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Advice for Employers and Recruiters

#SHRM10 a Rousing Success

Steven Rothberg AvatarSteven Rothberg
June 29, 2010


Last year’s Society for Human Resource Management annual conference in New Orleans was a disappointment for attendees, presenters, exhibitors, and others who were focused on numbers such as number of attendees and the amount of business being generated in the exhibition hall. The 2010 conference this week in San Diego is remarkably different.
Last year the number of registered attendees was something like 11,000 but only 7,000 showed. Where did the other 4,000 go? My guess is that many and probably most were laid off during the months that went by between when they registered to go to the conference and when the conference actually occurred. That may seem like a lot, but I’ve heard a lot of industry veterans estimate that at least 25 and probably closer to 50 percent of recruiters were let go during this recession. This year’s conference had about 11,000 to 12,000 attendees and I heard 1,000 of those registered on-site. So the actual attendance was likely about 50 percent higher this year as compared to last.


The exhibition hall definitely seemed larger this year in terms of number of exhibitors and those exhibitors were a lot busier and happier than they were last year. I know a lot of the vendors and most of them aren’t afraid to speak candidly to me about their experiences. Sometimes their official version of events is positive yet unofficially they’ll trash talk a conference. Not this year. Every single vendor with whom I spoke with happy to ecstatic about the quantity and quality of attendees with whom they visited. Every single one is optimistic that they’ll easily achieve positive returns on investment from attending. That’s great, great news for all concerned.
The quality of presentations was also very strong, although I don’t really have much of a yardstick for this one as I didn’t go to any of the presentations last year and haven’t talk about this with other attendees. Judging from my own experience, I had about 200-250 attendees for my presentation in 2009 and about 300-350 this year. Both groups were attentive and asked a lot of really great questions. The presentations that I attended this year were accurately described and well worth my time. And the keynotes by Steve Forbes and Al Gore were both insightful, expertly delivered, and well received. Kudos — again — to SHRM for balancing the politics on this one by selecting political and economic leaders from both the right and left.
The conference wraps up a midday tomorrow. Without a doubt, this will go down as one of the most successful shows hosted by SHRM. Every staff, board, committee, and volunteer member should be proud of what they and their colleagues delivered here.

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