May 6th – 8th 2025 I had the incredible opportunity to attend UNLEASH in Las Vegas as a delegate, thanks to my friend Ben Eubanks and Lighthouse Research and Advisory.
Tuesday evening started off with a networking roundtable with an incredible group of HR and Talent Acquisition Pros, all friends of Ben’s. I felt honored to be in that room with VPs of HR, Learning, and Talent Acquisition. We discussed some of the hot topics hitting our workplaces right now, such as return to office 5 days a week. It was interesting to discuss the impacts of return to office 5 days a week on the full employee lifecycle:
- From recruiting (time to fill increasing, harder to recruit women/caretakers, or those who identify with any type of disability)
- To engagement/retention (office spaces lacking culture, the way people are required to work in person does not make sense for their role. Cubes vs. offices, spending their days on Zoom calls with employees in other geographic areas which they could just be doing from home, etc. Folks feeling more disconnected from their personal lives and stress due to now commuting more in big cities with terrible traffic)
- To benefits. (Cost of benefits going up due to employees being more stressed, experiencing high blood pressure, needing more support through therapy and other services.)
It was refreshing to hear that I was not alone, and hear everyone’s insights on how they are managing through the world of work today and supporting their employees the best they can.
Wednesday and Thursday during the day I attended sessions and browsed the expo floor. Three of my favorite sessions I attended featured leaders from Comcast, Medtronic, and CarMax. I loved that all speakers at UNLEASH were senior level HR practitioners, sharing real stories and examples of what they have implemented at their organizations.
Here were some of my favorite insights:
- Mark Smith from Medtronic’s session was about candidate experience. Candidate experience IS your company’s brand. Memorable experiences create memorable brands. Leaders and employees are the most trusted storytellers. Invest in leaders to be candidate first, not process first. Most of the company’s I’ve worked at believed that recruiting was just HR’s job, and I’ve worked hard in my career to get my hiring managers involved in the process. To feel empowered and take ownership of their role and their position as a hiring manager. To share their open roles on LinkedIn, to put their voice behind why it’s a great opportunity, to share the role with their professional association groups and ask for referrals. Usually I can do it in a way that makes them feel special like I’m trying to spotlight them and their great work as part of advertising for the open role. For hard to fill roles especially, can you make the story more compelling? Can you work with marketing to create video content or other visually appealing content to capture attention and pique candidate interest, and then make their candidate experience memorable through a high touch experience.
- Hatch Reppard from CarMax talked about closing the skills gap and addressing workforce challenges in the trade industry. They have different levels of technicians at CarMax, from tire techs up to engine techs which is the most complex. Pay rates are associated with each level role and based on skills individuals are gaining and how they’re progressing. CarMax created an internal certification program, which they found to be less time consuming and expensive for employees than if they were going to external trade schools and associations. They developed clear skills tests folks can take and they pay based on that. Clear paths help motivate and retain people. And, be sure to bring marketing a long on the journey to to tell the story both to internal employees and external candidates – showcase employees who have advanced in their careers through this program.
- Comcast talked about skills based hiring and embedding skills across talent acquisition. 3-7 top skills get added to the requisition when it gets entered, which then go on the posting, which then get used in the interview questions, which then candidates can get feedback on why they weren’t picked based on those specific skills, and then we can look at internal talent pools to see who has those skills. Use these skills to know if we need to better develop the skills internally, and which do we need to go find externally. Talent Management and Talent Acquisiton are partnering weekly on what roles are open, what talent do we have, what skills do we need to develop, etc. Comcast’s goal is to have 1-2 internal candidates considered for every single open role, which is awesome. How many internals I’ve gotten to send offers to has definitely been a highlight of my time working at ATI. Hiring managers are very open to having exploratory conversations with all internals who apply. It’s really rewarding to play a role in someone’s career advancement which is ultimately life changing for themselves and their family.
The networking opportunities hosted by UNLEASH both Tuesday and Wednesday evenings were wonderful. Outside in the gorgeous Vegas sun, complimentary beverages, and everyone came buzzing with excitement from all they learned that day and eager to meet other attendees and chat! I met TA Professionals from ThredUp and we exchanged best practices about how we run our summer internship programs. One of my favorite things they did was offer all interns a consultation with a member of their TA Team to get resume help, LinkedIn help, or help crafting the bullets they wanted to add to their resume or LinkedIn to showcase their summer experience with ThredUp. I met Cody Rizzo, and learned all about the Degrees@Work Program, where employers can offer a benefit to their employees and their family members to earn full degrees (rather than just tuition reimbursement up to a certain amount.) I enjoyed chatting with Paul Dornier, Co-founder of Alpharun, an AI phone interview platform that accelerates hiring and delights candidates.
Being at UNLEASH also reminded me how much I’ve accomplished as a Senior Talent Acquisition Professional this year. I was able to pull from all I’ve accomplished and learned this year to contribute to inspiring and energizing conversations with other attendees. I partnered with our Senior Director of TA and had a hand in developing and communicating our new internal mobility guidelines. I created the content for our first hiring manager toolkit – including information on process overview, service level agreement, candidate experience best practices and sample interview guides. As a team we rolled out new practices around confidential hiring and agency usage. I became our ATS SME (ADP RM) within 6 months and created 10+ Scribe SOPs on transaction steps and trained HR and TA on the system which decreased errors needing correction and the the number of tickets being entered with IT. It was a lot of fun to meet new connections and talk with them about the projects we’ve worked on, are proud of, and what we learned and would do differently next time.
Also, I had never used ADP RM before in my 12 years in TA – I had used Kenexa, SilkRoad Open Hire (back in the day lol), Oracle PeopleSoft, Workday, Crelate and Loxo. Random side rant – ATS skills are 100% transferable. Each time I joined a new company, I had to learn their system. I wasn’t passed on for the opportunity because I was missing experience with their specific software. I feel for all the TA pros in the job search right now who when asked on an application if they have experience using that specific company’s ATS, have to check no, and are therefore not getting a call back. If you have ATS experience, you know what they’re for and best practices around using them, you absolutely can quickly pick up a new system at a new company. The good news is, it’s pretty assessable to get a demo of the product. OR reach out to a TA contact in your network who uses a different ATS than you and see what the ins and outs are to broaden your horizons.
Anyway, UNLEASH was a wonderful experience and I would definitely attend again. I believe the size was around 3,500 attendees, which is a perfect size to not feel like a small fish in a big pond. No constantly being overwhelmed by crowds, no long waits in line for coffee or to get into sessions, easy and non-intimidating to start conversations, and easy to get a good seat at the Main Stage without being 30 minutes early. It was also great to meet Matt Charney and see him in action as the Talent A Stage moderator and emcee. I’ve followed his work for years on LinkedIn! Just putting this out into the universe – I would love the role as a stage host and moderator at a future UNLEASH conference. Have to shoot my shot! (:
Thanks for reading friends and I’ll see you again on the blog here soon. Send me a message if you have any questions about the conference experience!
Claire is Coaching 