Dave Manaster and team once again put together a great conference.
ERE’s Expos are hands down the best recruiting conferences for a number of reasons. They always have a great mix of people in attendance, engaging content and entertainment.
It consistently has the best ratio of recruiting professionals per vendor. So it’s rich with opportunities for recruiting professionals to network and learn.
For vendors the well attended conference offers opportunities to engage new prospects and win business opportunities. This is contrary to the problem that OnRec faced last year in San Francisco.
CONTENT
Keynote speaker, Dr. Gene Stanaland was great.
The old-timer is an economics professor at Auburn. He speaks with a southern drawl and has a unique way of explaining economics through storytelling. He supports the points he makes with jokes. His presentation was as fun as it was entertaining.
The same can’t be said for the speakers that immediately followed him. Casting Director Miranda Rivers didn’t know her audience. Her speech was more of an insight into what it’s like on a movie set than it was rich with recruiting tips or best practice.
FedEx VP of Talent Acquisition, John Leech successfully acted out an hour long commercial for FedEx. I don’t think very many people walked out with a better understanding of how they can build their own employment brands.
A privacy discussion panel with Jigsaw CEO Jim Fowler and privacy activist Deborah Pierce sparked some mildly heated debate. ERE chose well to pit Fowler and his sterling silver puzzle piece cuff-links against the clearly liberal and well informed privacy activist. I think Deborah got the best of him. The ERE’s expo blog has more on this.
Another cool session was the one on start-ups. The two start-ups that I thought were most likely to succeed were Path101 and VisualCV. JobScore’s CEO was enthusiastic and sweaty which I’m always happy to see in a CEO pitching his early stage venture but ultimately I think the sharing model is flawed.
ENTERTAINMENT
Last but not least…the charity poker tournament was a huge success. ERE raised over $13,000 for charity. Jason Davis and Dave Manaster did a great job pulling this off. I took third place.
