Last week I spent a day at Bill Boorman’s #TruLondon recruitment unconference event (here is an explanation of an unconference if you are unfamiliar with the concept). This event ran over two days and I understand Bill had close to 200 attendees. With four sessions (called tracks) taking place every hour and such large numbers if was an absolute hive of activity and debate. Perhaps with a little help from the sponsors, Jobsite, the event ran very smoothly. There was a really great feel to the day with lots of energy abounding. The tracks I sat in on fostered great debate and one or two nuggets of real learning.
I enjoyed the Social Influence Blueprint track that Brian Wempen lead. I’d never come across Brian before (you can read his pre-event interview here) and found him to be the perfect track leader; knowledgeable but capable of letting others speak. There was one lady in the track who was struggling with taking the first step to get onto twitter and it made me release that being an early adopter and learning through mistakes in front of a very much smaller audience is the way to go! It has also encouraged me to take another look at our twitter tutorial – so I’ll be working on that this week.
I also sat in on “The Pinterest Puzzle” (led by Max Heywood). The track proved that a) recruiters will try to find a way to use/abuse any tool for recruiting purposes b) we like the sounds of our voices and c) you can waste a lot of time looking at new tools when you’ve not even got the basics right!
I didn’t make it along to the second day but I understand in Bill’s session on twitter sourcing there were some wide eyed and open mouthed audience members who just couldn’t believe what could be achieved using Twitter. I also, unfortunately, missed Mike Bishop from Ricoh talking about saving £3 million in recruitment fees by improving upon their internal recruitment function. More bad news for old school recruiters who can’t find their way in this changing recruitment space.
Overall I really enjoyed the event and would recommend it to recruiters. To get the most of out it you need to be prepared to speak up as well as listen… but also know when to shut up! It was a great networking opportunity too and I can’t even begin to list all the lovely people I managed to catch up with during the day (and lively drinks afterwards).
So, well done Bill and I’ll see you at #trulondon6!
