I was luck enough to speak at the Talent Leaders Connect event for recruiters in Retail and Hospitality on 11th May.  A great turn-out.  Excellent speakers.  A cracking venue (Foyle’s again).  You can see my slides here and I’d be happy to talk you through them.

Meanwhile, here are my top ten treats from the day:

1. Google Chrome Extensions – there are some fantastic extensions to help recruiters find the right people – tools such as Prophet, Crystal Knows and Email Hunter.  Brilliant.
2. Belonging matters – we heard from Shereen Daniels, Head of HR at Caffe Nero, who demonstrated eloquently why belonging, culture and values can make a huge difference in retail, and significantly reduce turnover.
3. Artificial Intelligence – is this the answer for preventing unconscious bias from creeping into the process?  We heard from LaunchPad about using AI in the recruitment process.
4. Never recruit when you’re hungry – make sure you have some lunch before making any recruitment decision.  Hunger tends to mean you make worse decisions.
5. Swedes are amazing – according to Bjorn from Cut-e, three out of four 2-year olds (72%) use the internet, and a third (32%) of 2-year olds use the internet every day.  Amazeballs.
6. Social shopping changes the role – expect more social shopping in the future, as retailers look to engage you more when you come into the shop.  This in itself will change the role of the shop assistant.
7. Retail and Hospitality are big employers – there are more than 2.8m people working in Retail and some 4.5m in Hospitality.  Yet there is still a huge turnover in staff.
8. Get more people into the industry – we discussed the ‘prestige hierarchy’, and where retail and hospitality sits.  Still too many people don’t go into the profession that would have amazing careers.  The industries need to find ways to encourage more people to join.
9. Predictive metrics is all important – you can have the most amazing selection process; but if it’s not aligned to future performance, then it’s not worth the napkin it is written on.
10. Stay till the end – you’ll miss some great speakers if you don’t.

Thanks as ever to the girls and guys at Talent Leaders Connect and The Job Post for hosting the event and inviting me to talk.