Erin Wilson is the brilliant mind behind Yahoo's innovative talent acquisition strategy, a strategy so successful it was quickly emulated by Google. In this fascinating Q&A we explore Erin's unique approach to talent management and find out what he has in store for us at HR Tech Fest in November.

There's a lot of my peers who don't feel empowered to drive their function even though they're quite capable of it. I think the best way to do this is to get out and talk about these issues in front of like-minded individuals who want to see the greater good push forward. Coming to HR Tech Fest and being surrounded by very intelligent people who are passionate about something I'm also passionate about is a rare opportunity, one I just can't pass up.

Talent Engineering is basically taking the spirit and application of agile principles and practices and applying them to a talent acquisition strategy. The whole idea of Talent Engineering came about back in 2012 when I was working as a technical recruiter. I spent my days interviewing some very smart, passionate engineers and listening to them speak about their work. More importantly, how they got he work done and what type and level of work they produced. It got me thinking whether the tried and tested principles of (agile) engineering could be applied to what I was trying to achieve in the talent space. And so Talent Engineering was born from there.

We started to apply Talent Engineering to our work with little things like daily scrums – talking about what we're doing for recruiting every day, for 10 minutes in the morning: the candidates we have in flight, the interviews that are coming up today, and any feedback we need to chase down from the day before. From there Talent Engineering really took off – our team started breaking out the talent strategy like road maps, breaking down the projects we wanted to do into different milestones and then breaking them down again into user stories.

Since this is a Tech Fest I'll give you a tech related analogy to explain (borrowed from good friend Nathan Phaneuf of LinkedIn): When you go shopping for a new phone, you're most likely looking for a specific phone, let's say an iPhone 6. If you go into the Apple Store and ask for an iPhone 6 and they say “no we don't have anyâ€' you'll probably walk out and try and find your iPhone 6 elsewhere, not even considering any other products in the shop. Similarly, if you're looking for a job, you're looking for a specific job title. But the idea of a job title is essentially flawed – when you ask people what they do, they tell you their title, not what they actually do. You miss out on a lot of candidates. So the “Create Your Own Job Descriptionâ€' flipped the job description idea on its head and asked candidates “Hey, what do you want?â€' This really gave us a shot at the people who walked in the store and didn't see the product (or job) they came to buy.

It was so exciting to see the responses come in- we had more responses for that job than any other job we had ever posted and we made two hires off that initial run. What was more exciting was that people were so willing to share so much about who they are and the work they were passionate about. It was a great project to be a part of.

From others. I honestly think it's about listening. I've always been taught to listen (I have four younger brothers which I've always listened to). When I got into this industry I knew absolutely nothing about technology, about recruiting, about structured sales or anything at all (except, maybe fantasy baseball). There's still so much I don't know but I do know listening has got me a long way. I think you have the opportunity to learn the most through listening to other people who are kind enough to share their experiences. And I'm thankful for that. Perhaps more uniquely, I was trained in sales but have been operating businesses for more than 10 years and bring that combined logic into the function.

Where did you hear that?!! It all came about over LinkedIn – somebody in my network reached out and it turns out that she knew a woman who used to work for me. Once we figured this out she asked if I would jump on a call to talk about trends in the industry, strategy etc. as she was stepping into a new role and just wanted some perspective. It was on this call she invited me to The Secret Recruiters Society, a group of really intelligent recruiters, HR consultants, business owners from Europe.

It's absolutely fascinating talking to this group and sharing ideas. The other day for example I spent an hour talking about sourcing strategies over Skype. It's a conversation I never would have had if I hadn't made that random connection through LinkedIn and then joined this wonderful group. I think we often underestimate the strength in weak ties. The next time someone reaches out for a random coffee or bite to eat, take it!

I've heard Australia is a wonderful place to visit when you have kids, so honestly what I'm looking forward to most is seeing my two boys experience a new place. Also I expect to see things I wouldn't see anywhere else but in Australia. Which I've been promised will come true! Fun aside, I can't wait to listen and learn from disruptors, thought leaders, and all people I am fortunate to meet while in Australia for HR Tech Fest '16.

Thanks!

You can hear more from Erin at HR Tech Fest, 27-29 November in Melbourne. He'll be sharing his story of the highly successful talent acquisition strategy he spearheaded at Yahoo in his session “Applying Engineering Principles to a Talent Acquisition Strategy for Extraordinary Resultsâ€'.