Will #iRecruitExpo Deliver Innovation Or BAU?

How many recruitment, talent and HR leaders’ presentations does it take to make you feel good/bad about your recruitment strategy?

Honestly?  I have no idea, but I am going to Amsterdam tomorrow to find out!  Now in it’s second year, iRecruit Expo has quickly become the biggest recruitment specific conference in Europe. While biggest doesn’t always mean best, it does mean that the 2 day event is guaranteed to attract a superb industry audience from across Europe and beyond.

I am hoping to see some innovative practices around recruitment, candidate engagement, brand and use of technology. My only fear is that the content will be great stories and case studies, but more BAU (business as usual) than innovation. I want to be proved wrong 🙂

I thought I would share my three challenges that I personally find with attending these bigger conferences:

As you would expect over two days and multiple work streams - all focused around the workplace, jobs and candidates - there is way too much content to get round too. Here is the first challenge - finding the speakers with current, interesting and relevant stories/case studies to share. Too often there is conference content recycling, with content/case studies that have been out in the industry media for many months, which can be disappointing. Presentations and workshops live or die on the ability of the presenters to retain their interest for 30+ minutes. Twitter is a great barometer for presentation quality - although sometimes a little unfairly! No one sets out to deliver a bad session, after all!

I hope I choose wisely!

Conferences are a great place for companies to showcase their technologies. I love discovering new recruitment technologies, new tools and new releases of existing products. Many of the innovators and exciting industry challenging companies are SME’s or start-ups, but disappointingly they are restricted from attending these types of events often due to cost of exhibiting. I am hoping to see at least a few in Amsterdam - as these companies are not afraid to challenge existing methods, process and technologies with new solutions to age old problems.

A simple challenge at any big conference - getting to speak to as many people as you want to. Sadly it never happens, as there are always more people you ‘wished’ you could have got to! At least we have the many different social media platforms to connect with people during and after the event!

The final comment which is more than a challenge - it is always a big problem, and frustration - and that is wifi! It is never enough for the delegates at these events, even though they say it is. The problems is that many people now have 2 or 3 devices that they plug into wifi sapping its bandwidth.

So, I am hoping that iRecruit Expo will tick all these ‘challenge boxes’ this year.

Let’s wait and see……..