#truLondon is tomorrow. Jet another recruitment conference in the already full calendar of similar events. Or at least events that would fall under the same category. Only this one is not a conference but as the organiser himself call it, this is an: Unconference. Interesting marketing spiel you would say, and then realise how wrong have you been after attending it.
For any conference, there will be fantastic speakers and those that are less relevant to what you are interested in. The conference format forces you to sit at your table for the full duration of it, and hopefully survive to the end to get to that valuable networking time. I know it myself, talking to a group of 100 recruiters about the aspects of the social internet sourcing, a large portion of them are asleep. They are here for the next or previous speaker. Their candidates are not on social networks (or at least they strongly believe so!). Here is where the unconference style gets interesting. There are always a number of topics covered by different speakers. You choose the one you like best, and even if you find a presenter boring – you can easily walk out and join something else going on in the same time. Sometimes even whole groups if they finish earlier – just ‘walk out’ and go and join another topic. What is even more important the setting is always organised so that there is no presenting of a speakers (OK, Bill does blow a whistle sometimes!) there is no podium, but kind of like Musical Chairs setting where people just sit around and one expert starts and leads the discussion on a chosen pre-set topic. Having no stand and podium the emphasis is on discussion. All in the group are invited to contribute. A good track leader will invite everyone in the group to contribute, and allocate time for everyone to have time to do so. The format is usually like: Here is a something that I have done in the recruitment that helped me a lot. Can this help you recruit in your industry or geography or niche? Interestingly enough the ones who are track leaders, actually learn the most. They hear all kind of feedback, and ideas of different possible applications of what they spoke about. Now tell me, how much have you learned as a speaker on a classical conference where you talk for 45 and have 10 minutes Q&A session?
But Bill did not stop there. Besides organising the best possible recruitment conference Bill makes sure that no one goes home for dinner. You simply get a continuous session pretty much until you can stand on your feet (or sit on anything) that day/night. There is no corporate policy that applies to you after hours, so a true brainstorming sessions just kick inspired by combinations of all the official talks during the day. And tomorrow you do it all over again. Two full days (you can forget 9 – 5 PM schedule), of top notch recruitment futurology.
To make things worse tomorrow we will also have to dance on the #Ride event in the City Hotel.
I am 100% confident I will hear about and see things I didn’t even know exist. I just learned reading in advance about something called Google+ Hangouts that Oscar Mager is going to talk about tomorrow. I do not know where have I been hanging out lately, but I honestly haven’t heard of the Hangouts thingy before. It sounds a bit like Facebook party, but with video element as well (oops, have to get a haircut today!) Oscar is already talking about the application of in in the recruitment. Bill said here that what is discussed on the #tru events becomes practice in recruitment some 3 to 6 months later. Not all of course – but very little have emerged in recruitment that wasn’t discussed months ago on the #tru events in this year.
Glen Cathey wrote an extensive review on the last years #truLondon on his blog. Here is one sentence where sums it all up:
I found TRU London 3 to be a fantastic experience and a welcome (and needed!) deviation from the traditional conference. I was exposed to more content and more engaged discussion than I have ever experienced at a recruiting conference of any kind.
I had a chance to participate on #truDublin and #truLeeds unconferences this year, and am really looking forward for the #truLondon tomorrow.
SEO for Recruiters
I am leading a track on SEO for Recruiters tomorrow afternoon – and want to thank you all who have sent the questions up front today. I also want to thank for all the feedback on the last SEO for Recruiters session I lead in #truLeeds. I am thinking on doing the #GoogleDance in London again tomorrow…
Twitter for Recruitment
There will most likely be another ‘secret’ track (you heard it here first) about nice sourcing on twitter. Ask about it tomorrow since it is not really announced (not much!).
So that is in short what is about to happen over the next days on the #truLondon conference. 190 names confirmed so far, and a long list of great topics and speakers. Well done on preparing it for us Bill! It is on us know to make it a success!
