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November 17, 2021 
13 min read
We had so much fun at INSPIRE 2021! From eye-opening conversations with Dan Levy and Allyson Felix to sessions about iCIMS’ future innovations, we’ve learned a lot.
INSPIRE is all about moving the talent industry forward, so we wanted to highlight some of our top sessions that focused on strategies to optimize talent acquisition within your company.
Here are highlights from INSPIRE 2021 sessions to help you attract, engage, hire, and advance talent in 2022.
Access our on-demand library here to catch up or rewatch sessions.
Recruitment marketers know that video can positively impact candidate engagement, but production can be expensive and complicated. Nicole Tucker, Talent Acquisition Manager at iCIMS, spoke with an iCIMS Video Studio customer to learn how they scaled their video recruitment strategy during the pandemic.
The key takeaway: Employee-generated video can be just as effective as hiring a high-end production team.
Anthony Jones, Director of Talent Brand & Employee Experience at Rockwell Automation, said, “When COVID stopped my team’s ability to go out and film these highly produced videos, we needed to find a way to pivot and tell our story in a new way. So, we turned to employee-generated content and found that with the right technology, we could not only be just as creative with our content but that we could also scale our content significantly by doing so.”
Watch this session for three steps to make your video-led recruitment marketing strategy laser-focused and intentional.
Jim D’Amico, Global Talent Acquisition Leader at Celanese, shared how companies can leverage employee-generated video to create welcoming experiences for candidates from historically excluded groups (HEGs).
As Jim says, “Oftentimes, we forget the devil is in the details.” That’s why Celanese shares short videos with candidates before the interview to help them feel relaxed. The videos welcome candidates and set expectations, encouraging them to bring their whole selves to the interview and create a much more engaging experience.
In this session, you’ll also find Jim’s advice on data visualization and how to tell a holistic DEI story to the C-suite.
How do global businesses use (and scale) employee-generated video to create meaningful connections with candidates? Kimberly Taylor, iCIMS VP of Client Strategy, dives in with IBM, Hilton, and Spectrum.
When asked how to make the initial business case for leveraging video technology, Meghan Magette, Senior Director of Employer Brand at Hilton, said, “The business case was pretty easy to sell because leadership knew using videos and actually having our team members tell their stories, their testimonials, their experiences, was going to make it a lot more impactful for our candidates than for us just to use text or written testimonials.”
So, how should talent acquisition leaders get started with video storytelling? Jennifer Tracy, Vice President of Talent Attraction and Acquisition at Spectrum, said, “It was so important to start small, understand why you’re building what you’re building, and then continue to iterate on it and grow. The wonderful thing about this tool is that it’s so flexible to add on new ways to work that you shouldn’t be afraid to start small.”
The current job market is unlike anything seen before. Candidates have all the power, which includes your current employees. As a result, their standards are changing, pushing companies to improve their talent attraction and engagement strategies.
Rachel Morgan, Senior Product Marketing Manager at iCIMS, and Kyle Hogan, Portfolio Director at iCIMS, showcased the iCIMS technology that helps attract and engage candidates in innovative ways: Career Sites, Digital Assistant, Text Engagement, Candidate Relationship Management, and Video Studio.
Moving forward, there are three things iCIMS is working on and investing in to help our customers attract and engage talent:
The candidate and recruiter experience are two sides of the same coin. When recruiting teams have the right information at the right time, they can deliver more impactful and memorable candidate interactions. Jason Schickel, Product Manager at iCIMS, speaks with Amanda Maldonado, Recruiter at OHL, and David Reichert, Product Manager at ADP Lifion, to uncover useful tools across the iCIMS Talent Cloud platform to boost the recruiter experience.
For Amanda, two capabilities help her create a seamless recruiter experience: iCIMS for Microsoft Teams and a tight integration between iCIMS Applicant Tracking System and LinkedIn Recruiter. These integrations help Amanda better collaborate with hiring managers and streamline the recruiting workflow.
David also gave his thoughts on how recruiters should navigate between the iCIMS ATS and ADP’s Next Gen HCM.
Watch this session to learn the three core capabilities added to this integration to help remove manual work from recruiters’ plates and make them more efficient.
Jaimelynn Scott has been with iCIMS for about five years and is a proud veteran of the United States Coast Guard. In this session, she meets with fellow veterans and iCIMS customers to discuss what TA leaders are doing today to engage and hire veteran employees.
She found that companies that successfully hire veterans make an effort to understand unique veteran perspectives and engage in the local community. FedEx Express was even able to surpass their benchmark for hiring veterans by partnering with veteran recruitment companies and fielding calls from veterans that want to talk about FedEx hiring programs.
Read more hiring tips in Jaimelynn’s article, Building a Mission-Critical Veteran Hiring Strategy.
Managers today face three primary hiring challenges:
Megan Gimbar, Product Marketing Manager at iCIMS, and Dave McCarthy, Portfolio Director at iCIMS, taught us how the iCIMS Talent Cloud empowers you to hire and advance talent with new experiences that maximize efficiency while enabling you to get more personal. This includes iCIMS Applicant Tracking System, Offer Management, and Onboarding.
The product roadmap theme for 2022 is “Recruiting efficiencies driven by talent cloud experiences.” iCIMS is focused on outcomes that help users complete tasks faster, focus on quality candidates, and ensure diverse hiring practices are embedded into the ATS workflow.
Ascension Health launched a national internal mobility program in six months to address turnover and keep employees fulfilled. Mark Brandau, Vice President of Portfolio and Solution Marketing at iCIMS, sat down with Ascension Health’s Lauren King, Sr. Director of Talent Acquisition-National Incentives, for an open conversation about the importance of advancing talent.
Our biggest takeaway came from Mark’s question, “There is often fear and stigma associated with internal mobility. How do you deal with these issues within your organization?”
Lauren said, “It’s a culture change. It takes some time. I’m a manager myself, and it’s painful when associates leave. It’s painful when you have to backfill them and retrain, and that’s difficult. I think what again the data showed us is they’re going to leave anyway. So if you don’t give them the opportunity internally, you might see them externally motivated to move.” The other thing I think [internal mobility] does is it creates raving fans. It creates associates who recognize that they have opportunities and a career journey with us. And the hope is that they then refer people back. So I think the manager can actually see that come back to them. Even if they lose one associate, perhaps that associate is now motivated to help backfill their own position by bringing in a friend. And we know that referrals are one of the best ways to get really wonderful talent.”
You’ll also find Lauren’s advice on using data to build your internal recruiting strategy and why you should provide internal candidates an experience just like your external candidates.
In this session, Mike Wilczak, iCIMS Chief Strategy & Development Officer, joins Mark Brandau to discuss how iCIMS helps improve internal mobility and retention by elevating the employee experience.
The iCIMS Opportunity Marketplace helps remove the friction around internal mobility for employees and hiring teams. It can also make it easier for your existing employees to find new opportunities within your company. For TA professionals and hiring teams, you’ll be better able to support internal recruiting, talent mobility goals, improve talent retention, and support organizational DEI programs.
Watch this session to learn more about how the iCIMS Opportunity Marketplace helps your employees go beyond opportunity identification to opportunity inspiration.
iCIMS recently formally launched our talent maturity model, iCIMS Ascend. With this maturity model as our guide, we partner with our customers to define their talent vision and help build the right strategies, processes, and candidate experiences to align with and accelerate their business strategies.
Christy Spilka, Vice President and Global Head of Talent Acquisition at iCIMS, was a customer for more than eight years before joining our team. As customer 0, using the iCIMS Talent Cloud platform to build our winning workforce, Christy discusses her experience using the Ascend Maturity Model. Together she and Jamaal Harris, Manager of Client Partner Professional Services at iCIMS, show how TA teams can leverage the iCIMS Ascend maturity model to identify low-hanging fruit, pinpoint improvement areas, and create a personalized action plan.
The hiring landscape is evolving at a breakneck pace. Candidates and employees are at the center of that evolution: how, when, and where they prefer to interact with employers is constantly shifting. Business leaders need a modern, next-gen platform that empowers them to better connect with their talent.
In this session, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Gazmend Kalicovic, and Sr. Principal Product Manager, Brendan Cyrus, discuss the iCIMS Talent Cloud roadmap and how future platform innovations can make it even easier for you to connect with your talent.
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Not only did we learn strategies to improve the talent acquisition lifecycle, but we also heard from talent and tech innovators across a variety of disciplines.
Josh Bersin, Global Industry Analyst, walked us through the major changes happening in recruitment and offered advice to HR and TA leaders looking to improve their value proposition to better attract and retain talent.
Jason Dorsey, generational researcher and best-selling author, helped us to separate myth from truth when it comes to generations. TA leaders can benefit from Jason’s strategies, tactics, and brand new research to drive results across generations in a time of rapid change.
And who could forget about our star-studded keynotes?! Sekou Andrews wowed us with his passionate speech about owning innovation at work. Our conversation with Dan Levy displayed the power of creative talent. And Olympian Allyson Felix closed out INSPIRE with a message that made us feel ready to take on any challenge.
Watch all these great sessions (for a limited time) in our on-demand library.
