Agenda at a Glance

Job advertising is no longer just about copy and clicks — it’s about visibility, structure, and resonance in the age of AI search. In this tactical session, Craig Fisher breaks down how AI search optimization (AISO), and structured job schema are redefining how ads get discovered and ranked. Learn how to apply practical frameworks like resonance scoring to evaluate what truly connects with candidates and how to future-proof your campaigns for evolving AI algorithms.  And we'll discuss how and where to spend your ad dollars for the best ROI based on good data.

Key Takeaways:

• How AISO (AI Search Optimization) differs from traditional SEO — and how to optimize job ads for AI discovery

• The return on Facebook Jobs and importance of Google for Jobs

• How structured job schema boosts ranking, relevance, and click-through as new XML feeds get rejected by Indeed

• A practical “resonance score” framework to measure emotional and behavioral engagement in job ads

• Real examples and tools to implement these tactics immediately

Get your pencils ready.  This will be a good one.

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Hiring success begins with a well-crafted candidate persona—but most teams either skip the step or build ones that never get used. In this session, Kenzie will show you how to develop personas that are practical, data-driven, and can be scaled to support long term pipelining or volume hiring goals. 

In this session, Kenzie will cover: 

• What makes an effective candidate persona—and what to leave out.
• Use data and market insights (plus AI) to create personas that reflect reality.
• Build inclusive criteria that avoid bias and expand pipelines.
• Leverage personas to manage challenging stakeholders and set clearer expectations.
• Why they are helpful tool for sourcing,  recruiting, and employer branding teams. 
• Repurpose and scale personas across multiple roles to save time and improve consistency. 

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Employee stories are one of the most powerful ways to connect culture, purpose, and brand. In this session, we’ll explore how organizations can strategically and tactically capture and share authentic experiences to drive business impact. You’ll learn how story-driven content can enhance employee engagement and recognition, while also strengthening retention by reinforcing a sense of belonging and pride. From a talent attraction perspective, we’ll examine how stories influence perception, build trust, and differentiate your employer brand in competitive markets.

On the tactical side, we’ll cover 

• Questions to ask your employees as you're sourcing stories from across channels inside and outside the organization
• Tips for encouraging participation, and frameworks for repurposing content across channels.
• Building blocks for your employee value proposition, to reinforce cultural strengths, and demonstrate measurable outcomes to leaders. 

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In today’s competitive talent market, striking the right balance between automation and human connection is essential for successful candidate sourcing. While automation and AI
scale reach and streamline processes, a personal touch is key to building trust and fostering genuine candidate relationships. Jobseekers are turning to social media to engage with companies that align with their values in 2026. To take advantage of this, employers must go beyond simply automating job listings–they need to deliver authentic, meaningful engagements.
Join Shawn Scott (Director of Talent Acquisition, Vi Living) and Jordan Mazon (Customer Lifecycle Manager, CareerArc) to learn how implementing an automated social recruiting strategy—with a human touch—helps you:
● Reach and engage with passive jobseekers where they already are
● Stand out from standard job listings by adding your authentic brand voice
● Build trust and meaningful connections by leveraging personal profiles

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For years, recruiting has relied on cold outreach and career site clicks to capture attention. But today’s candidates—especially the passive ones you most want—aren’t refreshing job boards or responding to yet another InMail. They’re scrolling, swiping, and following voices they trust.

This session will explore how creators and micro-influencers are reshaping the talent attraction landscape, moving recruiting from transactional outreach to authentic discovery. You’ll learn why candidates engage more deeply with trusted voices than branded messages, and how this shift is producing 3x more engagement and dramatically higher conversion rates.

We won’t talk theory—we’ll unpack what’s working now, why influence beats interruption, and how you can start rethinking your funnel to meet talent where they already are.

Learning Objectives: 

• Understand the shift from search to discovery: Learn why traditional job boards and InMails are losing effectiveness—and how creators are filling the gap.
• Decode candidate trust signals:  Explore why job seekers engage first with influencer-driven content.
• Apply practical next steps: Walk away with actionable strategies to test creator-led recruiting in your own organization, no matter your budget or industry.

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In this session, Bryan Adams introduces TRUTH: a bold new framework that redefines Talent, Reputation, Understanding, Transparency, and Human Impact as the five essential levers of modern capability building. Through real-world examples and powerful storytelling, you’ll gain actionable insight into embedding TRUTH across your talent lifecycle, from hiring to internal mobility and re-recruitment.

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In today’s competitive talent market, a strong employer brand and Employee Value Proposition (EVP) are critical to attracting and retaining top candidates. This session explores how your career site can serve as a powerful platform to activate your EVP and deliver an authentic candidate experience. Through expert insights and practical strategies, we’ll discuss common pitfalls, measurement tactics, and actionable steps to align brand, EVP, and digital presence for maximum impact.

By the end of the session attendees will be able to:

1. Understand how an authentic employer brand and EVP can differentiate in tight talent markets.
2. Recognize the key components of a career site that reflects and activates your EVP.
3. Outline three actionable next steps to align brand, EVP and digital experience (career site) within their organization.

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Unlock the power of data-driven recruitment marketing to create compelling messages that not only attract but also engage the right talent. Learn how to transform raw data into a strategic roadmap for your employer brand, ensuring every campaign and communication effectively connects with the talent you need to build your future.

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Recruiters today face a balancing act — scaling high-volume hiring while keeping up with the rapid evolution of AI. But without strong operational foundations, even the smartest tech can’t deliver results.

Join Tina Bright, SVP of Recruitment, for a practical conversation on how to stabilize your TA operations while embracing the power of machine learning and skills-based hiring. We’ll unpack what sets machine learning apart from traditional AI — and how it can enhance your existing systems, assessments, and hiring strategies.

We’ll also examine the gaps in TA fundamentals that quietly stall progress and how re-centering on skills, not just job titles, can create a more agile, equitable hiring process.

You’ll walk away ready to:

• Build stronger operational foundations for scalable, high-volume recruiting
• Apply principles to modernize your hiring engine
• Integrate AI and skills-based hiring for better candidate matching and business impact

This session is your roadmap to balancing back-to-basics recruiting with forward-thinking innovation — and building a TA function ready for what’s next.

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Discover how to make your sourcing strategy as irresistible as your brand. In this session, Blair Fambro from The Hershey Company will leverage AI to build the amazing sourcing strategy , as well as take you inside X (formerly Twitter)’s Advanced Search tools to uncover and engage top talent in creative, authentic ways. Designed for intermediate to advanced recruiting professionals, this session goes beyond basic keywords—showing you how to craft targeted Boolean strings, tap into real-time conversations, and build inclusive talent networks that reflect diverse experiences and backgrounds.

Key Takeaways:

• AI Boolean String Mastery: Build and refine advanced Boolean searches to uncover niche and hard-to-find talent.

• Deep Search on X: Use X’s built-in filters to identify candidates by company, title, interests, and engagement.

• Authentic Outreach: Learn practical techniques for personalized, respectful engagement that boosts response rates and strengthens relationships.

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Join Allison and Tim for a practical and insightful session focused on maximizing your employer branding content creation. She'll share:

1. Actionable tips for using AI to streamline your workflow

2. Strategies for creating content at scale without sacrificing quality

3. Best practices for enabling local teams to produce personalized, on-brand content that resonates with candidates

Whether you're just getting started with AI or looking to scale personalized content across markets, this session will offer tools and tactics you can put to use right away.

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• Understand how evolving candidate expectations around transparency, communication, and fairness are reshaping the hiring landscape.
• Identify and discuss practical changes to recruiting processes that can easily be implemented no matter your team and company size
• Learn why maintaining a “human-first” approach is not anti AI and how to continue moving into the future of recruitment without forgetting the past

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AI isn’t coming for your job — it’s coming for your tasks.

After sitting through over 100 AI product demos, global sourcing expert Vanessa Raath has seen it all — the overpromises, the breakthroughs, and the few tools that actually deliver. In this no-fluff, tell-it-like-it-is session, Vanessa shares what she’s learned so you don’t have to waste your time (or your budget).

Here’s what you’ll take away:

• Where AI is already outperforming recruiters — and how to leverage it instead of fearing it.

• Which recruiting tasks are quietly being automated (and which ones still need the human touch).

• Why most tools still need you to work properly — and how to avoid becoming just a human spellcheck.

• The one thing that will future-proof your career: strengthening your uniquely human skills while AI gets better at the rest.

Walk away with a clear, practical view of what AI can (and can’t) do for recruiters, plus actionable insights to keep you relevant, strategic, and irreplaceable in the age of automation.

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Sip, share, and connect with fellow practitioners over wine or mimosas as we explore:

• What you think an inclusive People Brand Collective / People Experience Association should look and feel like

• How certification could help legitimize your work—and what kind of certification would actually matter to you

• What types of global learning topics or knowledge-sharing moments would really support your growth

• What you need from a learning space, a network, or a professional home to feel supported and connected

This interactive discussion is held during the Afternoon Networking Break —but the conversation happens privately in the Mission Ballroom.

Come help shape a global, inclusive, and practitioner-centered community focused on elevating the impact of people brand and people experience work.

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Want top talent to not just join—but believe in—your startup? A strong Employee Value Proposition (EVP) does more than list perks; it paints a compelling picture of the future your team is building. In this session, you’ll learn how to balance honesty about challenges with a clear narrative of impact, growth, and ownership. Discover how to infuse your EVP with creative touches that bring your culture to life, turning benefits and buzzwords into a magnetic invitation for ambitious professionals to bet on themselves—and on your team. Walk away ready to craft an EVP that inspires high performers to see your startup as the place where their work truly matters.

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Remember "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)"? A couple places personal ads seeking new partners, only to discover they were perfect for each other all along. Sound familiar? Too often, talent leaders obsess over external candidates while overlooking the incredible potential already on their teams. This session explores why internal mobility isn't just a retention strategy—it's a competitive advantage that requires us to "woo" our existing employees with the same energy we bring to external recruiting. 

Session Takeaways:

• Learn why investing in internal mobility delivers better ROI than constant external hiring
• Discover practical strategies for "wooing" current employees with the same intentionality you bring to external candidate experiences
• Understand how to create clear lines of progress and growth that make career pathways visible and achievable
• Explore the case for building dedicated internal talent acquisition teams that champion mobility from within

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Refreshing your EVP ensures your employer brand authentically reflects current culture, values, and offerings, strengthening your ability to attract and retain employees and achieve long-term organizational success. Join Kerry to learn what it takes to drive an EVP refresh from getting through internal governance teams to the launch of a new career site. She'll share real lessons learned and tips to ensure an EVP remains relevant and aligned with shifting market conditions.

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Get a front-row seat for the first public demo of a breakthrough in candidate experience. In this session, we’ll introduce a fully conversational AI Voice Agent that transforms how job seekers explore career sites, find the right roles, and apply—using only their voice. This is not a prototype. It’s live. It’s fast. And it’s about to reshape modern career site experience.

What you’ll see:

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• Why traditional sourcing channels are failing and what’s replacing them
• How to engage passive talent authentically and consistently
• The psychology behind messages that get ignored vs. messages that convert
• The key metrics that distinguish high-performing sourcing teams
• How to build a simple, powerful sourcing dashboard that drives results

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AI is quietly rewriting the rules of how candidates find, evaluate, and choose employers. The shift is bigger than job boards or SEO. It is about how intelligent systems surface opportunities and shape decisions. For recruiting teams, this means the strategies that worked yesterday will no longer guarantee visibility tomorrow.

In this session, you will learn:

• How AI changes the way candidates discover companies and roles
  Why trust and credibility are becoming make-or-break in candidate decision-making
  Practical steps you can take now to ensure your employer brand and open roles do not get left behind
• Walk away with a clear understanding of the AI candidate journey and how to adapt your hiring playbook for a world where being discovered, trusted, and chosen depends on more than just showing up in search results.

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Imagine if your browser could think like a researcher, write like a recruiter, and work faster than your best sourcer?

AI browsers aren't just Chrome with a bolted-on chatbot. They are fully functioning assistants that can help you find talent, evaluate candidates, and scale our sourcing operations. In this hands-on session, you'll discover how tools like  Anthropic's Claude, OpenAI's Atlas and Perplexity's Comet speed up your workflow from Boolean-free candidate discovery to real-time competitive intelligence.

Whether you're drowning in tabs, frustrated by manual data entry, or simply curious about what's actually useful versus what's just hype, this session cuts through the noise. You'll leave with practical strategies to immediately boost your sourcing efficiency, a clear-eyed view of current limitations, and a roadmap for integrating AI browsers into your tech stack without disrupting what already works.

What You'll Learn:

• Which AI browser features actually matter for recruiting (and which are gimmicks)
• How to leverage AI for candidate research, outreach personalization, and competitive intelligence
• Real workflows: side-by-side comparisons of traditional vs. AI-assisted sourcing
• When to use AI browsers vs. your current tools—and how to make them work together

Bring your skepticism. Leave with solutions.

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An EVP is fundamental, but not sufficient on its own. In this conference session, Crystal will walk through how Zoom evolved their EVP into a living employer brand system.

Participants will learn how GBS and Zoom used four interconnected frameworks to drive this transformation:

• The Brand × System (BxS)™ aligns signals of belonging with market expectations;
• EBx™ connects EVP pillars such as Curious Growth and Unified Impact to measurable outcomes like retention and candidate engagement;
• The Decision Engine™ improves hiring alignment by reducing noise in app-to-hire ratio, and;
• The Employer Brand Engine™ operationalizes EVP across recruiter toolkits, campaigns, and candidate journeys.

With Zoom as the example, participants will walk away with the framework of how to expand their EVPs into a full execution program that resonates, scales, and delivers impact.

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Recruiting teams are often seen as cost centers—necessary overhead that drains resources during hiring surges and becomes expendable during downturns. But what if you could flip that narrative entirely? By leveraging recruitment operations strategically, talent leaders can quantify their direct impact on revenue, demonstrate ROI in dollars and cents, and position their teams as business-critical revenue drivers. This session provides a practical framework for measuring what matters, from the hidden costs of vacancies to the financial impact of hiring velocity and quality, while exploring innovative ways your team can generate external revenue when internal hiring slows.

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In today’s competitive talent landscape, retaining your best people is just as important as finding them. This TA Week session dives into innovative strategies TA and HR leaders can use to reduce turnover and build a thriving workforce.

Discover how to create meaningful opportunities and initiatives that enhance the employee experience, boost engagement, and keep turnover rates low. Isabella and Deirdre will share real-world examples of standout employee referral programs, fresh approaches to talent acquisition, and impactful learning & development initiatives that make a difference.

Join Isabella and Deirdre to learn how to leverage key incentives not just to find great talent—but to build loyalty and keep your team growing strong.

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