Well, I just returned from the Kennedy Information Recruiting 2006 conference. Interesting show. Some good ideas being exchanged.

Main points I took away:

• HR Managers are quite a bit behind the curve when its comes to online talent acquisition. I literally heard people asking several panels about tracking job board response. The Source of Hire protocol issue was addressed back in 2001 and really pained me to see this still being a point of contention. Not only does this illustrate the poor job ATS have done in tracking source of hire (or making their clients aware this has long since been developed), but it also alludes to the fact that many HR professionals are really far behind in sourcing metrics. Sad but true. Do these people measure quality hires at all? Whats the difference between a qualified hire and a quality hire? What is your time to fill? Which keywords delivered the highest rate of resumes for PPC, boonlean searches, etc? What eSourcing projects have you worked on and what specifically were the results? Doubt most HR people in that room could tell me. Of course, our clients aren't in this group - thankfully! And if this comes across as being boastful...I apologize....however at the same time, we're quite proud of the progress we have made in the last several years. It pains me to see how out of touch some HR depts really are these days (in some cases).

• The SimplyHired.com staff was a blast to hang out with and a real positive group. Only positive vibes from this bunch and really dedicated to "getting it right". My quick suggestion to them was to aggregate more than just job listings. I think all things related to job search should be found through their engine. Just my little 2 cents of course. Would love to see more recruitment video content, for instance, and more job search articles segmented by industry. That said, they have lots of energy and openness to new ideas so I think we are only scratching the surface on their product offerings.

• The Conference itself was too high-level for my liking. I would rather see break-out sessions where each of us can contribute thoughts and ideas in square-table discussions, as Jason Gorham likes to call it. I think we already know that tier 1 search engines work as a talent acquisition tool. Thats old news. I'd like to see application not "top down" theory that you should put your recruitment message in front of passive candidates. Yeah ok....I got that...but what's the sell? How are you turning eyeballs into candidates? What are the search terms that work? What are the current cost per click trends for hot industry specializations? What are the conversion on these terms? What editorial content that drives conversions more than others? How many uniques to conversions do you receive per job? Per industry? What are the ceiling rates for diminishing candidate returns? Exactly...this was hardly touched upon. You either work in PPC or you don't. Its pretty obvious to me who does.

• As usual, many people were there to sell themselves and their products rather than connect on forward-thinking recruitment strategies. Thats hardly Kennedy Information's fault but the fact is we actually expended valuable conference time on whether resumes would still be in existence in the future or not. What are the trends in HR relationship marketing? I hardly saw anything about HR Email Marketing, Recruitment Videos and SMS Text Messaging Job Alerts (which by the way, is not a job alert but rather an off-line networking event text alert). What are the delivery rates for HR Email Marketing pieces? Which creatives are more effective than others? What are the common talent segmentation ratings in ATS? Do you even have a working email marketing list of candidates segmented by skill set, geography and experience? I doubt it. Wasn't even discussed.

• Lastly, if I hear one more person approach me with "this new portal / application is going to change the face of recruiting forever"...I will jump off a cliff. Please! Just stop! Whatever you are doing isn't new. Its been done before...Trust me. What really counts is the market, approach/strategy and resources you have to sourcing candidates more effectively...not the technology idea. Even so-called "social networking / Web 2.0"...a term I hate by the way....has been around since the 1950s...it was just called Employee Referral back then (and today as well) and doesn't require technology to be effective. Give me recruitment tactics not stories about your new server that can store 5 billion resumes or profiles. Nobody cares.