Hi Friends – Tech recruiting is hard, and many would say it’s getting harder. We’re doing something about it. And we’d like you to be a part of it.

Introducing Talent 42, the first ever 100% tech-focused national recruiting conference.
It’s designed to help you and your teams – tech recruiters, tech recruiting leaders – discover the best ways to attract and recruit world class technologists.

We’ve got phenomenal speakers – engineering leaders and recruiting leaders – lined up to share the best practices and tools you need to attract, source, and close software developers and engineers.

Where, When, Cost?
We expect this national tech recruiting conference to pull in 200 tech recruiting pros from all over the US.  We already have tech recruiters and tech hiring managers attending from companies like Whitepages.com, Disney, Nike, SAIC, Microsoft, Amazon, Yammer, Groupon, Nintendo, T-Mobile, Rhapsody, Expedia, Living Social, and many more large and small companies.

• June 13-14, 2012
• Seattle, WA (world class conference center, on the water)
• $895 for 1.5 days of tech recruiting goodness

World Class Speakers
The folks putting on this conference (Carmen Hudson and I) are former tech recruiting leaders with companies like Amazon, Expedia, and Yahoo. They’ve pulled together a fantastic lineup of speakers, including…

• SVP Product, Groupon , Jeff Holden, owner of this rapidly growing company’s product vision and global commerce operating system, and a fiercely competitive tech hiring leader
• Sr Engineer, Google, Steve Yegge, avid blogger, internal Google recruiting tech champion, and former Amazon Bar Raiser
• Engineering Director, Jocelyn Goldfein, Facebook, who is working not only to build a world class engineering org for new products, but is also seeking ways to grow the tech talent pie
• Director of Recruiting, Zynga, Flo Thinh, who has built and scaled up a kick-ass tech recruiting function for this fast growing games company in Silicon Valley and Seattle
• VP Recruiting, Informatica, Brad Cook , who has built an award winning global tech recruiting machine
• Director, Global Talent Labs, Microsoft, John Phillips, who is building aggressive tools and innovative strategies – at a huge scale – to go after global tech talent
• Advanced sourcing gurus, Shally Steckerl, Eric Jaquith, and Dave Mendoza
• And more.

How is this different?
This isn’t your typical recruiting conference.

• It’s 100% focused on tech. You won’t learn how to hire sales people, accountants, or customer service. All tech.
• We’re hearing from tech/engineering leaders! Not just recruiting pros – which is critical – but also engineering leaders who push and partner with their recruiting teams to recruit world class talent.
• It’s advanced – we’re assuming you know the basics of good recruiting already. So our speakers are being asked to challenge us to go beyond the foundational elements that are typically covered at recruiting conferences.
• The agenda is being built by tech recruiting pros for tech recruiting pros.
• No squishy balls or yo-yos. Yes, we’ll have the opportunity to meet reps from some hand-picked exhibitors and sponsors, but they are banned from doing the trick-or-treat conference bag thing.

How do I register?
Go to http://talent42.com

I hope you can join us!  Email me if you’d like a special friends and family $100 discount.

John Vlastelica, Founder, Talent42

Date: June 25-27, 2012
Location: Atlanta, GA
Session: Five Keys to Successful Corporate Recruiting Leadership with John Vlastelica, Managing Director, Recruiting Toolbox

I’m excited to return to the largest HR conference in the world, the SHRM Annual Conference, to deliver a session on Recruiting Leadership.

Session Overview: Link to SHRM site
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Date: April 30-May 2, 2012
Location: Washington DC
Session: How to Leverage Hiring Managers as Your Secret Recruiting Weapon with John Vlastelica, Managing Director, Recruiting Toolbox

I’m excited to return to the SHRM Annual Talent Management Conference to deliver a session on a topic that – in my opinion – doesn’t get enough of a focus: how can we better leverage our hiring managers to recruit the best talent?

Session Overview: Link to SHRM site

For all of the talk about employer branding, improving quality of hire, and competing for top talent, not nearly enough focus has been given to the role of the hiring manager.  In this fun how-to session, John Vlastelica, former Recruiting Director with Amazon.com and Expedia, will guide you through the top 10 actionable strategies you can take back to your offices to fully leverage your hiring managers as attractors of talent, direct sourcers, interviewers, closers, and talent leaders. You will learn actionable strategies to help them set up the interview process and team so that you select and sell top talent effectively. You will also learn how to lead and influence hiring managers so that they see their roles as more than just passive participants in a recruiting process; get them to see their true roles as talent leaders. Hiring managers can and should be your secret weapon!

I hope to see you there!  Contact us if you plan to attend.

Date: March 29, 2012
Location: San Diego, CA
Session: 2012 Recruiting Excellence Awards Panel Session, with session leader John Vlastelica, Managing Director, Recruiting Toolbox

I’m excited to return to ERE to host the 2012 Recruiting Excellence Awards in San Diego.  As I judge, I get the opportunity – along with folks like Kevin Wheeler, John Sullivan, Lou Adler, Ed Newman and a bunch of prior winners – to review applications from some of the best recruiting functions in the world.

If you and your teams have done some amazing things in 2011, please apply for one of the awards. Here’s info on the categories: http://www.ereawards.com/categories-and-criteria/

I hope to see you there!  Contact us if you plan to attend and would like a special registration discount.

If you can’t make it, watch ERE.net for information on live streaming.  Last year’s session, which included an award to Cisco, accepted by Greg Stock (now part of our team here at Recruiting Toolbox), is hosted here if you’d like to view it.

John and I talk a lot as you would expect.  And our conversations are generally really interesting, given our backgrounds. It’s actually one of the things I like best about working together is we both have done very similar big global recruiting jobs, but at very different companies, so it’s fun to talk shop and compare insights, perspectives, and related points of view.

Last week we had a conversation about when Google opened an office in the Seattle market…. and how Amazon was out-executing Google with candidates that both companies were competing for.  In fact, he shared a story about one particular candidate that started the recruiting process with Google, and then got engaged with the recruiting department at Amazon, and Amazon engaged, interviewed, selected him, made him an offer and closed him before Google even launched their interview process. In fact, the candidate was still waiting to hear back from Google after he started as an employee at Amazon.

I shared that back in the day (circa 1998…. dot.com bubble age, Y2K Preparedness Era, etc, etc) when I ran recruiting for the small Oracle-technology consulting company that was acquired by CSC, we used to invite people to interview on site, with the intention of giving successful candidates an offer before they left our office.  We prepped candidates to expect it, and we beat our competition as a result.   In fact, as part of the M&A deal with CSC, I was given the opportunity to present to the CSC M&A team because they didn’t understand how we could be so effective at recruiting.  But I digress.

Now, this post is not about Google or Amazon or CSC, but it is a good anecdote, given the competitive landscape unfolding in the talent marketplace, to illustrate an important point:  Speed is a competitive advantage, and should strongly be considered.  In fact, speed is one of 3 Big Variables inherent in most recruiting efforts that are interdependent:  Speed / Time; Cost, and Quality.  Generally speaking, one can only optimize for two of these factors and the third will remain suboptimal.    The classic example is using search firms:  generally they produce fast, high quality results, but it costs more.  Similarly, if organizations want to hire high quality talent but also want to be fiscally conservative, then recruiting efforts will take longer.   It’s all a big never ending trade off.

So here’s the main point: Although few corporate recruiting organizations choose this, I would argue that focusing on speed is a great strategy in today’s market.   One reason is the financial cost is low… with operational discipline, recruiting organizations can (relatively) easily impact the speed of their process.  And that will lead to greater recruiting yields.  And it will also reduce the average net ‘candidate processing effort’ required per hire.  Which preserves capacity.  So getting candidates through your process quickly is a great area of focus as we head into a more competitive talent marketplace, while recruiting departments are being rebuilt and are currently really stressed.

Here’s a few ideas to consider when optimizing for speed:

• Pre-schedule interview days for hiring teams at the onset of the search.  This saves cycle time and allows you to execute more quickly.  In other words, set the interview days at the launch of the search, and cancel if you don’t have candidates.
• Pre-close candidates before you invite them on site.  Ask them, “If we made you an offer at the end of your interview day, what questions would you have to have answered in order to say yes?”  And then answer their questions.
• Prep your hiring teams that speed matters.  Pilot a speed-recruitment process with candidates that have exploding offers or related competitive pressures.
• Limit the number of interviews for candidates.  More interviews, beyond a reasonable number, simply doesn’t correlate to improved hiring quality.  I recommend less than 8 interviews.
• If you aren’t using videoconferencing for interviews of non-local candidates, you are negatively impacting speed (and cost!).  Most VC technology is now so effective that it won’t negatively affect interview and related assessments.  You should be scheduling candidates for interviews via VC and executing the interview process before you could even get a flight booked.  If you don’t believe me, you should experiment with the technology.