This week I travelled to Berlin to attend Social Recruiting Days – an event I would certainly recommend to others! I tried to make notes from the presentations I attended so I could give you a little bit more detais about the event, so here we go:
The entire event was combined of three different modules:
…I bet you can guess where I fit in 🙂 I won’t describe every single session in detail, but here are some highlights from each of the modules.
One of the sessions in this module I particularly enjoyed was all about combining recruiting & talent marketing effectively. It was a case study presented by Infineon in German but translated simultaneously (for those who are interested – that was what I intended to do before I ended up in recruitment). The presenters walked us through the change they implemented at the company – from analysing their recruitment needs and availability of talent, to figuring out a more effective approach to attract the right talent, to the ongoing process of improving their recruitment process.
The one thing I especially liked was the idea of the internal recruiting team offering different recruiting products to different teams and Hiring Managers, based on their analysis of the needs if the department and availability of talent in the market.
Love thus idea: 3 products from the internal recruitment team:
-post & select
-special & confidential
-network & sell#SRD17— Kasia Borowicz (@kmborowicz) 12 September 2017
The speakers mentioned using candidate personas as well, a tool that will definitely help in creating an effective recruitment strategy. Again, they had some interesting ideas on how to work with them.
Thought: use your candidate personas to find people who will fit the team. Look for the opposite of the persona to improve diversity #SRD17 — Kasia Borowicz (@kmborowicz) 12 September 2017
The second module focused on analytics. I joined the micro bar camp for a very interesting session focusing on a number of topics including automation and GDPR led by Oscar Mager. If you’re not sure what a bar camp is (I know I wasn’t!) it resembles a tru session, a discussion moderated by one person where everyone is invited to pitch in.
I also enjoyed (and heard other participants did too!) the closing keynote of the day presented by David Green. If you’re interested in the subject of people analytics, you will definitely enjoy his articles. He walked us through the the basics of what people analytics are, why we need them for effectively managing organisations and how this can be done. I heard from a number of participants they particularly enjoyed the case studies shared by David.
“Analytics pays back 13$ for every Dollar spent” Time to invest! @david_green_uk #SRD17 pic.twitter.com/TsNBcwRjcM
— SRD (@hrm_srd17) 12 September 2017
I’ll admit to missing one presentation in this module as it came before my own – I ended up going over my slides to prepare. Apparently it paid off as I got some nice feedback after the presentation on Social Sourcing, some of which even came in Polish! 🙂 I did manage to refocus afterwards and it was certainly worth it. I wrote down plenty of interesting tips and insights from the presentation on candidate experience from Balazs Paroczay, who managed to give us all a great experience despite some technical issues with the slides. Here are some of my favourite takeaways from this session:
Candidate Experience Model by @TheBalazs #SRD17 pic.twitter.com/FbtslTclve — Ghaya Hachani (@ghaya_hachani) 13 September 2017
What would happen if we tried to bring the theatre experience to the selection process? Think about the potential for AC @thebalazs #SRD17 pic.twitter.com/p42fBRGjqO
— Kasia Borowicz (@kmborowicz) 13 September 2017
Then Sergej Zimpel followed with a presentation encouraging us all to abandon templates and personalise messages we send to candidates. While this is a subject often covered at events, the one thing that’s often missing is a really good how to guide. Sergej delivered that with both some worst and best practice examples. No excuses now not to personalise future messages! 🙂
How do you write truly personal messages? #SRD17 – informal tone works better – short & simple@SergejZimpel — Kasia Borowicz (@kmborowicz) 13 September 2017
Worst practices in messaging candidates 😉 any message with “leading company” or “disruptive innovation” @SergejZimpel #SRD17
— Kasia Borowicz (@kmborowicz) 13 September 2017
I met some really great people at the event – and the atmosphere definitely encouraged networking. After the presentations on the first day, we all were invited to a party and the second day started with a run. Plenty of opportunities to discuss the learnings from the event! I know it may sound silly to some, but at this point I should mention just how nice the food was at the event 🙂 It was certainly a nice addition to the lively conversations taking place at all of the tables!
All in all, I’d definitely go back. The programme was prepared very thoughtfully, the speakers and the participants were great. So if I get a chance to attend next year, maybe I’ll see you there? 😉