On Monday, November 16, Caroline Slomski and I attended the Social Recruiting Summit in New York City. ERE marketed the conference as "a recruiting event experience unlike anything you have ever seen" and it did not disappoint.

A comedy club served as the venue and a punk rock HR icon acted as the MC. Televisions hung from the ceiling and displayed the live #socialrecruiting Twitter stream, which seemed at times like the social media equivalent of passing notes in high school. For me, the two most memorable presentation moments came at the beginning and at the end like bookends. 

In the keynote address, Fred Wilson encouraged us all to stop three things we've done for the past ten years and replace them with three new things. Simple but profound advice. Maren Hogan, known for her charming stream-of-consciousness tweets, had the funniest immediate response:

The rest of us, I suspect, are still deciding. When you do, please share your list with me for inspiration and I promise to do the same in a future blog post.

In the final presentation of the day, Jessica Lee from APCO Worldwide shared how one person with limited budgets can deploy an effective social recruiting strategy. If you want to see PowerPoint at its best, check out her slides. If you want a glimpse of the day's most thought-provoking presenter-to-audience banter, check out this video:

Jessica mentions cancelling her Monster contract due to the site's declining performance for her organization. Eric Winegardner of Monster thanks her for the shout out with trademark humor. The audience erupts in nervous laughter and two days later I'm still thinking about the exchange, as it generated a palpable buzz for the remainder of her presentation.

I'm sure there are those who feel Jessica's comment was inappropriate, even mean-spirited. I just think it was transparent. Monster is not working for her unique organization at this time. That being said, it would be a mistake for anyone to assume that her experience is somehow reflective of the site's performance at large. As someone privvy to the performance statistics of thousands of media for hundreds of organizations, I can tell you definitively: Monster works for others.

So what is the key takeaway? Evolve. Follow Fred's advice and Jessica's example and evolve from a point of intelligence.