My experience as a truManchester track leader
I wrote an article back in February this year detailing my experience from my first time public speaking. Prior to this, I was asked back in October 2018 by Martin Dangerfield to lead a track at truManchester on 4th April 2019. I met Martin on several occasions at DBR North meet-ups in Manchester, and from this, an opportunity to progress my skills and experience by speaking at events came about.
I found running a track very enjoyable, helped by having some friendly faces in the crowd (thanks Chris Piercy, Ash Carter, Sam Facer, Emma Gallagher, Gareth Peterson and Dan Myatt). Rather than stand up on stage and talk at people for 30 minutes (and believe me, no one wants to listen to me harp on for that long), it was a great way to share your experience and views on your chosen topic, and invite the group to challenge you, ask questions and share their experiences. I found it a much more productive way of learning from my peers in industry, than sitting in a room for 8 hours listening to talk after talk.
For me, this was very new, but there were some very experienced track leaders present. I learned just as much from observing how they ran their track and speaking to them at the bar afterwards (any excuse for a pint) to get feedback on my own, which overall seemed positive.
I’ve always found the thought of being at the front of a large group of people intimidating, and those who know me well, are aware that I’ll speak with anyone (even that weirdo Jon at the bar with no friends, whose hobbies include horse riding and picking up boxes). But having all eyes on you, and trying to keep everyone engaged is the scary part. But I’ve found that talking with passion about a subject you’re really interested in makes it so much easier.
I ran the risk of running a track that was purely focussed on tech recruitment, specifically software engineering. With an unconference which is open to recruiters across all sectors, it seemed to go well and pull a good crowd.
My track was titled “Pitch Perfect — What Developers really want to hear”. I chose this as meeting friends who are software engineers for a beer, they always tell me about how shit recruiters are in their initial engagements. Giving them little to no detail of the role or package on offer, often message with irrelevant roles and have a knack for not personalising any form of communication. Even I have received InMails on LinkedIn for contract Javascript roles in London evidencing the search and spam in one click approach. This is basics though right?
So with this in mind, and to try and get them to stop slating recruiters (there are some awesome ones out there, and others I think need to re-think their career path they’re that bad) I’d try and raise this topic at a recruitment unconference, aimed at both internal and agency recruiters. If only one person takes something away from my track and it helps engagement between recruiters and software engineers in the North, that’s a good thing right?
I went away and did some research. Sure, companies like StackOverflow like to send us surveys and then add us to a mailing list to tempt us in to using their platform, but can we trust that data? More often than not it is global insight, and any UK focus always lies in London. Has no one heard of the Northern Powerhouse? So I reached out to my network across Leeds, Manchester and everywhere in between. I looked for trends across the 3 key things they want to hear when a recruiter contacts them, what method of contact they prefer, and to rank 12 things in order of importance when considering a new role. Using this I was able to pull trends across perm/contract, gender (inc. non-binary before anyone asks), years of commercial experience and more. For a 3 minute survey, I got great results, and many of those I contacted appreciated I was trying to help educate peers in the recruitment industry (as well as educating myself).
Too often recruiters play the numbers game, see a software engineer as a headcount boxed off and not a person. Yes, as recruiters we have targets to hit, but surely those targets will be met with using the right approach, understanding your audience and building relationships, not quick wins.
I’d like to say thank you again to every one of my connections who completed the survey to give me this data, and for sharing across your company slack channels.
If you’re interested in tru events, then keep an eye out for future events. DANGERFIELD also organises truBelfast and truCopenhagen. I can’t recommend this unconference enough, and I will definitely be in attendance next year!
Check out the line-up from last weeks truManchester19 conference. There are some awesome people working across amazing brands that contributed to leading great discussions around multiple topics. I for one have already begun discussions with colleagues at work from the information and ideas I learned from these amazing individuals.
- Caroline Hill / Creed Communications — “The trouble with employer branding is…”
- Chris Piercy / AO.com — “I Just called to say I love you…”
- Theo Smith / NICE — “Neurodiversity — Autistic and Dyslexic superpowers (other superpowers are available)”
- Sean Allen / BJSS — “Pitch Perfect — What Developers really want to hear”
- Lysha Holmes / Qui Recruitment — “Why recruitment should be turned on it’s head and focus on the candidate journey”
- Gary Berney / HireUp — “We all need to improve employee referral programmes”
- Dan Kelsall / Twikel — “The art of offending candidates”
- Stanislaw Wasowicz / VONQ — “Less applications, more conversations”
- Giles Heckstall-Smith/Laura Chambers / JobTrain “Recruiting and rejecting — do we care enough about candidate experience?”
- Fiona Brookes / Code Nation — “Changing perceptions of apprenticeships”
