Last week, our team attended a Recruitment conference hosted by Acsess – Association of Canadian Search, Employment and Staffing Services. It was a blast! We had a chance to check out our competition, listen to inspiring and motivating speakers and leave with lists of new ideas we could not wait to implement.
A few things stood out and surprised us.
A large percentage of attendees seemed to consist of recruitment firm managers and / or owners. Why not send your staff instead (or with you)? The topics and issues discussed were key to junior recruiters and account managers (albeit also highly useful to those of us with significant industry experience). We were thrilled to have brought our “rookies” along. They had not yet been tainted with bad habits and cheesy one-liners when recruiting or soliciting new clients and had a chance to leave with tremendous insight.
We spent the largest portion of the day in the training session hosted by Peter Lefkowitz from Morgan Consulting Group – a guru in the world of recruitment, headhunting and working on specialized mandates. What a powerhouse! We were surprised to see how many people did not attend his seminar simply not knowing how fantastic he was. They truly missed out.
One of our account directors attended a session by Alain Samson – an inspiring and quirky speaker with an interesting and humorous approach to sales strategies. One of his questions to the audience was: “What makes someone buy from you versus another supplier?” Most attendees provided predictable answers, such as “Being pleasant or nice”, “being a good listener”, and so forth. Alain’s answer? Being similar to the person on the other side of the table – having things in common. Brilliant! And how true. When we look at our book of clients, they are all similar to us in many ways.
It would have been great if sessions were filmed and available to delegates. Even though we took notes as fast as humanly possible, it would have been great to go over some of the things discussed once again.
A session on the trends within corporate HR departments and behavioral interviewing was underwhelming to say the least. Recruiters and account managers seem to have one trait in common – we are restless and have trouble sitting through a lengthy session with our mouths closed. For that reason, sitting through a PowerPoint presentation with slides being read out to us was nearly torturous. I left before the session was over and went (umm.. ran) back into Peter’s class.
All in all, kudos to Acsess for putting together a brilliant event! We were still buzzing with excitement at this week’s team meeting and are implementing lots of things we learned.
And if you didn’t attend? The ones of us that did are now many steps ahead of you!
A few things stood out and surprised us.
A large percentage of attendees seemed to consist of recruitment firm managers and / or owners. Why not send your staff instead (or with you)? The topics and issues discussed were key to junior recruiters and account managers (albeit also highly useful to those of us with significant industry experience). We were thrilled to have brought our “rookies” along. They had not yet been tainted with bad habits and cheesy one-liners when recruiting or soliciting new clients and had a chance to leave with tremendous insight.
We spent the largest portion of the day in the training session hosted by Peter Lefkowitz from Morgan Consulting Group – a guru in the world of recruitment, headhunting and working on specialized mandates. What a powerhouse! We were surprised to see how many people did not attend his seminar simply not knowing how fantastic he was. They truly missed out.
One of our account directors attended a session by Alain Samson – an inspiring and quirky speaker with an interesting and humorous approach to sales strategies. One of his questions to the audience was: “What makes someone buy from you versus another supplier?” Most attendees provided predictable answers, such as “Being pleasant or nice”, “being a good listener”, and so forth. Alain’s answer? Being similar to the person on the other side of the table – having things in common. Brilliant! And how true. When we look at our book of clients, they are all similar to us in many ways.
It would have been great if sessions were filmed and available to delegates. Even though we took notes as fast as humanly possible, it would have been great to go over some of the things discussed once again.
A session on the trends within corporate HR departments and behavioral interviewing was underwhelming to say the least. Recruiters and account managers seem to have one trait in common – we are restless and have trouble sitting through a lengthy session with our mouths closed. For that reason, sitting through a PowerPoint presentation with slides being read out to us was nearly torturous. I left before the session was over and went (umm.. ran) back into Peter’s class.
All in all, kudos to Acsess for putting together a brilliant event! We were still buzzing with excitement at this week’s team meeting and are implementing lots of things we learned.
And if you didn’t attend? The ones of us that did are now many steps ahead of you!
In this picture: our Client Strategist - Jordan Greenberg (on the left) - with Peter Lefkowitz (on the right).
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