Join renowned talent acquisition consultant, strategist, speaker and internet search guru Shally Steckerl as he demystifies Boolean search techniques and breaks them down for you in clear and simple explanations so you can utilize search engine commands to get instant results. During this master-level FULL DAY class you will learn techniques, tools and tips that will allow you to unlock traditional sources so you can get deeper results, faster than ever before. After this workshop you will understand advanced searching techniques on websites such as Google, Live, Yahoo, LinkedIn and dozens of online social networks. You will get a chance to work on live requisitions as you generate a list of prospects to fill your pipeline!

Turning a prospect into an engaged, interested candidate is an art and a science. When do you make contact? What do you say? Do you email/text? Do you leave messages? When do you call back? Presenting along with Shally in this master class, one of the industry's leading experts on cold calling and performance improvement, David Szary from The Recruiter Academy will share best practices and provide you a detailed roadmap on how to turn your list of qualified prospects into engaged candidates! He will demystify the "cold call" and teach you how to help 'break the ice', overcome the initial awkwardness of the call and quickly build rapport with the prospect using time-tested completely intuitive persuasive communication techniques. We will discuss the "indirect/networking approach" that will turn a 'NO' into referrals and eliminate the friction of 'recruiting' from your competitors.

Come prepared to work at this workshop! Shally will show you ways to inexpensively fill your pipeline with top talent and David is going to have you roll up your sleeves and craft compelling value proposition/recruitment messages that will increase email/voice mail response rates by 50%!

As a successful recruiter, you also need to know how to manage and organize your pipeline. Shally and Dave will provide tips to manage your prospect pipeline and show you how to enhance your current process to help you save time, effort and money. Throughout the entire day the techniques presented in this session will generate engaged qualified candidates for those hard-to-fill requisitions and qualified prospects for future needs! Many real-life examples will be shared including how dozens of organizations have structured their recruiting process from the beginnings of sourcing strategy through lead generation, cold calling, and recruitment workflow optimization.

Strategic Talent Visioning and Action Workshop - Developing and actively exercising strategic visioning and planning.

Developing expertise around the realities of the talent market and committing to strategic directives that establish a guiding path will help to further your own development and leadership capability while also ensuring your company's success in the future. During these difficult economic times it is critical to be able to suggest alternative talent strategies to management and to be able to provide management with facts and data about internal and external talent quality and availability.

Some of the economic issues we face are caused by the shifting nature of work and the growth of globalization. As the business and talent landscape continue to shift, increased challenges around competition, multi-generational work environments, global complexities, and economic uncertainty require new boundaries of thinking and action. Developing the skills and approach to frame your strategy and build a compelling case positions you and your recruiting team to deliver increased value and guide your organization to success.

This workshop will boost your expertise in navigating the market. This workshop will support you in:

• Developing a broader understanding of the trends influencing the talent market today and in the future that shape the overall landscape.
• Building an approach to anticipating, preparing for and managing uncertainties in the business environment.
• Designing and incorporating market facts and data and company analytics to build a compelling case for enhanced talent function positioning.
• Leveraging a talent planning strategy to break through recruiting obstacles and reach new ground.

You'll also work hands-on in a situational planning exercise that incorporates your experience, learnings from this session, and interactions with others to broaden your perspective of potential and desired outcomes.

Join Susan Burns from Talent Synchronicity and Kevin Wheeler of Global Learning Resources for an all day session and take your strategic visioning and implementations skills further to design, develop, and enhance your talent.

Starting New Employees Off Right: Does Your Onboarding Process Lead to Employee Engagement or Buyer's Remorse?

If you're going to spend all that money on acquiring employees, why wouldn't you prepare them to succeed? But many organizations approach the onboarding process with a level of professionalism and quality they would never tolerate in their daily operations. Because many of the practices that bring out the best in employees-whether related to onboarding or other aspects of managing employees-are commonsense, the goal of this workshop isn't to surprise you with their complexity or novelty, but to challenge you to take an honest look at whether you are actually doing them. Your answers will help illuminate whether your onboarding process is the kind that leads to high employee engagement or buyer's remorse.

You'll learn to: Communicate the importance of onboarding to key stakeholders. Know the role effective onboarding plays in employee engagement. Learn the psychology behind getting onboarding right: what you need to know about human nature if you want to prepare your employees to for maximum engagement and productivity. Avoid common onboarding mistakes you can't afford to make. Discover the differences that make a difference: key components of effective programs.

You will: Gain a clear conceptual framework to guide decisions and strategy, and communicate with decision-makers the rationale and importance of their recommendations to upgrade onboarding. Analyze your current onboarding process to prevent "killer mistakes." Hear examples of what other companies are doing to create interesting and effective onboarding programs. Create a straightforward protocol for putting this information into use to upgrade the process.

Recruiting has functioned on its own for years, and many of you may like it that way! With a new focus on the talent management suite, and a holistic approach to not only attracting -- but managing, developing, and rewarding employees -- recruiting has the opportunity to become an anchor to driving the transformation in a talent management strategy. As recruiting becomes more integrated, how can you have a strategic voice in the process and technology and not just be herded in?

Join this workshop to understand how recruiting can become the center of a talent management strategy, and steps you can take to lead this role. This session is focused on practical tools and exercises that will help guide you in defining your talent strategy and driving your recruiting performance across your organization.

Topics of discussion include:

• How to be in front of business needs and business goals. Learn how to effectively target the market for specific talent, build sourcing strategies for critical positions, and elevate the potential to move internal talent into the right position at the right time.
• The ability to see a full talent profile (external or internal) and have the information in your hands to determine fit for a position, for the department, or the company, and quickly determine the right collaboration strategy with each different audience.
• Recruiter competencies and roles as a foundation to talent strategies for the organization. By better understanding talent management and where recruiting fit in, you will better position yourself for success.
• Communication and business case modeling. Learn how to partner with HR and business leaders to justifying the spend and the value of a talent strategy tied to recruiting.
• How to create business metrics that tie your results to the business and talent management, and not just to improving recruiting process.

An effective workforce planning process can help you pinpoint critical talent needs that will drive the success of your enterprise. But once you determine those needs, how do you address them? In this year’s workshop, we will build on the success of last year’s highly successful workforce-planning session led by Ed Newman, industry expert and president of The Newman Group. This year, we will look beyond workforce planning to develop an enterprise-wide talent management strategy.

In this session, Ed Newman will cover key ingredients to effective workforce planning and talent strategy development, including:

• Understanding the results of an effective workforce-planning effort
• Applying workforce planning to other ingredients in the talent management picture including Competency Management, Organization Design, Talent Acquisition, and Performance management
• A practical process for putting a talent strategy into action -- including planning, discovery, development, and deployment

This is a great chance for anyone involved in near-term and long-term talent decision-making to gain a practical understanding of workforce planning fundamentals, and how to apply them to a strategy that drives talent operations across the enterprise.

Join renowned talent acquisition consultant, strategist, speaker and internet search guru Shally Steckerl as he demystifies Boolean search techniques and breaks them down for you in clear and simple explanations so you can utilize search engine commands to get instant results. During this master-level FULL DAY class you will learn techniques, tools and tips that will allow you to unlock traditional sources so you can get deeper results, faster than ever before. After this workshop you will understand advanced searching techniques on websites such as Google, Live, Yahoo, LinkedIn and dozens of online social networks. You will get a chance to work on live requisitions as you generate a list of prospects to fill your pipeline!

Turning a prospect into an engaged, interested candidate is an art and a science. When do you make contact? What do you say? Do you email/text? Do you leave messages? When do you call back? Presenting along with Shally in this master class, one of the industry's leading experts on cold calling and performance improvement, David Szary from The Recruiter Academy will share best practices and provide you a detailed roadmap on how to turn your list of qualified prospects into engaged candidates! He will demystify the "cold call" and teach you how to help 'break the ice', overcome the initial awkwardness of the call and quickly build rapport with the prospect using time-tested completely intuitive persuasive communication techniques. We will discuss the "indirect/networking approach" that will turn a 'NO' into referrals and eliminate the friction of 'recruiting' from your competitors.

Come prepared to work at this workshop! Shally will show you ways to inexpensively fill your pipeline with top talent and David is going to have you roll up your sleeves and craft compelling value proposition/recruitment messages that will increase email/voice mail response rates by 50%!

As a successful recruiter, you also need to know how to manage and organize your pipeline. Shally and Dave will provide tips to manage your prospect pipeline and show you how to enhance your current process to help you save time, effort and money. Throughout the entire day the techniques presented in this session will generate engaged qualified candidates for those hard-to-fill requisitions and qualified prospects for future needs! Many real-life examples will be shared including how dozens of organizations have structured their recruiting process from the beginnings of sourcing strategy through lead generation, cold calling, and recruitment workflow optimization.

Strategic Talent Visioning and Action Workshop - Developing and actively exercising strategic visioning and planning.

Developing expertise around the realities of the talent market and committing to strategic directives that establish a guiding path will help to further your own development and leadership capability while also ensuring your company's success in the future. During these difficult economic times it is critical to be able to suggest alternative talent strategies to management and to be able to provide management with facts and data about internal and external talent quality and availability.

Some of the economic issues we face are caused by the shifting nature of work and the growth of globalization. As the business and talent landscape continue to shift, increased challenges around competition, multi-generational work environments, global complexities, and economic uncertainty require new boundaries of thinking and action. Developing the skills and approach to frame your strategy and build a compelling case positions you and your recruiting team to deliver increased value and guide your organization to success.

This workshop will boost your expertise in navigating the market. This workshop will support you in:

• Developing a broader understanding of the trends influencing the talent market today and in the future that shape the overall landscape.
• Building an approach to anticipating, preparing for and managing uncertainties in the business environment.
• Designing and incorporating market facts and data and company analytics to build a compelling case for enhanced talent function positioning.
• Leveraging a talent planning strategy to break through recruiting obstacles and reach new ground.

You'll also work hands-on in a situational planning exercise that incorporates your experience, learnings from this session, and interactions with others to broaden your perspective of potential and desired outcomes.

Join Susan Burns from Talent Synchronicity and Kevin Wheeler of Global Learning Resources for an all day session and take your strategic visioning and implementations skills further to design, develop, and enhance your talent.

Do you have a retention strategy that works? Join industry experts to share best practices on identifying critical gaps, pitfalls, and success factors that will save you money and improve candidate quality. This workshop is specifically designed for any high-volume recruiting environment. In this highly interactive workshop, you'll walk through a typical candidate experience as seen through the candidate's eyes, identify areas for improvement, and walk away with a journal of best practices to take back to your office.

Participants will be asked to share ideas with one another as well as hear from subject-matter experts on recent trends that we have seen in the industry. You'll explore such questions as:

• What is your company doing effectively in their hiring process?
• What are some better or best practices that would let you attract top candidates?
• What are you doing effectively in your on-boarding and training process, with respect to employee retention?
• What are some better or best practices that would improve the way you onboard and train top employees?
• What are some better or best practices that would help employee retention?
• Do we have a detailed success profile of what we are looking for in a candidate?
• Where do we go to find top talent that meets or exceeds the requirements for each specific position?
• What is the message we are sending about our "value proposition" (why would I want to work there?) to candidates?
• Does our organization set a realistic expectation of the hiring process for the candidate?
• Do we have an effective realistic job preview (video, written, or verbal) that we use with candidates?
• What screening and assessment tools do we have in place to screen out these attributes?
• What are our employees telling their friends about where they work?
• How is a new hire treated from the first day they join our organization?

Is your system actually "broken" or do your processes and practices need to be improved? Technology is not the silver bullet that many people think it is. Automating an inefficient process just creates an inefficient system. How do you optimize your processes and practices so that your current ATS helps rather than hinders your talent sourcing?

In this session, we'll cover such questions and topics as:

• How do you make sure you are getting a return on your existing ATS investment?
• Have you met the business objectives and decision drivers that were defined prior to selecting a system?
• How do you measure user effectiveness, usability, and satisfaction?
• How do you get effective training of all types of your users (recruiters, hiring managers, employees, agencies, etc)?
• How to achieve operational efficiency and usability with your ATS system
• How to get adoption and increased usage of the system by all users
• How do you continue to allow the ATS to evolve to meet changing needs and requirements of the organization?
• What peripheral applications should you use for talent sourcing?

Leading Consultative Recruiting Teams: Leading, Managing, and Motivating High-Performing Recruiting and Staffing Teams

• How do the best recruiting leaders structure their teams and focus their teams on the top priorities for their organization?
• How do top recruiting leaders create a more consultative culture within their teams?
• How do the best recruiting leaders develop high-performing recruiting pros?

This highly interactive workshop is strictly limited to HR, recruiting, and staffing leaders who manage recruiting teams or an organizational recruiting function. No vendors or suppliers allowed. The workshop is designed to address the key leadership and management skills necessary to effectively lead a high-performing corporate and organizational recruiting team and provide a toolkit for recruiting leaders to optimize the way they lead and manage a recruiting function. Using a consultative recruiting model, we will discuss key concepts in how to prioritize, structure, staff, lead, and problem-solve in the complex world of corporate recruiting and staffing. Prior to the workshop a comprehensive survey is sent to all registered participants to learn about specific issues the group is facing.

We will discuss such important issues as:

• Prioritizing organizational recruiting needs
• Aligning the recruiting function against priorities
• Identifying in-sourced and outsourced resources
• Identifying the best recruiting professionals for your team

• Leveraging contracting within the recruiting function
• Managing challenging recruiting situations
• Top-level overview of project management techniques for recruiting professionals

• How to motivate and lead recruiting professionals
• Increasing recruiting professional teamwork and collegiality
• Developing recruiting professionals
• Leading through problems and performance issues

What's making or breaking corporate success today is recruiting. The ability to attract and keep better employees than others in your industry and your region is the difference between record profits or lagging sales.

The fourth annual ERE Recruiting Excellence Awards are your chance to share how your success is helping your business - and in many cases furthering the recruiting profession. Whether it's your diversity program, your careers website, your referral program, retention program, your branding initiative, or another talent strategy, this is your best chance to showcase what's working at your organization.

Conference Chair Jason Warner tells you what to keep your eyes and ears open for and sets the stage for the next two days of learning and networking.

As globalization spreads corporate activities around the world, recruiters need to anticipate the moves of successful companies as they divide operations between home and abroad. How do companies decide which parts of the business to keep within their own four walls and in the U.S. and which parts to outsource and offshore? Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology visited 500 firms in the U.S., Europe, and Asia to discover which strategies work best. They learned there's no silver bullet. MIT did, however, draw lessons from best practices. With new pressures on globalization from high energy costs and from citizens seeking protection against job losses, these best practices face new challenges. Track them to see where hiring is heading.

Do you always hit your recruiting goals? Are you the model of consistent results? Does your business count on you to deliver? If the answer is yes to all these questions, you may be in serious trouble!

While your results may appear great, and you business may love you, you may be unknowingly stuck in a way of recruiting that is preventing you from adding more value to your business. In this thought-provoking session, you'll see how the recruiting model can be influenced and improved to avoid the "fill-the-req" trap. You'll learn how to achieve a more significant level of contribution and leadership. The presentation will include discussion of strategies and experiences from Microsoft's global talent acquisition activities. It will address aspects of recruiting including workforce planning, sourcing, hiring for critical roles, use of technology, and employment branding. Come ready to be pushed out of your comfort zone.

Here you'll learn more about the companies and the people who were honored at Monday evening's ERE Recruiting Excellence Awards. Find out what they did to excel in such areas as employee referrals; college recruiting; employment branding; and recruiting technology.

Enjoy lunch on the exhibit hall floor while browsing the latest recruitment products and services from leading vendors in the recruiting space.

Asked what they know about networking, most people conjure up recollections of business card exchanges at cocktail parties or industry lunches. "They think they are networking to the full extent, but are really turning a shovel full of sand on the beach of opportunity," says Joe Pelayo. The bestselling author of "Work your Network," Joe will lead this session on developing a networking strategy which will increase your return on effort, and put the power of contact development and control in your hands. Attendees will leave the session with:

• Increased knowledge of the tools available today to help create and manage their networks
• New insights into what works, and what doesn't merit the time-investment required
• How to glean the important substance from your network
• Powerful information that will have you "networking as if on steroids"

Get ready to increase your networking capabilities and capacities, which will pay huge dividends going forward, no matter what industry you work in.

Help Me Help You: How recruiting professionals can make their hiring managers successful

There's a lot of discussion around what we, as recruiters and recruiting leaders, can do to make recruiting work better. But what about hiring managers? What can they be doing-and what should they be doing-to be successful? In this fun, how-to session, we'll discuss what makes an effective hiring manager successful, what you can do to drive your hiring manager's success without becoming a subservient customer-service rep, what tools and training they need from you, and what expectations you should set with them about their role. John Vlastelica will leverage his time in the trenches as a corporate recruiting leader with a high-hiring-manager-ownership company, and his time consulting with recruiting leaders across North America, to share strategic and tactical approaches for getting your hiring managers to take more ownership for recruiting and making it easier for them to succeed as hiring managers.

Over the past few years, sourcing has gone through an upheaval of epic proportions. But according to Lou Adler, you haven't seen nothing yet. In this eye-opening program, Lou will provide an overview of what's happening on the sourcing front and what you need to do to get instantly involved. If you want a bigger share of the best top talent then you're getting today, you'll need to develop a proactive, forward-looking sourcing strategy. Lou will show you how in this high-impact program. Here are just a few of the key topics in Lou's important talk:

• Three often-overlooked recruiting trends you'll need to address immediately.
• The essential elements of a talent-driven sourcing strategy.
• Disintermediation and the convergence of consumer marketing and recruiting.
• How to develop an ROI to throw away your existing sourcing programs.

Learn how 20th Century Fox used onboarding to align its employment brand with its product brand (TV and motion pictures) -- while, at the same time, increasing new hire productivity and decreasing new hire turnover.

You'll take away from this presentation:

• An understanding of how onboarding technology can be used for more than simply orchestrating a process -- its role in employer branding and retention.
• Insight on how to engage new hires from the day they receive their offer (Day Zero) through to the critical period when new hires decide to stay with their new employer (Day One, Day 30, Day 60, and beyond).
• An understanding of the critical components of an onboarding solution.
• Ideas for managing "re-boarding" -- engaging inter-company transfers and employees after promotions to new roles.

The startup forum is an editorial-driven session (the speakers don't pay for the mic, it's not paid advertising) where new companies, or old companies with new products, appear. They'll tell you what they're doing or trying to do, and you can grill 'em about their products, services, or even their business plan.

If you want to be considered for this panel, contact Todd at todd@ere.net.

Navigating a successful recruiting department in a down market with limited resources can be a challenging prospect. You'll see a cost-effective recruitment model that has turned a troubled recruiting division into a real-life success story. You'll get practical and affordable solutions for recruiting top-tier talent.

You'll learn:

• The essential elements of successful recruitment campaigns
• How to structure a recruitment marketing plan
• Which techniques are most cost-effective
• Practical ideas and tips for sourcing new hires
• Taking referrals to the next level
• Balancing your managers needs with your limited budget
• How checklists can keep your recruitment team with their eyes on the prize
• Standardization of processes and procedures

In most companies, especially those with high turnover problems, retention is a political "hot potato." The scene is usually one of finger pointing and buck passing. This presentation will make the case that for any Staffing Leader to truly transform into a next generation Talent Management Leader; they not only need to tackle retention but they must completely accept responsibility for it. Aimco's Talent Team, back to back winners of ERE's Retention Award, will share how being responsible for retention has changed the face of their department, increased company funding of the overall Talent function and put quality of hire at the front of operational decisions from the CEO to the line hiring managers.

One of last year's ERE Recruiting Excellence award finalists is flying in from India to talk about referral programs in India's IT industry.

The session will focus on the following 10 facets of Aricent's referral program:

1. A "boomerang" plan with an objective to win back good ex-employees.
2. Hiring people with skills in niche technology areas.
3. Multi-level hiring.
4. Service Level Agreements with referrers.
5. Branding and communication.
6. Effective rewards and recognition.
7. Enhancing participation through collaboration and competition.
8. Constant improvement through analysis of metrics and success measures.
9. Low cost per hire and high loyalty.
10. The feedback mechanism.

Facebook. MySpace. LinkedIn. Blogs. Twitter. YouTube. Web 2.0.

Trying to make sense of it all? Social media and social networking are all the rage, but what their true implications to your recruiting strategy? How can these sites and tools fit within a comprehensive corporate recruitment marketing plan?

Join Ben Gotkin for a highly interactive approach to help you better understand how to make sense of it all. Ben will facilitate a broad group exercise designed to explore the value of these sites and tools, and how each of them can be integrated into a hypothetical company's recruitment marketing strategy. Arrive ready to participate and walk away with a practical view into how to make Web 2.0 work for you!

Enjoy drinks and hors d'oeuvres, mingle with attendees and speakers, and discuss the day's sessions and breakouts at this two-hour networking event.

The current economic climate presents a major challenge for recruiters. With a severe depression in the housing market, gridlock in financial markets and the Federal Reserve in a quandary over interest rates, there is more than the usual concern over what lies ahead. Dr. Genetski will explain how government policies contributed to our current problems and how the policies of the new president will shape the economy and financial markets in the period ahead. Learn how the new President's agenda will affect the market for jobs; how the Federal Reserve will influence wage and salary trends, and how the dynamics of gas prices will shape future employment trends.

Making change happen...it's the hardest challenge in all of recruiting. After years of learning what works and what doesn't in the world of recruiting, the most difficult issue isn't learning what works and what doesn't. It's actually making the change happen inside of your own organization. Navigating corporate politics, culture shifts, and long-held views on how recruiting should be can really throw a wrench into change management. Join this interactive panel discussion with recruiting leaders who have attempted to implement change in their recruiting functions. Learn what has worked and what hasn't in how change is managed for them. Noted recruiting guru Jeremy Eskenazi of Riviera Advisors will facilitate a lively panel discussion and interact with the audience.

Enjoy another opportunity to network and mingle with attendees, exhibitors, and speakers of this year's ERE Expo!

Walk through a real-life case study as Carmen Hudson describes the Yahoo! Staffing Team's heroic response to dramatic business challenges. In early Spring 2008, the team was called upon to meet an enormous hiring goal, despite distracting headlines, low morale, and uncertainty about the company's future. The staffing team partnered with the corporate marketing executives to transform the employer brand and create messaging that inspired skeptical candidates and hiring managers. She will share details of the groundbreaking branding, advertising, and referral campaigns that created buzz, news headlines and, most importantly, resulted in hiring hundreds of engineers during a critical time period for Yahoo!

When the economy turns sour many companies react by enacting broad sweeping cost containment efforts that more often than not decimate the capability of the staffing function. Such efforts force the shutdown of non-transactional sourcing programs, reduce departmental staff levels to a bare minimum, and restrict managers from taking advantage of talent opportunities by freezing requisitions. Unfortunately these constraints come at a time when organizations that succeed largely due to their use of intellectual capital are presented with a virtual panacea of unprecedented opportunities. During this interactive session, Dr. John Sullivan, will share with you how organizations can balance cost containment efforts with investments in strategic staffing initiatives that produce incredible ROIs during tough times. By allocating limited resources to high ROI activities strategic recruiters can demonstrate to senior leaders that they can contribute to business performance directly while paying respect to organizational hardships. Specific topics that will be addressed include:

• The top ten highest ROI strategic staffing programs
• Tips for calculating the dollar impact of talent issues
• Major elements needed for a world-class business case to invest in staffing during tough times
• Questions from hell you better be able to answer

This session will hold no punches in attacking the issues that lead to staffing being one of the first costs organizations act to contain when the economy turns sour. It will present a hard look at some of the stupid things too many organizations do, and the highly strategic things that get talked about but rarely accomplished.

In tough economic times, many corporations may choose to streamline and eliminate programs. How can staffing leaders maintain a focus on diversity and employment branding in the midst of budget cuts and fewer resources? Kelly Chapman, Diversity Recruiting Director at Microsoft, will share best practices to maximize your corporation's recruiting potential. Topics covered will include:

• Maximizing the use of the Internet
• Guerilla marketing
• Maximizing Strategic Partnerships
• Microsoft Case Study about building a diversity recruiting function

There'll also be an open discussion for attendees to share best practices with each other.

Rob Humphrey will take you on an interactive journey starting with social media marketing strategy and planning and ending with actual tactical execution. This session is based on a recent consulting engagement with a division of a $13 billion media conglomerate.

You'll walk away with a truly unbiased look at what it takes to take advantage of social media marketing for recruitment-what works, what does not work, and what the reality is behind vendor toolsets and claims.

You'll also leave with a compass for embarking upon social media marketing and gain a solid understanding of what challenges lay hidden inside and outside even the most forward-thinking human resources organization. Please fasten your seatbelts, we are about to take off into the future!

Enjoy your last opportunity to network and mingle with attendees, exhibitors, and speakers of this year's Spring Expo!

Ed Newman presents the latest insight on the evolving market for talent acquisition systems. As the industry continues to evolve, there is always something new for everyone.

He'll cover the changing technology landscape, including market consolidation, solutions with expanding capabilities, and the perennial search for solutions that will truly change the face of talent acquisition. What do technology providers have in store? How are companies changing their expectations? What will remain the same?

In addition, we will explore some of the forces that may shape your next talent-technology decision. What does it really take to compete for talent today? How will the emphasis on quality candidates affect talent acquisition in the future -- and what changes can you expect in your choice of technology options. These are key questions that we'll explore -- a great chance to gain insight that may affect your next talent strategy or technology decision.

The mandate is clear: "Do more with less." Cost cutting in this uncertain economy is a major factor pushing a new strategy in the area of talent acquisition, or more accurately, talent pursuit. Now, executives and hiring managers expect their recruiting functions to work smarter and more efficiently to procure talented professionals. The reality is that many companies will be hiring fewer people in the near term, but those they do hire will likely be more strategic in nature. An economic downturn, while never pleasant, offers an excellent opportunity for your organization to secure top talent and reap the benefits for years to come. One of the most strategically important decisions facing any organization is the quality of talent it hires. We'll explore various ways to leverage the current economy in our favor, more efficiently source candidates, as well as drive and retain our recruiting professionals, all with fewer resources.

The value of a talent acquisition's organization is often measured by results and whether it makes the most of the resources at its disposal. This session takes an in-depth look at this issue: the difference between high and low quality research; what do you do with quality research once you have it; and how you manage it all.

Iris Libby will take a microscope to a vital part of the recruitment process and enable you to walk away not only with valuable tools and techniques, but with a sense for how to manage your team and create value in your organization. We will examine what to do once you have research in your hands, how to translate that into optimal potential hires, and how better process management translates into improved results management. This session will touch upon the following topics, so that you too can transform your talent acquisition team from mere mortals to the superheroes of your organization:

• The Battle for Quality Research: What is it and why is it so hard to get?
• There's Gold in Them There Hills: Once You Have Good Research, What Do You Do With It?
• Paths Of Glory: The Importance of Process and How to Manage a Diverse (and in today's economy, often-shrinking) Team

Cathy Trane's 2008 presentation on Six Sigma at last year's ERE Expo drew an overflow crowd; she's back for a "lean" session. Lean production, derived from Toyota Production System, is about finding the right things, to the right place, at the right time, in the right quantity, to achieve perfect work flow while minimizing waste and being flexible and able to change. In recruiting, lean is about finding the right candidate in the right time and place. This session will show you how Trane utilizes tools such as value stream mapping, 5-S, Kanban, and poka-yoke to improve process flow and eliminate waste. "Waste" can be identified in many ways, but in recruiting, it is usually time spent on waiting for the next step in the hiring process or time in sourcing candidates. Come learn how these "lean" tools can help you identify and eliminate waste in your processes.

You've attended the sessions, listened to the keynote speakers, and seen all the new tools designed to facilitate the staffing and recruiting functions. Attend this closing session to tie it all together and see what lies ahead for the rest of 2009.

• Hear some of the great "a-ha!" moments gathered on conference feedback cards
• Get highlights of some of the sessions you weren't able to attend
• Understand where the economy and the talent market are headed

You'll leave this session with some great concepts you can immediately put to work.