Last week I attended HR Tech Europe in the Beautiful Okura Hotel in Amsterdam, and I have to say for a startup conference I really feel like HRTech Europe has got a bright future.  

There seems to be a pent up demand for information and education in the world of HR Technology across the pond.  Not only that but for smart North American companies wanting to make an global impact, the European market with it’s slightly stronger Euro would/could be an excellent opportunity for expansion —- if it’s done right, and the HR Tech Europe show is an excellent opportunity to explore the challenges and pitfalls of developing a market that crosses multiple language and cultural divides.

Firstly I want to thank my fellow Blog Squad members, you made it a great event to attend but as always we also had a fantastic time hanging out together, they were:

Craig Fisher

Johnathan Campbell

Oscar Mager

In fact Oscar’s photography was so impressive, well you can see it above:

As part of the event we were judges at the first European iTalent Contest which pitted HR Tech Startups against each other and they were judged on their 5 minute pitch along with Judges scores and audience appreciation.  Hosted by Jerome Ternynck of Smart Recruiters fame (who won the first iTalent Contest at HRDemo in Las Vegas) the competition featured, Sonru, Brave New Talent, TribePad, Work4Labs, and MIIATech.  

And although all the contestants put on a good pitch what really became clear early on in the process was that the judging focused not so much around the Technology but more so around the style and substance of the pitching, which in my opinion ruined it for a number of the contestants.  Now don’t get me wrong it’s never easy to do a 5min pitch/presentation to a large crowd of HR Tech Enthusiasts…however, ultimately the winner won on the fact that they focused on the Technology and not so much on the story (and had the huge cajones to perform a live demo infront the crowd)….and the winner was:

MIIATech

“With MIIAtech’s GoldFish technology, users can phrase their search questions in natural language.  Both the CVs and the job profiles within the database will be analysed and matched.  The result is that the user receives only the best and most relevant matches between candidates and job profiles.  No more mismatches like ‘speaks French’ with ‘worked in France’ and similar classic errors.  With GoldFish, you’re able the find the ideal candidate, much faster and significantly more accurately that with any traditional keyword search.”

—-now having said that they were the winner’s of course I have some key questions for MIIATech and one take away.  Dudes change your name, it’s confusing and honestly I forgot it about 5mins after I first heard it (that was the take away).  As with all Semantic and Natural Language search tools the Technology is only as good as the Semantic Brain behind it and it seemed to me (from what I heard), that the Goldfish product was only able to swim in limited pools and therefor would have limited opportunity to learn.  

I think to be successful MIIATech and GoldFish will have to take a page out of the Book of Jobs and create an unlimited potential for learning based on Semantic feedback as we are seeing in the role out of Siri.

Jonathan Campbell interviewed the other iTalent Competitors and you can find those videos below:

So key take aways from HR Tech Europe:

1.) HR Technology is becoming a driving force on the European continent but unlike their North American cousins they have to deal with a whole new set of issues around language, translation, culture and legal environments that differ greatly.

2.) Companies like Workday are starting to target the European market and will be attempting to make a big splash starting in 2012.  This is a trend that I think bears watching.

3.) If you are at all interested in HR Tech and want to explore opportunities to move and expand your markets then HR Tech Europe is the place to be in 2012, heck they’ve even set dates for October 25-26th in London —- I’ll be there, I hope you will as well.

—-Oh and a wrap up wouldn’t be complete without a Swag Video (which was sorely lacking)