#InTalent Europe – Linkedin and talent brand risks

 

   Yesterday was Linkedin’s huge European Talent Connect conference for recruiters – over 500 people, double last year’s attendance (though still a lot smaller I’m sure than the US version held in Las Vegas recently).

The event was a mixture of announcements around Linkedin Recruiter tools you’re hopefully aware of (and if you’re not, you should be!), some useful professional inputs eg Glen Cathey with a bit of basic Boolean and Matthew Jeffery on the latest instalment of Recruitment 99.0 (we’re up to 5.0 now).  And there were quite a few case studies too.

So – what do I post on?  Well, I had been meaning to make this a non-social media post, but then I do see social as being pretty much at the heart of most of the transformation of recruitment (and also at the heart of yesterday’s conference, as long as you’re happy to see Linkedin as a social technology).

Even some of the other key themes like candidate centricity (which, since this blog, and my whole focus really, is devoted to people centricity I heavily endorse) is build largely upon participation in social conversation.

And I do also think that one of the most interesting things about yesterday was that this wasn’t even the only social recruiting conference going on in London yesterday – there was also Bill Boorman’s TRU unconference, and Mike Taylor’s Mobile Recruitment conference (OK, I know mobile is a slightly different agenda to social, but most people use their mobiles to access social sites, and do their social updates on their mobiles so it largely comes down to the same thing).

So sticking on the social element of the event, possibly the most interesting presentation, I suppose, was Linkedin’s announcement (though already launched in Las Vegas) of the Talent Brand Index = Engagement over Reach.

 

 

And there was a linked announcement to the top talent brand index companies in the UK, France and Netherlands.  This is the UK:

 

As well as Linkedin’s and other inputs, we also had some good recruiting case study presentations.  I particularly liked Paul Maxin’s session on Unilever (the UK’s 3rd most in-demand employer), and within this, his points about social media:

“You can’t control participation and energy. You have to be where the consumer is.  You need to take the risk.”

 

I thought this was interesting given the ‘tweet-off’ between O2 and Tesco earlier in the week – because although I do think they had gone badly wrong here, I do admire their willingness to take a risk.

 

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