Bersin & Associates has hosted its IMPACT conference for five years now, but it’s only in the last year or two that talent acquisition has become a significant portion of the program. I had the chance to attend the event in St. Petersburg, FL last week and was impressed by the caliber of the attendees and the discussion.
Rather than rehash the conference in long-form, I’ve aggregated 20 tweets into six themes that capture my main observations, from Josh Bersin’s keynote and from the talent acquisition-focused breakout sessions:
Sweeping trends
1) #1 driver of HR change: accelerated globalization. “China now feels like Tokyo” @josh_bersin
2) #2 driver of HR change: global talent imbalance & emergence of “the expertise economy”
3) #3 driver of HR change: emergence of Big Data & impact on talent analytics
It’s all about the candidate
4) “Candidate relationship management isn’t a technology, it’s a practice” – Kim Lamoureux
5) Give EVERY candidate in your funnel a positive experience, even at the very top #passivetalent
6) Eaton Corp: does your career page help people self-select into applying? Wrong candidates in funnel dilute recruiting impact
7) Halliburton: employer brand does NOT equal marketing campaign, though every touchpoint has at least 1 component of our EVP
Leveraging every employee in talent acquisition
8) UnitedHealthcare: what % of YOUR employees participate in your employee referral program? Are the rest struggling to articulate your brand?
9) “It’s not just RECRUITING’S job to recruit, it’s EVERYONE’S job”. Heather Lemke speaks the truth!
The present – and future – of recruiting
10) Name generation is commoditized – “I could teach my 10 yr old to source” – REAL recruiting skills making a comeback
11) “An agile organization is always recruiting” – farming, branding, relationship mgt.
12) Social IS recruiting for us. It’s how we go to market – @ljbrock
13) Could recruiting REALLY report into marketing in the next 5 years?
Getting the proverbial seat at the table
14) Recruiters, know your internal bench strength. Be part of your org’s talent review discussions
15) “Use data to speak to business challenges, not HR challenges” – @londonjames
New – and not so new – technology
16) “Mobile isn’t big or clever in recruiting – it’s necessary” @johncampagnino
17) Are you using video to recruit? YouTube videos 600% more likely to come up high in Google search than any other content
18) vmware videoed job descriptions, included out-takes for viral impact, getting thousands of hits a month – great for mobile
19) “Don’t chase every new recruiting technology. Focus on where you can be differentiated; ok to be vanilla where you can’t”
20) putting QR codes on t-shirts at career fairs – pretty cool for GenY
These days I can tell the amount of learning I’m doing at a conference by how tired my thumbs are from tweeting, and it’s fair to say they got quite a workout last week. Check out #bersinimpact on Twitter for more discussion inspired by the event, and follow us at @hireonlinkedin.
We recently hosted a great panel of 
Can you use your LinkedIn profile to overcome the following candidate objections?
How are your New Year’s resolutions going? If you need some help kicking the year off right, our January webcasts will come in handy. Here’s what’s on tap this month:
