Talent Connect

7 Talent Connect Talks You Don’t Want to Miss This Year

There’s a reason why leading visionaries in talent acquisition from all over the world journey to attend what’s called the recruiting conference of the year: up-close-and-honest talks from some of the most innovative minds in the industry.

Not only is legendary entrepreneur Richard Branson on board as this year’s keynote speaker, LinkedIn’s Talent Connect 2016 has a handful of talks we can’t wait for. From how Virgin Media transformed its business’ bottom line by changing the candidate experience to why ‘culture fit’ is outdated, there’s a lot of cutting-edge hiring and talent acquisition ideas you don’t want to miss.

Here’s a quick look at seven keynotes we’re especially excited about:

1. Virgin Media’s Graeme Johnson on how changing the candidate experience transformed the company’s bottom line

Virgin Media is one of the most in-demand employers in the world, but even this leading entertainment and communications provider had to rethink its recruitment process to get great talent.

In a refreshingly honest assessment, Johnson will speak about how his company’s once low net promoter score (NPS) turned customers away and was detrimental to Virgin’s bottom line.

Through some digging, the company discovered that candidates were rating their interview experiences negatively and, as a result, wouldn’t recommend the company to their friends. In his talk, Johnson will share how failing on the candidate experience hurt businesses and how only when Virgin Media transformed its TA culture did customers—and profits—return to a positive trend.

2. Netflix’s vice president of HR on how the company recruits great hires through business partnerships

Netflix is known for its ability to find the best and the brightest. The company’s Vice President of Talent Acquisition, Nellie Peshkov, attributes the high success rate not only to the company’s solid employer branding, but also the TA team’s strong understanding of what the business needs years in advance. This kind of deep knowledge of the business and company culture can only be built through strong partnerships with all departments throughout Netflix.

At Talent Connect 2016, Peshkov will walk us through how Netflix established its culture of recruitment and the expectations had of every hiring manager to build a team of what she calls “stunning colleagues.”

3. Pandora Media on the new ‘culture fit’ and how to attract and retain talent in 2016 and beyond

Remember when culture fit used to be the secret to business success? Well, Lisa Lee, Director of Diversity and Inclusion, and Marta Riggins, Director or Employee Experience and Recruitment Marketing, argue that we should forget that term because it often rejects hiring diverse teams.

Instead, Pandora looks for culture “add” in hiring. This means thinking about unique skills and viewpoints candidates bring to the table that don’t yet exist at the company.

In this session, Lee and Riggins will explain how Pandora built an employment brand and culture of inclusiveness that allows for hiring the right diverse people—and retaining them!

4. Time, Inc.’s Gregory Giangrande on why millennials aren’t the entitled, lazy, spoiled people employers thought they were

Young people have always challenged the status quo (think: hippies of the 60s, radical anti-war protesters of the 70s, treehuggers of the 80s, and the yuppies of the 90s) and millennials are no exception.

What does make Gen Y different is their size (they’re the largest generation), complexities (they’re the most ethnically diverse generation) and influence (hello social media!), meaning everything that we thought we knew about hiring needs to be thrown out the window.Young people today don’t want the same things from their careers that the generation before did.

In his talk on millennials, Giangrande, an Executive Vice President and Chief HR Officer at Time Inc., debunks myths of 20-somethings that keep corporations guessing (and losing talent) and talks about how to hire and treat millennials to get the most value out the most educated generation of all times.

5. Starbucks on applying e-commerce strategies to recruiting

In digital times where attracting talent is a lot like winning customers over, Starbucks built the dream team by borrowing frameworks and strategies from e-commerce.

In this session, the company’s TA and marketing team—Alex Cooper, Matthew Kennedy and Neha Sinha—will talk about how jobs are comparable to SKUs, candidates to customers ,and applications to transactions. They’ll get into the nitty gritty of how Starbucks treats TA like a business unit that has products to “sell” and as a result, gets the right job seekers to “add [their resume] to cart.”

6. DocuSign on its new algorithm model that measures each recruiter’s success and drives high-impact recruiting

There’s a lot expected of recruiters today, as employee engagement and overall productivity is driven largely by hiring the right talent. And, there’s a lot of algorithms out there to help recruiters improve. But DocuSign’s approach goes beyond rankings based on the number of hires closed and other traditional recruiter tracking tools used by the majority of companies today.

Mike Euglow, DocuSign’s Head of Global Talent Acquisition and Tony Truong, the company’s Director of People Analytics, will hone in on four factors that drive high-impact recruiting: (1) hiring attainment, (2) operational excellence, (3) candidate experience and (4) Business Unit client satisfaction.

Euglow and Truong will also share how their new recruiter algorithmic success model provides transparent results to both management and recruiters and gives the TA team constant feedback to drive stronger and more predictable performance.

7. A business coach shows us how to effectively lead with the right body language

It’s what you don’t say that often speaks the loudest. Nonverbal cues—everything from posture to facial expressions to physical gestures—play a big hand in either helping or hurting our leadership abilities.

Carol Kinsey Goman, a Lynda.com instructor, business coach and author of the book The Silent Language of Leaders: How Body Language Can Help or Hurt How You Lead shows us all how to project confidence, build relationships, inspire trust, motivate teams and communicate effectively through body language savviness. In her interactive talk at this year’s Talent Connect, you’ll learn:

  • The secret to making a dynamite first impression and all the things you can and can’t control.
  • Two nonverbal signals that everyone looks for in a leader, but why leaders don’t use them.
  • The body language that robs you of your “leadership presence."

It’s not too late to hear these exciting talks and more! Join us at Talent Connect in Las Vegas on October 5-7.

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