Category Archives: Conferences

Video: Discussing AI in Sourcing and Recruiting

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I recently had the chance to participate in a Google Hangout with Jeremy Roberts of HiringSolved as an introduction to the speakers of their upcoming conference on Feb 7 in NYC (HIREconf).

You can watch the recording of our chat here or play the video below to learn a little about my background and my thoughts about the evolving role of technology and specifically artificial intelligence solutions when it comes to sourcing and recruitment, which will be the topic of my opening keynote at HIREconf. I’m planning on addressing how intelligent machines are changing talent acquisition and how sourcers and recruiters can prepare for today and tomorrow.

https://youtu.be/8yOHA2d66jU

The folks at HiringSolved have really put together a solid list of speakers for their 1 day event in NYC:

Here’s a peek at the agenda:

hireconf-agenda

If you can make it, I’d love to see you there!

Talent42 Keynote: Building Talent Pipelines

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Glen Cathey - Talent42In theory, building a talent “pipeline” sounds like an ideal strategy, ensuring that you always have a steady supply of the talent you’re looking for.

In reality, there are many issues with building talent pipelines, and they all “leak” extensively.

I recently delivered the closing keynote at the always excellent Talent42 technical recruiting conference where I explored the core issues associated with building talent pipelines, proposed that talent acquisition is essentially responsible for managing a company’s human capital supply chain, and challenged the audience to see that the “war for talent” is really a supply chain management competition.

If you have a difficult time seeing the parallels between talent acquisition and supply chain management, take a look at the definition of supply chain management according to the CSCMP (Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals): “Supply chain management encompasses the planning and management of all activities involved in sourcing, procurement, conversion, and logistics management…It also includes the crucial components of coordination and collaboration with channel partners, which can be suppliers, intermediaries, third-party service providers, and customers.”

Talent acquisition certainly involves the planning and management of all activities involved in sourcing, procuring/converting candidates and all associated logistics – as such, I believe HR/recruiting organizations need to leverage proven production and supply chain management principles (e.g., Lean, kanban, Just-In-Time, etc.) in their recruiting processes and strategies to gain competitive advantages.

Unfortunately, many companies seem to be very late to the game in this regard. As the ultimate owners of talent acquisition, HR/recruiting should be the experts in human capital supply chain management and processes, leading innovation in this space. However, I have found several examples of global I.T. professionals innovatively leveraging Lean principles to recruit people for their own teams and to manage recruiting processes that should serve as a serious wake-up call to HR/recruiting organizations.

If you’re curious about the core problems associated with proactively building talent pipelines and would like to learn about the many benefits of applying lean principles to the recruiting process, including reducing the “7 deadly wastes,” employing kanban and enabling Just-In-Time delivery, take some time to navigate through the Slideshare below.

My live presentation deck was comprised mostly of images, so I’ve published a modified version that can be consumed without the benefit of hearing me speak to the concepts.

Enjoy, and please do share your thoughts.

My Future of Sourcing Keynote at Talent42

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Talent42 audience viewI recently attended and thoroughly enjoyed the Talent42 conference in Seattle – John Vlastelica and Carmen Hudson have done a fantastic job, and I was also honored to be asked to present the closing keynote on the current and future state of sourcing.

Aside from the stacked speaker lineup, valuable content, sourcing roundtables led by a good portion of who’s who in the sourcing community, and power + wireless for all (other conference organizers please take note!), what I especially enjoyed about Talent42 is the fact that it is the only technical recruiting-only conference.  My entire career has been focused primarily on the technical recruiting, so it was nice to spend a couple of days in the company of people who share a similar recruiting background and appreciate the unique challenges associated with sourcing and recruiting IT professionals.

As my keynote presentation had a lot of animations, off-slide commentary and embedded videos, I took the time to modify the slide deck so that it could be largely understood that without the benefit of hearing me speak to the content (I wish more presenters would do the same!!!), and I have uploaded it to Slideshare, complete with informative, funny, and controversial YouTube videos.

In this presentation I address what I feel is the current state of talent sourcing as well as what I believe the future of talent sourcing will be, sooner than later.  Additionally, I demonstrate Facebook’s Graph Search and offer insight into functionality from several “Big Data” talent sourcing tools, including Dice Open Web, TalentBin, Entelo, and Gild.

The Moneyball Recruiting Opportunity: Analytics & Big Data

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Earlier this year, I traveled to Australia to present a keynote at the Australasian Talent Conference on the topic of the Moneyball opportunity that exists for companies when they are sourcing, identifying, assessing, recruiting, and developing talent, and how big data and predictive analytics will be the next major area of competitive advantage in the war for talent.

Below you will find my keynote presentation, including a couple of YouTube videos.

Big Data and predictive analytics are just beginning to be leveraged in talent acquisition by a few forward thinking companies, and I am convinced they will both play major roles in the near future.

Unfortunately, at this time there is still some confusion around exactly what “Big Data” is and is not. For example, this Wall Street Journal article incorrectly references the use of personality assessments and other online tests to facilitate hiring as an application of Big Data, when in fact it is really just an example of analytics.

Data from personality assessments and online tests coupled with other human capital data doesn’t represent a combination of high-volume, high-velocity, and/or high-variety information assets, which most experts agree is required for something to be classified as “Big Data.”

In this presentation, I think you will find the examples of how companies are currently leveraging analytics in their recruitment as well as in the analysis of their current workforce to be quite interesting, as well as some of the tools that already exist that do in fact harness high volume, high velocity, and high variety information assets.

You may be shocked to find that data supports the finding that taller and more attractive men and women make more money than their shorter and less attractive peers (especially shocked to find out exactly how much more!) – which gives us a glimpse into how people make hiring and promotion decisions on a daily basis based on unconscious prejudice, similar to how unconscious prejudice, wisdom, and “gut” instincts are and have been used in athletic recruiting – which Billy Beane and Paul Depodesta of the Oakland A’s specifically set out to counter.

As demonstrated in Moneyball, very strong teams can be built with data-based decision making, throwing conventional wisdom to the wind.

Enjoy the presentation, and please do let me know your thoughts. Thanks!

 

 

If you like what you’ve seen in the Slideshare, you may want to read this post I wrote on Big Data, Data Science, and Moneyball recruiting last year.

 

I Return to London For LinkedIn Talent Connect and TruLondon

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I’m writing this from the International terminal of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport – the busiest airport in the world.

I thought I would let you know where in the world Glen Cathey is, and this week – I’ll be in London to speak at my 5th LinkedIn event, LinkedIn Talent Connect Europe.

I’ve cooked up a great presentation for the attendees who come to my session at 2:30 on Tuesday the 23rd.

While I understand Talent Connect Europe will have attendees from all across EMEA, I must say that there is a special place in my heart for Londoners.

Why? Because for the 4th year in a row, London has more unique visitors to my website than any other city in the world, with New York in 2nd and Bangalore in 3rd.

The sourcing and recruiting community is strong in London – check out my Google Analytics map of unique visitors below:

 

 

I also plan to sneak into TruLondon on Monday the 22nd – Bill Boorman has assembled an impressive list of some of the world’s top minds in sourcing, and I am keen not to catch up with those fine folks as well as throw my skills and experience into the mix.

This will be my second TruLondon experience, and Bill always puts together an amazing unconference, so I am very much looking forward to it, even if I can only attend for a few hours on Monday afternoon.

If you’ll be attending either event, please be sure to find me and introduce yourself if you have the chance.

Happy hunting!

 

 

SourceCon 2012 Atlanta – the Biggest SourceCon Ever!

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It’s official.

The SourceCon event at the Georgia Aquarium on Feb 9 & 10 will be the biggest event ever, with more attendees than any other SourceCon!

What that really means, other than proof that Atlanta is the center of the sourcing universe [sorry Seattle ;)], is that attendees will have more opportunity to network with, share best practices, and learn from other sourcers and sourcing leaders than ever before.

As you would expect, SourceCon will treat those in attendance with high-value keynotes and general sessions from industry luminaries such as:

  • Aida La Chaux from Yahoo on sourcing through adversity
  • Adam Lawrence of Alexander Mann Solutions on global sourcing
  • Jim Stroud of Bernard Hodes on social & personalized search
  • Eric Jaquith from SourceRight on how to stack the deck in your favor when it comes to sourcing
  • Conni LaDouceur on phone sourcing best practices (and yes, you’ll hear recorded calls!)

In addition, there are breakout tracks for sourcing leaders and for sourcing practitioners lead by Charles Bretz, Shannon Van Curen, Shannon Myers, Cathy Henesey, Elaine Order, Justin Clem, Anne DeWys, Therese Hightower, Cathy Henesey, and Atlanta’s own Chris Havrilla, covering topics such as ATS/candidate databases and social and mobile sourcing. Continue reading →

LinkedIn’s Talent Connect, Talent Pipeline, and Certification

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Talent Connect 2011 in Las Vegas  was just as good as, if not better than, Talent Connect 2010 in San Francisco.

Nearly 2,000 people showed up, which is around 3 times as many attendees as last year’s conference, and they represented over 700 companies from 17 countries.

One thing’s for sure – LinkedIn knows how to put on a conference. The Talent Connect events have been the most well coordinated, polished and produced conferences I have ever attended.

I won’t bore you with all of the details – but I will highlight LinkedIn’s new Talent Pipeline offering, Web 3.0 (the shift from social to data), touch upon how to automatically build Boolean search strings (yes, that came up at the conference), and inform you about LinkedIn’s Recruiter Expert certification. Continue reading →

I’m Going to the Australasian Talent Conference SourceEvent!

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I’m very excited to be attending and honored to speak at the Australasian Talent Conference SourceEvent in Melbourne  this August!

When I had a Skype call with Martin Warren, Kevin Wheeler and Trevor Vas and they asked if I’d be interested in coming to the first dedicated sourcing for recruiters’ event in Australia, it was an easy answer.

The sourcing and recruiting community is truly global, and after my excellent experience at #TruLondon, I jumped at the opportunity to brainstorm with the top sourcers and recruiters in Australasia!

I’ve been busy writing quite a bit on the current state of sourcing and what I see as the future of talent discovery and identification, and I look forward to discussing these ideas at the SourceEvent.

Here’s a bit of a preview: Continue reading →

#TRU London 3 Recruiting Unconference Review

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I was invited to attend TRU London 2 in 2010, but I unfortunately had a scheduling conflict and was unable to make it.

So when Bill Boorman, conference disorganizer extraordinaire, asked if I could make it out for TRU London 3, I blocked out my calendar as I was determined not to miss this event.

Unconference?

I had been warned by attendees of previous TRU London events that I would be entering a chaotic atmosphere with a lack of organization.

In fact, I was advised it would likely be best if I didn’t have any expectations at all.

However, I must say that I felt that TRU London was quite organized.

I hope Bill isn’t offended by that observation, because I know he takes pride in his unconference experience which is specifically designed to deviate from the standard conference format where a bunch of people listen to one presenter for an hour at a time.

It’s obvious that a different format from the recruiting conference norm does not necessarily lead to a poor experience. Although there were some track, track leader and schedule changes, I did not find them to be an issue, disruptive, or to lessen the impact of the event at all. Continue reading →

#RecruitFest 2010 Reflections and Insights

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RecruitFest 2010 LocationIs it just me, or does it seem that there have been a record number of sourcing, recruiting, and HR conferences this year?

And we’re still in October!

I would have loved to attend RecruitFest in person but I was unable to. However, I did catch quite a bit of the event via the live streaming they offered. There were several sessions that inspired me share my observations and opinions with the recruiting universe.

Some bloggers would choose to string you along by splitting their content into four, 400 word posts.

You know I didn’t. :-)

In no particular order: Continue reading →