It’s the end of day one at Talent Connect London, and what a day it’s been! The 1500-strong audience has heard from talent leaders and social media gurus at companies spanning automotive, tech, retail, oil and gas, telecoms, finance advertising and more. The speakers shared the stories of their successes and challenges, and most importantly, what they’ve learned along the way.
In the spirit of shared learnings, here’s a taste of what we’ve learned from today’s keynotes. If these topics sound intriguing to you and you want to hear the entire talks, you can watch our keynote stream at 1pm GMT on 13th November. If you haven’t already, register now to get the full stories.
1. The fundamental difference between “good” and “great” is talent.
Ariel Eckstein, LinkedIn’s Managing Director of EMEA, shared his view that the single most important decision made in any company is who you hire, because these hires will manage your people, build your products and services, and look out for your customers’ best interest.
2. Forget the needle in the haystack - recruiting could be like finding an atom in a hayfield.
But don’t worry - Wade Burgess, VP of LinkedIn Talent Solutions, explained that as LinkedIn scales towards our goal of hosting three billion profiles - one for every member of the global workforce - we will focus on making sure our customers can find the right person for the right job at the right time. And we’ll do that by listening to what you have to say about what you need to successfully hire the best talent.
3. The right insights will help recruiters become strategic business partners.
Hiring managers often don’t realise they’re looking for unrealistic candidates, so use LinkedIn insights and our new data visualisation tool to help them understand that the candidate they’re asking for is a purple squirrel - a mythical creature which no one is sure exists. Then use this tool to identify opportunities for expanding your talent pool by broadening specific criteria.
4. Being first is about daring, taking risks and being unique.
L’Oreal aren’t content to just be the company that produced the first ladies’ hair colour, or that launched the first cosmetic advertisement; they want to lead the way when it comes to talent too. To do this, they have taken risks by establishing a culture of “creative confidence” in their employees to brainstorm unique ways to attract talent, like their Madeleine Diaries campaign, which really has to be seen to be appreciated, so tune into the stream for all the details.
5. You can follow an unlikely path to reach great destinations.
L’Oréal use channels which might not be immediately obvious as talent-related channels to build a multi-faceted experience for their potential candidates, using SoundCloud, Jelly, Medium, and more to build share their story as an employer.
6. Candidates feel first and think second.
Dave Hazlehurst explained that people connect emotionally with the “why” rather than the “what” or “how”, so ask your employees why they work for your company, to understand the emotional drivers that will humanise what you do and make people feel good about connecting with you.
7. A brand is not what you say it is, it’s what they say it is.
Your brand is only as strong as what people say about it when you’ve left the room. You can’t control it, but you can influence it by moving away from trying to connect people with your company, towards connecting people with your people. How? Use employee advocacy to tell stories through your people, to become a team that people like following and, in turn, become a company that people want to get involved with.
We’re excited to see what tomorrow at Talent Connect brings, but in the meantime if you can’t be there in person, be sure to join us online at 1pm tomorrow, 13th November, for a stream of all of today’s and tomorrow’s keynotes, plus exclusive online-only commentary and backstage interviews.
Topics: Recruiting tips
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