The Talentor Partner Meeting 2024 in Vienna: The largest to date
From the arrival of most of the participants the night before the event, until the closing of the event, there was an atmosphere of closeness, excitement and a strong sense of community. The personal highlight for many of us was to welcome our partners from Ukraine (MIRA Top Recruiting) for the first time in person after two years! We thank Alena Chernysheva, Miroslava Trandash and Marina Bogushko for making a great effort and arriving in Vienna with their biggest smiles after a full day of travel!
Our Partner Meeting was also highlighted by an engaging agenda of workshops, presentations and other activities that the whole group was involved in and that we want to relive with you once more.
The starting point of our journey: Welcoming new members to the community
We started DAY 1 with the introduction of the new Talentor Partners! We welcomed Annie Dolmadjian from Talentor Health USA, Jay (GC Jayaprakash) and his team from Accrete Executive Search (India), Felipe Bournas from People Go (Chile), and Doug Mackay from Collingwood Executive Search (UK - England & Wales). A very diverse group that came from different places in the world! We appreciate having you with us in person for the first time!
The first stop on our journey: Practice Workshops
From refining sales strategies to optimizing remuneration systems and measuring performance metrics, we divided our participants into several discussion groups in which they shared different insights on their best practices about:
- How to train people
- Sales in their company
- Our partners’ remuneration & bonus system
- How to set targets for their company
- How to run their companies in challenging times
This was one of our partners' favorite activities as they were able to engage in deep communications with each other, reflect on their own companies and decisions, get ideas for their local markets and also share their best practices or uncertainties with colleagues who can relate to them.
On this journey we also climbed a mountain: Leadership keynote presentation
Alois Badegruber, GM EMEA / VP Global Business Unit Mountain of Boa Technology shared with us his extensive expertise and invaluable insights into the trials and triumphs of building and scaling a global organization, offering a personal keynote into the leadership journey at the top.
Our partners were interested to learn how Alois handled fear or failure next to his team, as well as highlighting the similarities between mountain climbing and running a business and that a strong team spirit brings in the end the best performance and results.
‘’If you fail, fail fast.’’
The next stop of our journey: The Leaders4Tomorrow Program
At Talentor we believe that the value of your company depends on the investment you take in growing your talents from within the organization. This is one of the main reasons why we created this program and 7 talents from Austria, Latvia, Netherlands, Switzerland, and Ukraine were sent by our partners’ companies to participate and work on their personal leadership skills and strategic projects for their own companies.
The program is planned to continue and a new group of rising talents shall start the program again in Warsaw for our Talentor Summit 2024, as Gertraud Eregger, our Program Manager shared!
You can find more about the program here.
The day one of the journey ends: Speed Dating & personal 1:1 time
Our partners always ask for it and we know that nothing beats real conversations so, that’s why we encouraged the group to exchange on an 1:1 base to brainstorm on actual collaboration opportunities, starting with a simple question to break the ice “What do you want to know about me that will help you in your business?”.
The first day’s final highlight is a joint visit of a typical Austrian inn enjoying traditional food as Schnitzel, beef, dumplings, Kaiserschmarren...and of course outstanding wines and talks. The tables were full, and the restaurant was practically ours!
Day two of the journey begins!
DAY 2 kicks off with a personal overview of updates from partners worldwide, providing comprehensive insights into the first quarter's achievements and setting ambitious goals for the year ahead. With each partner given the spotlight to share their insights and experiences, the collective positive market trends of the Talentor network are seen!
An update of the Practice groups follows
At Talentor we developed and currently have the following practice groups actively running:
- Generalist Group
- Industry Practice Group
- Life Sciences Practice Goup
- IT Practice Group
- Research Roundtable
- Americas Group
- AI Masterclass
Each group has a different focus in its area of expertise and is made up of different members of the network. We thank all of them for participating and especially their group leaders for working to promote this topic within Talentor. Special mention to Matthias Dietrich leading the Industry Practice Group, Yoni Szpiro leading the Generalist group now and Ken Schmitt leading the Americas region calls.
The journey is almost over: AI keynote presentation
Daniel Stojanovic, Co-Founder and CEO of bits and birds. Talked about how the future in recruiting is now! Daniel and his “virtual co-host" Sandra, introduced our group to an insightful and meaningful showcase of the latest AI tools and features.
And after his input, we keep this valuable learning when integrating AI into our organizations:
‘’This presentation is old next week Tuesday as AI is rapidly evolving and new tools come out everyday. The recruiting industry is still slow in adapting, but AI is one the forefront in all parts of our process’’.
Before the journey ends: Time for some Talentor updates
As usual in our events, Sabine Steiner and Michael Sarsteiner gave a full overview of Talentor’s figures and the exciting outlook for us in 2024, Manto Antoniotti also commented about our current Marketing activities to strengthen Talentor's awareness, and we highlighted one of our group initiatives: the Talentor Global Survey in which we encourage the participation of the entire network and thank our partners’ organizing team: Gunita Smirnova, Barbara Hansen, Alberto Fernandez, Michael Wang, Ken Schmitt, Sachin Khisti, Pritul Sanghavi and Jay (GC Jayaprakash).
We reached the end of the journey...
The last, but not least, presentation of the Partner Meeting was about the importance of Quality in the recruiting industry.
Özgür Gülcem is Auditor and Trainer at Quality Austria and had been invited to share the key steps to implement a quality process in recruiting agencies and the main benefits that the process and procedures inside a company are quality certified. It is worth mentioning that some of our partners of Latvia, Sweden and Austria are committed to quality within their companies and are ISO-certified!
“To get ISO certified is not an everlasting process. It is a brilliant chance to assess the strategy, and the processes and take a moment to analyze the core of your work. It will be a fundamental step into strengthening your organization’’.
Every year we assess the activity of each partner! Last year Independent Recruiters (Talentor Netherlands) and Kaiser Stähler Rekrutierungsberatung (Talentor Germany Frankfurt) stood out for their high activity in cross-border projects with other partners, activity in the monthly partner calls, reporting, and contribution to the network in general and were recognized for their efforts by welcoming their teams to Vienna so we shared with them and with some of our other partners a enjoyed the sightseeing of the beautiful city! The evening culminated with a dinner with the award winners and they continued to enjoy the rest of their stay in Vienna.
Before concluding the journey to our Partner Meeting in this article we share this quote:
“Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is not found in finishing an activity but in doing it.”
Our Partner Meeting is over but the memories, moments, teachings and reflections that we all took with us were precisely from the course of the journey of it. We were delighted to have so many partners at this meeting and we continue to encourage all to participate in these events as it is one of the factors that differentiates our network from the rest, that connection and desire to foment collaboration in person.
See you all in Warsaw for our Talentor Summit 2024!
