Executive Grapevine - Annual Conference

I was fortunate enough to be invited by Peopleclick to the Executive Grapevine Talent Management conference last week.

And, I'm pleased to say it was one of the better conferences I have attended over the last few years both for quality of content and attendees.  I did not however follow US blogger 'rules' and video it!

The agenda of the conference was around Talent Management starting with a session by board level speakers who were talking about the future TM strategy.  Although they were all very good you have to ask what they know about recruiting Gen Y!  I'd guess that none of them use Facebook et al and rarely engage with tomorrow's talent (I could of course be wrong here).  So, my main opinion would be that the Board need to be getting the idea's and strategy from Gen Y by having these people advising on Talent Strategy.

Also, conference Chairman David Fairhurst came in from some American sarcasm from Lou Manzi (Head of Global Resourcing GSK) about his hair.  David claimed that Lou had taught him everything he knew; Lou countered with 'everything but how to cut his hair'.  Fair point; David's hair looked like he had slept on stage or, was entering a Dad Dancing competition at the weekend and wanted to pretend he was 23 again!  Of course I can't say too much about hair.

Lou also stole one of my analogies by asking the attendees how many would like to have their house built by a plumber, a painter or a master builder.  The answer was obvious even for us Brits and Lou followed with a similar question; would you rather your recruiting be done by a master recruiter or an HR Generalist (we of course got this one wrong).  It is not really surprising why Line Managers go out to agencies instead of relying on HR.

Anyway, a great conference so well done to all at Executive Grapevine.