Talent Connect is back in Las Vegas this October 10-12, 2012!
Earvin “Magic” Johnson inspired and engaged a packed house during the final morning keynote at Talent Connect, fist-bumping and hugging attendees and sporting a pair of LinkedIn shades. The former NBA star turned entrepreneur shared his tips for success, including persistence, hard work, building your personal brand – and his most important word of advice for your business: running a SWOT analysis twice a year. On a motivational note, Magic says, "Losers lose. Winners win. You have to decide which one you want to be."
Next up was a keynote panel on Web 3.0, the New Data Opportunity. Tim O’Reilly, Founder and CEO at O’Reilly Ventures, Michael Chui, Senior Fellow at McKinsey, and LinkedIn Co-founder Reid Hoffman sat down with moderator Josh Bersin of Bersin & Associates to talk about how companies and individuals can leverage the incredible amount of data out there waiting to be mined. “The data is a competitive edge,” said Reid Hoffman, and Tim O’Reilly followed with, “Magic expanded your heart, we want to expand your thinking.” With several references to the popular book Moneyball, panelists agreed that the real value lies not just in the data, but how you deploy it.
And congratulations to the 2011 Recruiting Awards winners: Angie White of hhgregg, the winner of the 2011 Talent Hunter award, Kari Cohen and the Renaissance Financial recruiting team for being selected as the 2011 Recruiting Organization of the Year, and Stacy Van Meter of Deluxe Corporation, winner of the 2011 Recruiting Innovation Award.
Some of the final day’s session highlights:
In a session focused on social recruiting for diversity and inclusion, a panel of talent acquisition leaders from FedEx, the IRS, The Nature Conservancy, and Lawrence Livermore Lab spoke to the need for a diverse group of people to solve critical problems. Putting a face on diversity is not only about focusing on black and white, but rather on all types of backgrounds and bringing it to your organization. Use Groups, use discussions, and your LinkedIn Career Page to promote and put your organization/company in the best light, so potential candidates can see what you can bring to them.
Johanna Danaher of Pfizer shared a case study on how they conducted a recruitment brand makeover. After Pfizer had been plagued by social stigma of the healthcare and medicine industry, it made recreating its brand presence a top priority. Johanna outlined the steps Pfizer took: first assessing how its clients viewed the existing brand, defining what they wanted to achieve in a brand makeover and what specific qualities the brand should have, validating that the new brand is being well-received, and building on that momentum to propel the message successfully.
William Uranga of TiVo and Florence Thinh-Klein of Zynga shared insights into involving every employee in talent acquisition by rewarding not only good recruiting results, but also good recruiting behavior, and utilizing employees to create sound bites and stories to promote their recruiting hiring efforts. They are your storytellers, after all. A session on turbo-charging referral programs stressed that it’s better to think of an employee referral program as marketing or customer service for your employees. And for fans of LinkedIn Groups, a panel moderated by LinkedIn’s head of content products Ryan Roslansky and featuring Allison Kruse of Walgreens and Danny Ollier of PepsiCo suggested that groups should be treated as a living organism, constantly growing with new information and content, and that Groups can even be used to break down silos in your company, creating conversations with other departments and letting them leverage each others’ expertise.
And finally, in a session entitled “LinkedIn on LinkedIn,” global director of recruiting Brendan Browne, senior recruiter Ed Campana, and head of employment brand Meg Garlinghouse shared some best practices on working effectively on the LinkedIn platform. Ed showed how recruiters can earn credibility with hiring managers by illustrating the data behind their searches. While hiring managers make their candidate demands known, it can be helpful to educate the hiring manager on “supply side” of the equation. Meg showed how LinkedIn brightens up the corporate culture with a once-a-month InDay where employees work outside the scope of their day-to-day, and to build a successful brand, she emphasizes utilizing the stories of your employees in video clips and profiles. A real brand is built on people, not buzzwords and company hype.
That wraps up Talent Connect 2011!
It was a privilege putting together this conference for our customers. We really look forward to sharing more of the best practices that we picked up during these amazing 2.5 days.
Stay tuned, we will soon:
- Host follow up discussions in the LinkedIn Talent Connect Group (for our corporate customers and conference attendees only)
- Announce webcasts on this blog, re-playing some of the highly-rated sessions of Talent Connect
Don’t miss a beat by subscribing to this blog by email and following us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/HireOnLinkedIn.
See you next year!
Topics: Talent Connect Recruiting strategy
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