Word on the street: A chat with Boston’s OPEN 2018 Roadshow attendees

5 mins, 37 secs read time

Greenhouse recently hit the road to kick-off its traveling conference series, OPEN 2018 Roadshow in Boston, with more events in Austin, and San Francisco. Boston’s event just wrapped and we’re still beaming over the day filled with Talent insights, resourceful workshops, an exclusive candidate Q&A; panel, and what trip to Boston would be complete without some delicious mini lobster rolls during happy hour.

We snagged some face time with a few of our attendees to discover more about their experience at OPEN Roadshow Boston and hear about the work they're doing in their own Talent and HR worlds. Here are the highlights from our conversations with Russell Thomas of The Predictive Index, Katie Cech of Wayfair, and Freddie Montgomery of Panorama Education.

1) What is the most important challenge you're working to address right now within your Talent team?

Russell: I think the biggest challenge is being able to better connect the People strategy to the business strategy, and figuring out how you can use systems and data to accomplish those goals.

Katie: One of our biggest challenges is thinking about ways to efficiently identify top talent from a large talent pool.

Freddie: Our recruitment team has grown so much, but something that we’re thinking about is how to quantify the data and metrics behind our growth. Essentially, I think our biggest challenge will be defining our KPIs for 2019.

2) How do you leverage recruiting technology to do better work?

Russell: Right now it’s about using systems to move candidates through a workflow. We actually are a client of Greenhouse on the internal side, but we also have the partner network we’re trying to grow. Part of the reason we’re here is to explore working with Greenhouse for that growth.

Katie: At Wayfair, one of the things we invest in a lot is our people. I work on our Recruiting Analytics team, and we are constantly thinking about how to best leverage our ATS and our CRM platforms to capture the data we need to drive the business forward. This is how we ensure that the processes are capturing the data that we need, and are built in a way that support recruiting efficiency and effectiveness.

Freddie: In terms of leveraging recruiting tech, I love the custom ability of the scorecards in Greenhouse. In my role, I’ve been using the tool to see how I can eliminate bias in the interview process and make sure there are quantifiable things that we’re looking for, as well as ensure that folks aren’t moving too far out of those outliers.

3) Please share anything unique you and your hiring team are doing to make your candidate experience stand out from the competition.

Russell: As a company, we provide assessments. So we do an assessment with candidates upfront and give them a readback, which tells them more about their workplace behaviors and what they need in order to be successful. Additionally, we try to streamline the process as quickly as possible. This way, we don’t overwhelm candidates with 20 interview rounds, but instead keep things more brief, yet meaningful.

Katie: One thing I think is really cool and fun, although super small, is that we give every candidate who comes on sight a quick tour around the building. We sell a lot of awesome furniture, so our building is pretty beautiful. We try to make the candidate feel at home by giving them a lay of the land and an idea of what our space looks like.

Freddie: We really care about creating a positive interaction with our candidates including keeping them informed throughout the interview process. This might require some prep before an interview. Whether you’re sending them a simple email guide about what might be discussed in the interview, or what they should look out for, it’s important that they feel comfortable before coming in, so that they’ll be set up for success.

4) Why did you attend Boston’s OPEN 2018 Roadshow?

Russell: Greenhouse has a great reputation, so that caught our attention at first. Because the internal team uses the software, we wanted to check out its benefits, as well as think about potentially bringing it on for our team. We’re also here to learn from the rest of the community about new ways to win the war for talent. The opportunity to exchange experiences with my industry peers is huge.

Katie: I work on the team that does all of the recruiting analytics for Wayfair and we’re a relatively new team – we’ve only been around for about a year. So we’ve learned a ton in the year, but we’re always looking for better ways to do what we do, especially in the world of high-volume tech recruiting. It can be a really daunting space, so any best practices or learnings from others are always really helpful.

Freddie: I was really intrigued by the schedule of events here, particularly the reporting and dashboards. There were a few tools like Domo that I’d heard about but I wasn’t familiar with, and it was really cool to see those reports live.

5) What is one key learning you’ll be taking away with you from today’s event?

Russell: The importance of having data to advocate for your People strategy. If you’re really going to hire effectively, you need to have data to back it up. Especially when it comes to positioning that to the business leaders and that’s one of the things that Greenhouse does very well.

Katie: It’s actually quite tactical. In one of the presentations that TripAdvisor gave, I really appreciated looking at their data visualizations. I’m always thinking about how we can better visualize data to tell a story based on our recruiting metrics. I definitely saw a few visuals that I’m going to take back to Wayfair.

Freddie: I loved the discussion around Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and how that impacts the candidate experience. It allowed me to assess if we’re on track and headed in the right direction or not. Overall, it was amazing to hear all of the great perspectives here.

If you’d like to experience OPEN 2018 Roadshow for yourself, you’re in luck - we still have a few tickets left. Due to high demand, San Francisco is sold out, but you can still register for Austin for a chance to gain the tools to help elevate your hiring.