RecruitTECH 2009, the inaugural Australian recruitment and technology conference, held in Canberra on 18 September 2009 was a great success, according to its organiser, Clayton Wehner.

‘Our hope was to put on a day-long program of engaging speakers and to have a ‘full house’ of delegates and we achieved both of those aims’, said Clayton, who is also the Managing Director of ACT jobs board CapitalJobs.com.au (http://www.capitaljobs.com.au).

‘We were very lucky to have the support of some great sponsors: the ACT Government, which provided us with a grant to run the event as part of the ACT’s ‘Business in Focus’ month, as well as CapitalJobs.com.au, Peoplebank and JobAdder. Without their help, RecruitTECH 2009 wouldn’t have gone ahead’.

Seventy five delegates, both local and interstate, attended the conference and were representative of the broad spectrum of organisations that are actively using technology to aid their recruitment efforts: recruitment companies, government departments and agencies, small-to-medium enterprises and multinationals.

Delegates were treated to a program of engaging presentations from the likes of recruitment industry stalwart Ross Clennett, social networking queen Laurel Papworth and well-known Oracle blogger David Talamelli. A humourous ‘vox pop’ video from JobAdder’s Brett Iredale was well received by the audience and demonstrated the levels of engagement that can be achieved through online video.

A highlight of the day was the event’s Twitter handle (#recruittech2009) appearing in the top 5 Australian topics for the day as delegates tweeted and re-tweeted their comments around the world. This feat was indicative of the power of social networking, a recurrent theme throughout RecruitTECH 2009.

Given the success of the 2009 event, consideration is now being given to running the event again in 2010.

‘The feedback for RecruitTECH 2009 has been overwhelmingly positive and we’re keen to run the event in both Melbourne and Sydney in late 2010. We had quite a few people contact us in the lead up to RecruitTECH 2009 and ask when the show was moving to those cities, so we’re confident that it will be well received there, too‘.

Anyone interested in attending or sponsoring RecruitTECH 2010 should get in contact with Clayton Wehner at info@capitaljobs.com.au.

Video footage of RecruitTECH 2009 presentations will soon be available at http://www.recruittech.com.au.