Social Recruiting Days Recap: Hot Shit or Boring AF?
That’s it — Social Recruiting Days 2018 in Berlin are over. More than 600 recruiters from all over the world gathered together to share and exchange knowledge about the latest recruitment trends. The biggest event in Germany to ramp up Talent Acquisition efforts. This years motto was “Power of Words”.
#1 Inclusion & Diversity efforts are amazing
The event was kicked off with a talk by Joanne Lockwood, Transgender Awareness Activist, who reminded the audience to think more about the usage of certain words and choose them more wisely & precisely. Just a quick example, don’t we sometimes say to a crowd of people “Hey Guys” addressing all different genders? If we think twice this is absolutely wrong. Joanne’s talk made me aware of the ‘power of words’ — she said words can divide, and destroy if we use them wrong but words can also heal, and inspire. If you wanna know more about Joanne, also check out my interview with her.
The second talk which I extremely enjoyed was delivered by Stuart Cameron, Co-founder & CEO of Uhlala. He told the audience his personal story and how he evolved from an aggressive, unhappy guy in his youth to one of Berlin’s most inspiring LGBTQ+ activist. Inclusions & Diversity is just a super important topic which companies cannot longer just treat as a nice-to-have but it’s a must-have. Diversity, in my opinion, goes far beyond by getting only the right ratio of men and women working in the company. And to the people who think that a diverse workforce has anyways no influence on business results. You are totally wrong! Just have a look at the latest diversity report by McKinsey which uncovers that diversity has a positive impact of the financial performance on an organization. The diversity & inclusion talks at the conference were definitively hooooot!
#2 Data-Driveness is the new normal
One hot topic on this year’s Social Recruiting Days was data-driven recruiting. It’s nothing new basically and I think in a lot of companies operating in fast & volatile environments, so especially startups, this is already the new normal. I am still fascinated to see that there are companies who are still applying a post & pray approach nowadays. A great kick-off was the presentation by Sören Winter from Zalando who gave some insights about Zalando’s recruitment analytics journey. And also Bastian Lehmkuhl from Deutsche Bahn was showing how DB is applying performance marketing methodologies in recruiting. That we shouldn’t miss all the amazing opportunities to tell great stories even though we have to analyze and deal with a shitload of data and may get afraid of AI (or not) told Manuel Heichlinger from LinkedIn in his inspiring talk. I also loved the talk by Hung Lee who shared his learnings from sending 250.000 emails and gave some great insights how his successful Brainfood newsletter evolved. Have a mission, delivering promises, maintaining a coherent style — and just be approachable and human is his recipe. Hung Lee also shared his opinion about employer branding in tech recruiting with me, just click here. My absolutely hidden champion and one of my personal superstars at this year’s Social Recruiting Days was Matej Matolin from STRV who was sharing how its company developed a loyalty program for candidates and used e-mail marketing as well as an integration of Eventbrite to their ATS system to even engage more with high-value candidates. Amazing! And if you wanna jump-start your e-mail engagement with your own Talentpool right now from scratch — read on here. Data-Driven approaches are for sure hot shit!
#3 Prof. Dr. Uwe Kannings closing speech
The closing speech by Prof. Dr. Uwe Kanning was really cool. He cleared up with some recruiting myth from a psychological perspective quoting current research. For example, if someone has typos in his cover letter or gaps in his CV or even is oversharing on social media it has nothing to do with the person diligence. Yes, exactly! OMG! I was so happy when I heard this — often I still have a discussion with people who believe that jumpy profiles or profiles with gaps are a problem. Sometimes even a photo on the CV matters for them. WTF, I think we should be over it. I strongly believe jumpy profiles or a gap in a CV or even a typo really really doesn’t say anything about the qualifications of a person. So happy, its even approved by science. Woop woop!
To sum it up: This years Social Recruiting Days were simply HOT AF!
What do you think? Would love to hear your opinion about it!
