Celebrating all things TA & recruitment at Talentpalooza

Last Thursday at a brand-new venue in Melbourne, myself and Tamara Diveroli were fortunate enough to spend the day at Talentpalooza.

Put on by the team at Talent Table, a special thanks must go out to the lovely Andrea Kirby who facilitated an event full of talented speakers who explored trending topics in the TA and recruitment space. The team at Talent Table put on a great day for the TA industry, and provided us all with one of our first chances to get together in-person in nearly 2 years!

Talentpalooza was a day for learning, networking and being inspired - a festival for the in-house talent community. As always, Talentpalooza is themed, with this year's 'festival' taking us all back to the groovy 1970s. Famous for bell-bottoms and the rise of disco, the 70s was also an era of economic struggle, cultural change and technological innovation, and feminism was finally making some progress. To celebrate the era, we were strongly encouraged to come in 1970s fancy dress, which we did!

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Hill Consulting were also proud to be the sponsor of the sundowner drinks to conclude the event. Erin from Fusion Sport was the lucky winner of a bottle of Tasmanian gin from Taylor & Smith Distilling Co.

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Some of the key themes explored by the speakers at the event included diversity and inclusion (D&I) practices in recruitment, equity and the digitisation of HR, including the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). And with the global turmoil of the past 2 years, a focus was rightly on how we can ensure enough attention is paid to everyone's mental health.

Hung Lee from the UK, and known for his weekly newsletter Recruitment Brainfood, warmed up the day by sharing how cognitive fitness in leaders and who they manage, can help forge certainty in an uncertain world. It got us on to ways to break typical patterns or habits. A great segway into what we heard next when it comes to mission and purpose-led businesses via Emjoy.

The MEGA take-aways on the day for me were the talks on neurodiversity and indigenous biases in hiring practices. Hearing them has heightened the perspective of how inclusion matters and what micro steps we can start to take and not be afraid to, for fear of getting it wrong or saying the wrong thing.

Michael Delaney was a phenomenal MC and co-host. My favourite speaker of the day was Belinda Leon, who spoke about her journey and realising later in life to be ADD / ADHD and what is neurodiversity and how we can accommodate this in hiring practices.

D&I is a subject close to our hearts at Hill Consulting. All people in TA and recruitment can help in getting people from under-represented backgrounds into their business. Often a review and rethink of process and procedures is needed first. Possibly starting with a review of what is “Talent” and the many forms it can come in. Then how we can help and assist individuals with different backgrounds into our organisations. There was plenty of food for thought from the line-up of speakers at Talentpalooza.

And on that note, if you don't already, keep an eye on the upcoming events from the team at Talent Table. They put on great events that facilitate meaningful conversations about key themes affecting TAs and recruiters.