Our latest roving reporter, George Royce of Royce Associates Executive Resourcing, gives an account of the Executive Research Association’s 2011 Conference:
The ERA (Executive Research Association) held their Annual Conference on 6 April 2011.
More than sixty members attended the event entitled “Social Media – Friend or Foe” held at the Royal Society of Arts in their magnificent building beside the Thames near Charing Cross. They enjoyed a fascinating and stimulating day where the renowned speakers gave very practical guidance on how to exploit social media and leading search engines to find the very best candidates.
The first speaker was Andy Headworth, Managing Director of Sirona Consulting. Andy helps and advises companies about recruitment strategy, recruitment process, online recruitment and social recruiting. He is passionate about the value of social media as a recruitment tool. Although most of the audience already used social and business networking sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, Andy quickly showed how these and many others sites and resources can be used to optimum advantage. He gave numerous practical examples of how to link them together to create powerful profiles for your own business and also how to drive good candidates towards your website.
He swept aside any misconceptions and concerns that people may have about these tools and left his audience totally convinced that social media should be an integral part of their recruitment strategy. Andy’s stark message was that companies, recruiters and candidates need to jump on the bandwagon right away if they are not going to be left behind.
After this intensive and invaluable session delegates enjoyed a delicious lunch and were able to catch up with old friends and also have the opportunity to meet the many new members who were attending their first ERA event.
After lunch, Simon Stephenson, the Co-Chairman of the ERA introduced a panel discussion on whether social media will ultimately make executive researchers redundant. The panel members were Ann Gales, Director of Ann Gales Consulting, Jamie Homer, Director for European Talent at Urban Outfitters Anthropologie, Alex Wratten, Business Development Manager, Telegraph Media Group and Jocelyn Buxton, a very experienced independent researcher and founder member of the ERA.
The panel responded well to a series of penetrating questions from the floor but the general consensus was that even though social media and other tools are vitally important there is still a need for recruitment professionals to check the data, assess its validity and speak to the candidates. Social media, however good, can only ever be part of the researcher’s toolkit and there will never be a substitute for personal interaction with candidates.
Relieved to hear that they still had a job, members of the audience took a short break in the beautiful spring sunshine.
They returned to a short presentation by Jason Starr of Dillistone Systems who took them through some features of Filefinder 10 which has only just been released. Among many enhancements, Filefinder 10 pools a wide range of data gathered from social media and networking sites and this will make it an even more valuable resource.
The final speaker was Katharine Robinson, Sourcing Recruitment Manager at Capgemini Consulting. Katharine won the title of Grandmaster Sourcer at SourceCon in San Diego in March 2010 and it rapidly became clear why she was given this prestigious award. Building on some of the points Andy Headworth had made earlier in the day she treated the audience to a whistle stop tour of Google and other sites to show the real power of these tools that few people ever harness. Using certain key words and search strings she demonstrated just how much information can be retrieved. Her audience was totally absorbed by her presentation and tried to assimilate as much as they could from numerous live examples.
Simon Stephenson then drew the conference to a close. He thanked the speakers and the panel members for giving everyone such a stimulating and thought provoking day and then invited everyone to sample some delicious wine in the cellars of the RSA. This was yet another resounding success for the ERA. As the leading executive research organization in the UK they welcome new members whether from the search, research or corporate communities.
For more information on the 2011 Conference and the ERA’s programme throughout the year please contact: Sarah El-Rasoul at ERA on 01442 828846 or email sarah@theera.org
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