5 Most Interesting Notes From the 2010 Israeli Recruitment Conference

What you'd most like to know from the 2010 Kenes Gius (כנס גיוס), the 3rd edition of the biggest recruiting conference in Israel.

The Kenes Gius is the annual conference about recruitment in Israel put on by HRD, the company of Israeli super-recruiter Morit Rozen, one of my Top 9 Israeli Job Search Experts on Twitter at @moritrozen.

I had hoped to attend the conference in 2009, but there was a problem with the timing – and I think that I ended up being sick that day anyway – so I was particularly looking forward to this year's conference, which took place on October 11th.

One of the reasons I wanted to attend the conference was to hear about recruiting trends in Israel and other juicy pieces of information that would interest you.

Here's what I learned.

1. Generation Y is a hot topic

When I interviewed Gen-Y Career and Workplace Expert and bestselling author Lindsey Pollak in October 2009, she asked me if  ‘Gen-Y' was a hot topic in Israel. If I had barely heard it used here back then, it has definitely gone mainstream now.

Almost every speaker at the conference mentioned Gen-Y, and in particular, the challenges of keeping Gen-Yers satisfied, such as:

• Gen-Yers want to work from home, enjoy life, continue studies and have kids i.e. not be slaves to their jobs.
• They start getting antsy at work after 18 months on the average
• 51% are unhappy in their current jobs
• 56% are always looking for better jobs
• 71% are ready to be recruited away from their current job

However, it's worth pointing out that almost all the speakers were HR professionals from large corporations in Israel such as Microsoft, Intel & Cellcom.

2. Israeli social media recruitment is just beginning…

Some statistics that were given:

• Currently, only 14% of Israeli recruitment is done via the Internet
• Companies like Intel are doing %90 of their recruitment online

A practice that savvy recruiters love already is the use of Facebook pages to post job offers and interact with potential candidates. You can expect to see more of these.

3. …and personal branding is going to explode

Morit Rozen even said that “the resume is going to die” – I disagree; more on that another time – and that soon, recruiters will just want names and use the Internet to find everything else. She suggests googling yourself right now (“לגגל” – l'gagel) to make a quick assessment of your situation, and I definitely agree with that.

Maybe you should take a look at my Personal Branding Overview in 5 Short Video Clips?

4. The easiest job to get in Israel right now might be…

Call center sales person for the cellphone companies.

Cellcom currently needs to hire 20 sales representatives per hour, and Orange and Pelephone are in a similar bind. Competition between them is so fierce that – in a terrific move for job seekers – they are bending over backwards to attract candidates by offering flex-time, help with school tuition and more.

One of the refreshing things to hear was how the cellphone companies, and Cellcom in particular, have understood that they need to diversify their sales staff to properly speak with the diverse Israeli population, which means that they are specifically looking for people from different ethnicities and age groups.

5. The best kind of interview is…

The structured behavioral interview aka the group interview aka psychometric testing aka the kind of interview that job candidates hate most, for the same reason that companies should be doing more of them.

As Morit pointed out from her research, the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior, and the best way to get a true assessment of an employee is to see how they perform under pressure. With that in mind, the whole point of these interviews is to create a pressure atmosphere to see which candidates react best.

You've been warned.

So should you attend a future Kenes Gius?

If you're a job seeker- I hope you'll have a job by the time the next conference takes place, but otherwise, no. Although there clearly are some points of interest for Israeli job seekers in general, it wouldn't justify the cost (more than NIS 500). Better to count on people like me to bring the most important takeaways.

If you're a recruiter- absolutely, you shouldn't miss it. Morit Rozen and her team did a professional job putting together a smooth-running event with great networking and lots of terrific insights shared from the stage outward. I really enjoyed myself and look forward to doing it all again next year.

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