Yesterday, ERE community member Michael Goldberg sparked an overdue conversation on LinkedIn about the state of conferences in the talent acquisition profession and the shift away from practitioner focus to vendor-centric content. As the founder of one of the longest-running events for talent acquisition professionals, this is a subject that I care about deeply: I’ve been told multiple times by companies that “we only sponsor events where we have a speaking slot.”

A big driver is the current conference model: most large TA events are free for practitioners, which only really works if the event itself becomes content marketing. Someone has to pay for the show, and if you’re not the customer, you’re the product.

We’ve pushed against that for years, keeping practitioner voices at the center. At the ERE Recruiting Innovation Summit a couple of weeks ago, speakers like Riana Maus, Sedef Buyukataman, and Jay Olson shared specific experiments, failures, and wins from their own teams. They are exactly the kind of sessions that we try to build our events around.

We do still have sponsored sessions, because that is the reality of the business. We keep them in a clearly labeled track and hold them to the same standard as the rest of the program: they should teach something useful first and talk about products second.

It is not like this in fields like engineering, nursing, or accounting. There are certainly user conferences, but there is also a healthy ecosystem of independent events and associations where professionals share their stories and challenge each other’s ideas. Those communities are sustained largely by practitioners themselves through membership and registration fees, which helps keep the focus on learning rather than lead generation.

If we want events that feel like community instead of advertising, it starts with clearly marking sponsored content and with TA leaders supporting the conferences that put practitioners at the center, not just the events that pay lip service to it.

So what can you do? 

Demand that events label sponsored content. Every single event in TA pays lip service to practitioner involvement and community. But are they clearly labeling which presentations are direct from practitioners and which are advertising content? 

Vote with your feet. Every event in TA has some level of vendor involvement - they are an important part of the ecosystem and learning about cutting-edge solutions is one of the big reasons why TA professionals attend conferences. But does the agenda have a core of practitioner-focused content? Was it designed to promote learning that you can take to work the next day and try something different?

Elevate voices within our community that are pushing for quality and transparency. Gerry Crispin has been leading on this topic for as long as I’ve known him. Jim D’Amico has been outspoken as well. If we hit a critical mass of practitioners pushing for change, the change will come.

Share your own ideas. We invite potential speakers to send ideas our way on the Summit website. The vast majority of the pitches we get are from marketers. If you are a practitioner, we want your voice!

If learning is why you attend an event, support the events that treat you as the customer, not the product.

— David

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