in one place, it seems like everyone had something new to talk about.

If you missed this year’s event, we hope to see you next year at Hiring Success 18, where we’ll have even more recruiting insights, professionals, and hiring strategies to take back to your organization.

For those of you who missed Hiring Success 17, or want to relive it again, here are some highlights from this year:

Mainstage Presentation Highlights:

Starting the conference off, SmartRecruiters’ CEO Jerome Ternynck spoke about the future of talent acquisition with Michael Ross, the EVP of HR of Visa. They explained the critical need to expand the talent function beyond the borders of HR. At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that hiring is a team sport. The success of a new hire in the long term takes more than just recruiters and HR. With this extra effort, retention and overall candidate experience went up. Michael Ross also showed off his Visa Payment Ring!

Lou Adler, CEO of The Adler Group dished out some great advice. He recommends “swim where the big fish swim” to find the best candidates. Also recommends that we focus on smaller sets of candidates who have performed well, as opposed to a wide net of many different candidates.

“Balancing your Marketing Mix” focused on the need that every touch point you have with a candidate is considered recruiting marketing. Just like marketing, you need to create a memorable, positive experience. And this needs to occur long before someone wants a job at your company, or long before you want them for a job.

Stacy Zapar, a Consultant, Trainer, and Speaker with Tenfold spoke about optimizing the end-to-end candidate journey. I thought she was AMAZING. She reiterated that through the candidate experience you have the opportunity to create fans for your company, even if you decline that person as a candidate they can be a great source of referrals or a perfect fit for a role in the future

Highlights From Breakout Sessions:

One of our most popular sessions spoke about diversity. The panel showed research that companies which have more diverse workforces grow faster, innovate faster, and disrupt faster. And that diversity is about more than just race or gender, but you also need a diversity of thought, background, and ability. If you don’t know your own bias, you may be missing diversity goals.

Our women in tech panel stressed that addressing the issue is more than just gender parity. It’s about speaking to the types of candidates you want to attract. The programs around gender equality recognize the value of work over the value of time spent. They also found that after increasing maternity and paternity leave durations, they were able to increase employee engagement, retention, and is a great way to attract new candidates.

Diana Ferguson, Vice President of Talent Acquisition at OppenheimerFunds spoke about “relational recruiting”, in that you should create relationships with your potential candidates long before you ever need them. Recognize the expanded network of your organization, and empower your network to be your recruiters and evangelists for you. Make everyone at your company a recruiter for you.

The Smarty Party:

Of course, I have to mention our annual Smarty Party, this year at SPiN. With table tennis matches galore, tons of networking, handshakes, smiles, and pictures, it was the event to be at this year. I took so many pictures, met so many people, and made connections that I’ll have for years.

Awards:

BEST QUALITY OF HIRE

WINNER – EQUINOX: The Best Quality of Hire award recognizes companies that put the maximal amount of thought and passion into the candidate selection process. These companies pay close attention to the effectiveness of their sourcing tactics, diversity of candidates moving into the interview rounds, and are extremely efficient from offer to hire. The winner will have a thorough and consistent hiring process that allows them to truly source, identify, interview and hire the best talent out there.

BEST PLATFORM DEPLOYMENT

WINNER – VISA: The Best Platform award recognizes that transformative talent acquisition requires the process enablement that comes from a Talent Acquisition Suite like SmartRecruiters. The award for Best Platform will recognize a company that has crisply and engagingly implemented the SmartRecruiters platform. The winner will have envisioned a future-state hiring process, rolled-out the SmartRecruiters platform to enable it, integrated internally and externally, and successfully brought all stakeholders into the fold.

BEST HIRING ENGAGEMENT

WINNER – SCALITY: Collaboration across hiring teams and especially with hiring managers has long been a hurdle for talent acquisition teams. The Best Hiring Engagement award will recognize a team that has transformed this reality by making it easy for hiring managers to engage in the recruiting and vetting process. The winner will have a controlled yet accessible process that makes it easy for hiring managers to collaborate with their hiring team. Speed of feedback, use of scorecards, and elimination of workarounds are hallmarks of success.

BEST CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE

WINNER – BOSCH: Marketing to qualified candidates is the starting point of recruiting excellence. The award for Best Candidate Experience will recognize a talent acquisition team that makes it easy for high quality candidates to learn about opportunities, to engage in a way that respects them and builds the employer brand, that makes it easy for them to apply, and that facilitates clear communication throughout the recruiting process.

HIRING TEAM OF THE YEAR

WINNER – INDIGO: Quality of hire is the ultimate goal of transformative recruiting, making Hiring Team of the Year the ultimate SmartRecruiters Award. Accordingly, the award for Hiring Team of the Year will be based on the hiring score, an NPS-like measure for quality of hire. This award will recognize a talent acquisition team that has succeeded in delivering a consistently elevated hiring score and is therefore delivering on the promise of Hiring Success.