On May 25th I attended the one day conference known as RecruitDC held on the campus of George Washington University. For me it was another chance to network on the east coast with industry peers. There is such a lack of recruiting events for anyone in the Northeast I couldn’t miss the chance to meet the likes of Pete Radloff, Matt Duren, Katrina Colllier, Audra Knight, Mike Chiudian, in real life. I always appreciate being able to meet the twitter avatar in person.
I can sum it up in 3 words. Conversation, Hobbies, and Great Food.
I drove in Wednesday evening and went out to dinner with Derek Zeller, Audra Mcknight, the Steve Levy, Lorne Epstein and Mike Chuidian. We found an Italian place and talked shop before heading to another bar to meetup with some of the event staff. The food at Ristorante La Perla was terriffic. (I recommend the Penne ala Vodka)
Social Recruiter Trainer/Speaker, Katrina Collier[ @The Searchologist ] kicked things off the next morning with her enticing Aussie accent. She’s Australian, lives in the UK and travels extensively. Her keynote was lively and entertaining.
Here are the highlights from her keynote that stood out to me.
- 150 million emails are sent every minute, how will your recruiter email standout.
- Copy and paste is too easy…too much bulk emails being used in recruiting departments these days.
- Candidates don’t care if your email is “Urgent”.
- Check Facebook for unofficial company pages, you may be surprised at what’s been created without your company’s knowledge.
- #RecruiterFail on twitter is a great hashtag to follow to learn what not to do.
- YourFacebook company page is just as important as your comp LinkedIn page.
- UseFacebook notes as a blogging platform, copy your blog posts here for additional exposure.
Shannon Pritchett, the new editor of SourceCon also spoke. She’s a great replacement for Jeremy Roberts who left recently.
- Boolean: Don’t need to use OR NOT intitle any more. Google is doing it for you.
- Facebook is an untapped source of candidates for sourcers that is free. (I tend to agree as LI becomes less effective in reach candidates)
- Career Advice: interview for a job at least every 2 years so you know your worth in the market.
Random Notes
- Chris Young, a recruiter from GovHire has his own lead gen tool called FreeMilitaryResumeBuilder.com where he gets thousands of candidates each month. Sounds like an effective way to proactively build your own candidate list.
- Overheard: a PWC recruiter sent a job offer via text, candidate replied back with thumbs up, he sent back applause emoji. Maybe we need some recruiting emojis on our keyboards!
- Overheard: Indeed resumes getting 2 million uploads per month.
- Chris Kurtz formerly of Glassdoor, offers a Glassdoor consulting service to help companies learn how to improve their ratings and respond to employees.
- Congrats to Kerry Noone who just took over employer branding at CVS Health.
Smaller conferences offer you the chance to get to know the attendees in a more intimate setting. I did just that. I discovered some unusual hobbies among the recruiting pros in attendance.
* Derek Zeller, now at Comscore has a massive collection of Star Wars action figures. In addition to being a foodie he’s a massive fan of the force. Check out Derek’s recent post about community in recruiting spurred by the event.
* Mike Chiudian a sourcer for Sears is a DJ on the side. In fact he DJ’ed the after party! Hit it, DJ MIke!
* Audra Knight from Tenable and her husband play in a band called The Filth. Here’s one of their videos. I wouldn’t have guessed she was a Bassist in a rock band. Great gal.
We ended the event with an After-After party at District Commons on Pennsylvannia Ave. Damn that was good food. I had the Shrimp & Grits which was epic. It was the perfect ending to a great day in #RecruiterLife.
And with the Annual SHRM conference also in DC in a few weeks I can’t wait to go back.
