#SST15 Melbourne Wrap Up

ATC Events – Sourcing Social Talent conference (SST15) is up and running with the Melbourne leg a success. #SST15 takes place in Sydney today and in Auckland on 23 Nov.
I wasn’t expecting a SOLD OUT event in Melbourne. Well done to the ATC Team. With a line up which included Chris Hoyt, Shannon Pritchett, Bill Boorman and many more it made for an entertaining and interactive day.
Firstly, you have to acknowledge the sponsors. Without them, the speakers who grace our shores would not be here. What was great about this event was that the sponsors were part of the audience. There were no booths, or stands, just people networking and sharing ideas. It was refreshing to see sponsors engaging with attendees and not necessarily pitching from stands.
This year’s agenda included the staples including the Unconference sessions. Elaine Orler’s “The Cost of Candidate Resentment vs. Improving Candidate Experience” session was standing room only. Don’t forget to check out ATCHub recent interview with Elaine on the Candidate Experience Awards. I heard great things about Michael Jhoomun (Sportsbet) “First date” to “I Love You”. Hope to hear more of the Sportsbet story in the near future.
For the first time at an ATC Event a Hackathon was introduced where Chris, Shannon, Bill and Martin hosted groups to tackle a topic and find a solution. From what I saw there appeared to be great engagement, although personally I would have liked to have seen or heard people pushing the boundaries a little more. Dare to be different. Don’t be afraid to fail. Something Shannon and others mentioned throughout the day.
There were plenty of numbers being thrown about. Some were questionable, like the average time to hire was increasing even with all the technology available to us today. Apparently two thirds of all candidates make up the number of placements here in Australia via job boards? Yeah, not so sure on that stat either. The later stat surprised a few people following via social. As usual, there was a list of cool tools for people to check out and use. #Trello and #Textio are two that I remember. Trello to help with workflow management and Textio to help you write better job advertisements. There were more, but someone stole my list!
I posed the question to Chris around how employers should approach crap reputational scores to which he answered ‘acknowledge the feedback and be authentic in your approach’. Later in the day I caused a stir when I proposed that you could use a bad candidate experience as a tactic to increase awareness to then overcome. That raised a few eyebrows. Perhaps I had too many beers the night before, but taking the idea of 1 poor experience is spoken about many times to 1 great experience spoken to few then it would be possible to design a tactic around a purposeful poor experience. Yeah, it was a bit out there, but have a think about it. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
So what did I take away from #SST15?
Everyone is talking about sourcing from Facebook but I’m yet to see a case study on it.
Chris gave us a couple new words and phrases “meat in the seat” and “fanalytics” over Big Data.
Shannon says don’t be afraid to fail and ‘giving back’ to the people and industry with which we work.
For someone who is unemployed, Bill travels A LOT.
The CandE Awards has been well received here in Australia and I’m very excited to see the baseline data.
The WA presence was minimal at best. A sign of the times and somewhat concerning that my colleagues aren’t attending.
If we all did great things, it would all become average. Don’t overlook the left of field ideas. You may fail but you will learn.
There’s a growing recruitment agency attendance compared to previous years. Great to see.
LiveHire is making waves in the talent community software space. Great to see an Aussie company making headway in the HR Tech arena. We use LiveHire here at Barminco, and it’s worth its weight in gold.
Wish I was coming to Sydney and Auckland. Follow the fanfare on #SST15.