10 Recruitment Insights From Amsterdam’s #iRecruitExpo

For two days last week, the good (and some great) people from the world of recruitment, talent and HR descended on the RAI in Amsterdam, for the annual iRecruit Conference. It was an enjoyable and well organised conference, and one I would recommend looking out for next year. It was well attended, but why weren’t there more industry professionals there? It is the biggest recruitment conference in Europe and still there is apathy towards attending these types of events. Madness if you ask me!

There was way too much content to share, so instead I thought I would share ten  insights I had from the two days, from the speakers and sessions I chose to watch and listen to.

1. “Recruitment (big) data should be about the insights it gives not the actual reports themselves” -  @TheRecruiterGuy aka Chris Hoyt, Global Talent & Marketing Leader at PepsiCo. < My favourite quote from the two days.
2. “ATS databases are candidate graveyards” -  @jerometernynck aka Jerome Ternynck, Founder & CEO SmartRecruiters < context: from a recruitment perspective!
3. “You can’t train people to be smart” - @vlastelica aka JohnVlastelica Founder & CEO of Recruiting Toolbox
4. L’Oreal have a try/fail/try approach to new social platforms for recruiting. They reach their audience with innovative content. If they try a new platform a couple of times and it doesn’t work for them, then they park it and move on.
5. Current employees of Google are called Googlers. Newbies at Google are called Nooglers and people who have left Google are called Zooglers. Made me smile during Mary Hamershock’s closing Keynote on day 1.
6. “The competency model used by many companies is static - it is about the competencies of today, NOT tomorrow.” Via Peter Baker, Global Head of Learning & Development, Maersk Line.
7. “Everyone has a story to tell” via  @FredScav aka Frederique Scavennec, Global VP Talent Acquisition, L’Oreal. Simple but brilliant image message about story telling here:
8. “Most ATS vendors are selling you the past -  we are in the future now!” via @jerometernynck . Think about some of the technology vendors are trying to sell you every week - this statement is spot on! Product roadmaps with social and mobile are no good - they should be in the products now.
9. “The best candidates expect to be approached. So what are you doing about that?” via @MatthewJeffery , Global Head of Talent Strategy & Innovation, SAP AG.
10. “80% of people we hire applied for our jobs within the first 30 days” via @TheRecruiterGuy aka Chris Hoyt, Global Talent & Marketing Leader at PepsiCo.

There was obviously much more content from the two days, but these were some of my favourite snippets that resonated with me.

Are there any of these that ring true with you and your company?

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