Sourcing Summit Australia 2013 Review
By Dan Nuroo, GM Recruitment, IMA Management
Well that’s it then.. another SOSU done and dusted. I know it’s taken me a week to blog about it, but please, there was a heap to process.
As with the previous three it did not disappoint. Despite an ungodly hour, that my day started to get my sorry bum to Sydney, the range of speakers and coffee from the surrounding areas kept me wide awake and my mind bursting at the seams.
Apologies to the other presenters, but Phil’s acquisition of both Will Staney and Stacy Zapar was a major coup. Just so if you’re reading this you know, I cannot dissect every presentation that was given here, but here are a few highlights
Seriously, looking over my notes and tweets. The first one I saw was “Will Staney, very cool, new shit”…. I think that bodes for a great conference…
They didn’t disappoint.
Will’s energy was infectious, and he held the audience in the palm of his hand… figuratively of course, although who knows what one can do with the Google Glass he was sporting (please note, my eyes are too ordinary to use them and I’m a little jealous!).
Will grasps the Recruiting function from a marketing perspective and he (quite rightly) ranks sourcing as the top part of talent acquisition. His assertion around the fact that with the fact that with all the bells and whistles within our industry and the amount of data, and the complexity of such data growing, that whilst the role of Sourcing is both easier and harder at the same time. He also introduced me to the term “contextual technology” which I loved and have used it as my own in conversations since (ssshhh don’t tell anyone)
One of his other memorable points was when he stated that Sourcers are emotional marketers, story tellers if you will. That imagery just rocks, however it only works if the Sourcers are away from the computer and talking to people.
Then Stacy hit the stage, and stacy is (let’s all say it together) THE most connected woman on LinkedIn. Talk about another ball of energy, she was conscious of not going over her allotted time as Phil was being a hard task master on the watch). It’s easy to see how she has got to where she is. The hints I got from her, made me look like a wizard when I returned to the office the following day. (Not sure if I mentioned where I got the tips from)
She spoke about being who you want to be online, especially on LinkedIn. I mean who thinks of doing a search of how you want to be found on LinkedIn to see if you are number 1? I sure didn’t… until now :). I mean I’ve googled myself (who hasn’t, but always in the privacy of my own home), but never LinkedIn’d myself. The importance and learnings around what goes into the LinkedIn algorythm was definitely eye opening.
One of my biggest takeaways, which I promptly forgot and had to resort to getting Mark Mansour to help me out on, was the “on-click invitation”. Solid gold! and implemented immediately (well after Mark told me how to do it) and made my immediate and wider teams too.
This takeaway slightly shaded the “How to view your 3rd connections who viewed you” bit. Very sneaky, but strangely obviously, someone else just had to think of it first. 🙂
Mark Reilly stood up and did what he does best – sourcing tools. Just wowed me in what he knows and how much depth he knows things. He made a conscious effort to de-geek his presentation and the great news is, that he succeeded magnificently, as I could understand what he was saying and even implemented a few of his things. I mean a place that builds search strings and saves them for you… who wouldn’t like that right? His tip to search with Recruitem (recruitin.net) did however make me break Google to the point Mr Google thought I was a robot. Good times 🙂
Laura Stoker has to be the person that makes the energiser bunny tired. I hadn’t spent too much time with Facebook Graph search in the past admittedly , and this was a new frontier. OMG this will cause a lot more rabbit holes for me to fall down. Well played Mr Zuckerberg (and hat tip to Laura for taking me on this journey) natural language search capability you say (well I just said it and I think saying that makes me sound smart)
She backed up with another site I again knew of but hadn’t played with yet about.me, this too looks pretty cool, I must admit, I have meant to do something in this place, but the tab is still currently open in my browser and I still haven’t really touched it. Laura caused a few gasps in the audience and I think a few of the hard core sourcers may have passed out when Laura told the crowd “not everything you are looking for is going to be on Google”
Daoud’s case study from Lion really caused me to think and examine what I am doing at IMA, I spent more time writing notes for myself with ideas that he sparked in my head that specifically about his presentation. Always a great sign of a presentation I think. @doudis “Quality conversations lead to quality outcomes….” Yes sirrrrrr
Jessica Dunham from GE embodies what I think a Sourcer should be and what I’d want in a Sourcer. Reflecting back on my notes, I’ve scribbled, “next hire will be a Sourcer like Jessica, OK maybe a little more junior”. She spoke a million miles an hour, with a passion that is hard to find. She really loves this stuff. She spoke of market mapping, she spoke about the need for the inhouse Recruitment function to provide the business market competitive analysis, she spoke of the necessity of cost efficiency, and how imperative it if to partner with and educate the business.
“Don’t hire for business… hire with it!…”
We want to fine the “Key people in the market… NOT ON THE MARKET!……” AMEN sister!
Apologies to the other presenters or “Unconference” people I haven’t mentioned, but there was just that much happening. It was a really great day ,even the breaks provided great content and the chance to meet old friends and new friends in real life that I”d only met on Twitter, which is always pretty cool.
Before I sign off I must acknowledge Suzanne Chadwick for keeping a bunch of Recruiters who love a chat on schedule, a gigantic effort.
