Talent Connect Anaheim is just two months away and the excitement is becoming palpable. Speakers are preparing their talks, tickets are selling quickly and people are already registering for our live stream of the event.
This year, Talent Connect is going to be slightly different than years past. First off, presentations will be streamlined, creating a TED Talk-like feel for each one. More importantly, we’ve added a new track – talent management and HR – so Talent Connect now caters to HR professionals and HR generalists, along with recruiters and talent acquisition leaders.
Overall, there are nine tracks at Talent Connect this year:
- Data and metrics
- Talent brand
- Talent management and HR (new)
- Leadership and strategy
- Pipelining and recruitment
- Innovation
- Small-and-medium business recruiting
- Sandbox sessions
- Customer success sessions, where you can learn best practices for LinkedIn Talent Solutions products, including new products.
At Talent Connect, you are by no means locked into any one track, as you can flow from presentation to presentation. The goal is to have something for every role and every challenge within the general sphere of talent management and recruitment.
What are some of the presentations we’re really excited about? Well, we picked a few from each track that really jumped off the page; although you can see the full agenda here.
Data and metrics track
The data and metrics track focuses on what your talent acquisition team should measure and how you should measure it.
1. Seeing your way through candidate experience
Presenter: Melissa Thompson, Citrix
A quality candidate experience is a major driver of success in any talent acquisition strategy. At Citrix, they decided to look at the quality of the candidate experience through the lens of the business focused Net Promoter Score (NPS).
Using NPS, Citrix asks every candidate who goes through the interview process to rate their experience. What is unique about this quality measure is that they offer an option to provide contact information and more than 70 percent do.
Find out what happens when Melissa’s team calls detractors who rated them between o-6.
2. Using talent trends & analytics to shape strategic workforce planning
Presenter: Ian Bailie, Cisco
Cisco Systems created its talent trends division to ensure that recruiters and hiring managers have access to critical market intelligence data at their fingertips. Internal teams can use the data to understand the skillset of their existing workforce and where to target hiring or understand skill gaps, while the external recruitment team can use it to drive more strategic discussions with their hiring managers, provide quick snapshots of available talent pools, and to influence hiring projects based on location.
In this session, Cisco will discuss the journey they’re on to move towards a more predictive and data-driven mindset in talent acquisition and also how they have scaled this approach globally.
Talent brand track
The talent brand track focuses on how your recruiting team can create the kind of employer brand that gets the right people wanting to work for you.
3. The legacy company: driving the talent brand at Amtrak
Presenter: Kerry Noone, Amtrak
At the center of the transformation happening within HR and talent acquisition at Amtrak the past few years has been the legacy company’s talent brand—once non-existent. Amtrak has spent more than a year building an active and responsive talent brand through their new career site, and social channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram and Tumblr.
The content communicated through these digital spaces has been recognized internally by senior leadership and the Board of Directors, as well as externally by a variety of respected industry web sites. In addition, candidates have shared that they appreciate the opportunity to connect with their talent acquisition team and to better understand the culture of our company.
This session will show how to implement a similar transformation at your organization.
4. Brands as broadcasters: Video first recruitment strategy
Presenters: Barnaby Cook, Casual Films, and Lance Bloomberg, Marriott
Video is a powerful medium whose consumption online and on mobile devices has exploded in recent years among millennials, who are increasingly expecting brands to behave like media companies that deliver curated content across their channels. Marriott has decided to leverage this by creating and distributing content with the reach and frequency that will enable an international brand to amplify key company initiatives in a highly engaging way.
Lance and Barnaby will update you on Marriott’s video-led recruitment and social media strategy in 2015, which uses different styles of content to engage employees and candidates. This flexible approach means content can be adapted as organizational priorities change throughout the year.
Talent management and human resources track
The talent management and human resource track – the first year of its inception – will focus on getting the most out of your employees while ensuring your company is a great place to work.
5. Creating a culture of internal hiring at Wells Fargo
Presenter: Sangeeta Doss, Wells Fargo
Hear how Sangeeta and her team have built a culture that fosters internal mobility and hiring and focuses on the value and support of their people as a competitive advantage. This is no small feat, as Sangeeta leads a division that hires 70,000 people per year.
This presentation will reveal how to create a similar culture in your own organization.
6. Success starts with culture: taking a holistic approach to organizational change
Presenter: Tony Bond, Great Places to Work
Not only does a successful workplace culture lead to happier employees, but it is also a critical factor in helping an organization drive performance and results. Mistakenly, many organizations cling to tradition or “what’s always been done” to inform culture— and this pushes against innovation and growth.
Tony understands the importance of organizational change and business innovation, and what particular aspects of workplace culture are most relevant today. He will discuss what Great Place to Work has learned while consulting for and accessing the culture of some of the largest and most well-known companies.
Leadership and strategy track
The leadership and strategy track is tailored for talent acquisition leaders looking for strategies that will push their teams to the next level.
7. Leading a talent acquisition turnaround
Presenter: Susan Hailey, Medidata Solutions
Since 2013, many organizations in the U.S. have greatly expanded their hiring plans due to improving overall economic climate. As a result, there is an increasing demand for talent acquisition executives who have business acumen and can quickly translate the business goals into a hiring plan.
This session will be a case study about Medidata Solution’s rapid headcount growth and the key levers implemented to build a scalable and efficient talent acquisition function with a greatly improved employment brand. The session will describe the actions taken to improve the TA function at Medidata in terms of four key areas: people, systems, process and leadership.
8. How to outsource your recruiting function without losing your talent brand (and candidates)
Presenter: Jeremy Tipper, Alexander Mann Solutions
How do you manage talent acquisition resources during times of growth and increase effectiveness? Why is RPO a $1.5 billion market growing at 20 percent a year? How can you gain the benefits of delegating recruitment work to brand-led recruitment process outsourcing firms without sacrificing a focus on quality and passive candidates?
Learn how the largest companies in the world leverage Alexander Mann and other brand-led RPO teams to help reduce their workloads, decreasing time-to-hire, and increasing quality of hire--while maintaining ownership of their employment brand and the candidate experience.
Pipelining and recruitment track
The pipelining and recruitment track focuses on both recruiting best practices and creating a pipeline of consistently strong talent.
9. Stacy's secret sauce: How to recruit like a boss
Presenter: Stacy Zapar, TenFold
Stacy Zapar is a longtime recruiter and sourcer who’s parlayed those skills into a consulting and training career focused on employer branding, social recruiting, and sourcing strategies. In this session, Stacy will share her best tips, tricks, and strategies that have made her most successful over the years.
Learn quick, easy ways to maximize your recruiting ROI by building relationships, optimizing your recruiting process, improving candidate experience, driving employee referrals, increasing candidate engagement and strengthening your personal and employer brands.
10. Diversity and inclusion strategies for recruitment that really work
Presenter: Steve Johnson, the University of California - Irvine
Diversity recruiting and inclusion continue to be hot topics and a core piece of an organization’s overall talent acquisition plan. Are you staying in front of current trends and strategies?
Come learn how different organizations have found creative, effective ways to build diversity and inclusion recruiting programs and initiatives.
Innovation track
The innovation track focuses on new ideas and approaches for recruiting top talent.
11. The GPA is not predictive of job performance: New research about what is
Presenters: Kristen Hamilton and Josh Jarrett, Koru
Google published research last year as proof that a high GPA is not correlated with high performance in their experience. While this is becoming accepted as truth among employers, it has also begged the question: What is the better signal for employers to find the best post-college entry level talent?
Centered on what innovative employers need from their talent, this session will reveal the seven competencies employers can use today to optimize the top of their recruitment funnel based on demonstrated performance drivers and new tools to measure them. These competencies include a combination of skills and mindsets like grit and analytical rigor.
12. The eye of tiger: Recruiting the best through a marketing lens
Presenters: Marie Findlay and Greg Economos, Kellogg Company
Kellogg’s global talent acquisition journey has included a strong partnership with marketing. This session will bring their story to life through case examples of how they have successfully applied marketing principles to talent acquisition.
For example, the importance of customer reviews and feedback has become increasingly important to consumers, and Kellogg’s is seeing the same trend among potential candidates. They have responded by leveraging our employees to tell their own stories and providing various channels and methods to do this.
Small-to-Medium Business Track
The small-to-medium business track, as the name suggests, focuses on recruiting strategies for smaller companies, which often have smaller budgets.
13. Recruiting at scale: How a small team of recruiters grew AppNexus
Presenters: Brandon Atkinson and Lorraine Buhannic, AppNexus
Learn how AppNexus built a recruiting machine to predictably hire 90 new employees per quarter by defining our hiring philosophy, threading our values throughout our recruiting process, engaging the AppNexus community and using data-driven recruiting strategies.
In this session, AppNexus' People leaders will discuss the importance of creating an authentic hiring experience and the strategies they implemented to double their hiring capacity in one quarter. Topics will include increasing referrals, aligning recruiting resources, and measuring key recruiting metrics.
14. How to ask for money: 6 steps to building a winning business case for your talent acquisition program
Presenters: Kara Yarnot and Moe Hutt, Meritage Talent Solutions
Every talent acquisition leader and team could use more investment for technology, programs, marketing, and branding. Yet, your budgets rarely increase from one year to the next.
In this session, we'll cover the six steps to take to build a winning business case for executive leadership investment. We'll walk through specific examples of how to quantify potential outcomes of your new program, technology, and more.
Sandbox sessions
Sandbox sessions aren’t typical presentations, but instead interactive workshops where people get together in small teams and talk through big problems. The sandbox sessions run throughout Talent Connect and are perfect for people looking for a more hands-on experience.
15. Culture code: Creating a culture employees truly love
Presenter: Katie Burke, Hubspot
HubSpot's approach to culture (encapsulated in its Culture Code) has gone viral, and since the company went public in October 2014, the organization has doubled down on making HubSpot a remarkable place to work and scaling its approach to radical transparency and autonomy.
In this session, Katie will talk about how to build and invest in a culture your employees are proud of, how to measure your investment in culture as you grow and scale, and how to think about codifying your organization's approach to culture in a manner that feels authentic and aspirational. This will be an interactive discussion style session, so come prepared to talk about how you can help create a winning culture at your own organization.
16. The types of talent leaders you need on your team
Presenter: Michelle Hord-White, NBC Universal
Strong leaders are the key to any successful team—and the same holds true within talent acquisition. However, what are the types of leaders one needs for their team?
Join this interactive, discussion style session as Michelle shares how she reorganized NBCUniversal’s separate campus and talent acquisition team into one 75-plus person team.
You can Learn more about the conference and view the entire agenda and speaker sessions here.
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Topics: Talent Connect
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