HR people are people, too.
They don’t like it when hiring managers bring in their laptops to interview candidates. (Yes, that is rude.) They also don’t like rushing job prospects through making a final decision—the wrong fit only makes their lives harder in the end. And they also care about looks: employer branding was the most-discussed topic at HR Uncubed, a two-day conference for innovative companies held last week at Williamsburg’s Brooklyn Brewery, Wythe Hotel, and Dobbin Street.
Uncubed, which was founded in Brooklyn in 2012, is an event- and video-based job platform where employers upload classes about what it’s actually like to work at their companies in an effort to attract top talent. Uncubed’s mission is to “make work human” again through connection and to break free from the cubicle zones pioneered by designer Herman Miller in the 1960s. Their first HR-specific conference attracted speakers from the New York Times, Refinery29, Spotify, Kickstarter, among other big names.
The venues should have been a dead giveaway that this wasn’t going to be your typical stuffy conference, but what was most surprising was how young most attendees were. As we descended to the hip Wythe Hotel’s screening room for a panel, one young woman said, “This feels like college orientation.”
As a manager noted later, HR professionals are the “bouncers to the party.” So what are New York employers looking for in their workplace? Where do millennials fit in? How are companies dealing with diversity? We uncovered a few gems for job seekers or those in the middle of a career change.