Over 150 professionals found out how to develop winning Employer Branding and Product Marketing strategies
After months of intensive preparations, the second edition of our own conference, MK4IT, took place on Thursday, the 23rd of February. Over 150 marketing and HR professionals from local IT companies chose to wake up early and come to Impact Hub, to discover how to develop winning Employer Branding and Product Marketing strategies.
After they grabbed a cup of coffee to push the last remnants of sleepiness away, they proceeded into the main conference room, to attend the Employer Branding panel. There, they got to interact with Laura Gregg, Media Solutions Consultant LinkedIn, Sorina Bradea, RoMarketing co-founder, Mircea Pop, Product Manager, Talent, BestJobs, Antonia Onaca, founder of Engager, Laura Chiculiță, Chief Marketing Officer eJobs Romania, Dragoș Gheban, Managing Partner Catalyst Solutions, and Andreea Nicolescu, Senior Communication Advisor Temenos.
Among the reached topics were the increasingly bigger role played by a company’s employees in the Employer Branding process and the necessity to target both the potential candidates and the current or even ex-employees. Our guests were deeply interested by the steps of developing an efficient Employer Branding strategy, the most recent changes in the recruiting market and the importance of standing out from the competitors.
As for trends, video is king; especially if those videos are made directly by a company’s employees. When it comes to what tools can and should be used by our guests to raise a company’s image, testimonials, genuine video clips and gifs, references and workshops are among the most powerful ones.
When talking about the recruitment process, a particular kind of attention should be paid on transparency and on a job’s description. As Laura Chiculiță confided, job announcements are more effective if they include details about the recruitment process, the projects in which the candidates might be involved and the offered wage.
Next, it was time for the second panel, the one on Product Marketing, to start. Dan Tănăsescu, Digital Marketing Manager – East Europe, Russia & CIS Ubisoft, Anca Bundaru, Senior Product Marketing Manager Bitdefender, Gabriel Dombri, CEO Tapptitude, Alexandru Roja, Executive Director Startup Transylvania Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center, and Mircea Vădan, Startups Program Manager MVP Academy, touched a slightly unexplored area in Romania, the one of IT products.
One of their drawed conclusions was that many IT companies make mistakes in their approach. They tend to focus on developing solutions first and only afterwards on finding the problems those solutions fix, instead of isolating a problem and developing its specific solution.
Around lunch time, we were excited to hear our main speaker, Laura Gregg, who held the keynote speech. She talked about the influence Digital Marketing has on the Employer Branding process, about the most recent trends and about the direction in which the recruitment market is heading.
“I believe it was a successful edition. Each speaker touched relevant issues regarding the Employer Branding and the Product Marketing process and delivered practical advice, not merely theoretical info. From the gathered feedback, our guests appreciated the fact that our speakers shared insights from their own experience and offered them information that can’t be found with a Google search or in a textbook”, said Victor Gavronschi, our CEO.
Workshop section and active rest areas
All those speeches left our guests starving, so it was time to serve them lunch and let them crystallize the freshly received info. After they filled their bellies, it was time for them to choose which workshops they wanted to attend. We had six of them, half on Employer Branding, half on Product Marketing, and they had the chance to freely switch among them.
Aided by interesting paradigms, practical exercises, examples and thought provoking questions, Antonia Onaca, Laura Bîrhală, Sorina Bradea, Mircea Vădan, Anca Bundaru, Dan Tănăsescu and Dragoș Gheban managed to grab and hold their attention. The six of them showed which are the solutions marketing and HR specialists can use to develop even better strategies and to raise the image (or the sales) of their companies.
„It’s been a long time since I saw so many cool people gathered together. When wherever you look you see sad faces and dark looks, it’s refreshing to see smiling faces, curios gazes and people who want to do more, either for themselves or for the companies they work in. The event’s management team was very helpful and amicable and the conference was well organized. All these ingredients make me say: keep going forward and congratulations”, confessed Sorina Bradea, one of our speakers.
We all know how desired are the mighty breaks, so we made them truly magnific. We set up three special areas, in tune with our conference’s theme, where our guests could relax and get in touch with our speakers.
In the first area, called “Sit down with the professionals”, they talked with Victor Gavronschi, our CEO, and discovered financial news from the A&I Consulting team. At the same time, they had the chance to discuss about the recruitment process with the TdC team, to talk about partnership opportunities with Banca Transilvania and to find what does an online employee engagement system involves from the Engager team.
The second area, entitled “Arts you can master”, was dedicated to creativity, while the third one, “It’s time for an upgrade”, was the place where they could make an “upgrade” at the Cheerup’s photo booth or to test Edotec’s multimedia auto navigations.
Each attendant of the Catalyst presentation was privileged to find the results of a national report on Employer Branding in IT, presented exclusively at our conference. Last but not least, in collaboration with Uber, all the participants enjoyed a free ride.
Almost 10 hours later, it was time to wrap it all up and let our guests head home and get ready to develop amazing Employer Branding and Product Marketing strategies.
For us, it was time to assess everything and get a good night’s sleep. Proud, but tired, we decided to take a short break, but, rest assured, we won’t stay out of the picture for long: we have to prep for our third edition of the MK4IT conference.
Stay tuned!
Yours dedicated,
The Loopies
