Day One

• Understand how AI platforms like ChatGPT, Google AI, and Perplexity are shaping candidate perceptions of your employer brand and whether your EVP, culture, benefits, and career opportunities are being accurately represented.
• Identify gaps in AI-driven candidate discovery by uncovering inaccuracies, missed opportunities, and disconnects between your employee value proposition and what candidates find through search.
• Build a stronger AI-era employer brand strategy by aligning Talent Acquisition, Employer Brand, Marketing, and TA Operations to improve visibility, credibility, and discoverability beyond the career site.

• Learn how Allan Myers shifted from promoting projects to promoting people, repositioning craft professionals at the center of its employer brand to better attract the skilled workforce critical to business growth.
• Explore how Talent Acquisition partnered with Marketing to redesign the careers experience through role-specific employee videos, simplified job navigation, and conversational tools that help candidates quickly find the opportunities most relevant to them.
• Uncover how a candidate-first digital experience has increased career site engagement, improved application quality, and created a more intuitive hiring journey for craft talent in an increasingly competitive labor market.

• Learn how the “17-Day Problem” has evolved and where delays between application and first contact continue to cause candidate drop-off, particularly across skilled trades and craft hiring.
• Explore new quantitative and qualitative research revealing how construction candidates experience the hiring process, what keeps them engaged, and why they choose to move on before interview or offer stages.
• Uncover a practical playbook for increasing candidate conversion, accelerating hiring velocity, and reducing drop-off, alongside a construction employer’s experience of what changed after closing the gap

Join all three speakers for an interactive audience-led Q&A designed to unpack the strategies, challenges, and lessons behind their approaches to employer brand, candidate engagement, and hiring process effectiveness. Ask your questions, compare perspectives, and gain deeper insight into what it takes to attract the right candidates, improve conversion rates, and create a more effective hiring experience.

Work alongside your peers to reflect on the ideas shared throughout this section and build a practical action plan for improving candidate attraction, engagement, and conversion. Discuss common points of friction, exchange experiences, and identify the changes that could help your organization turn more interested candidates into successful hires.

• Learn how Southland transformed Talent Acquisition from a reactive recruiting function into a proactive talent intelligence engine by introducing a specialist sourcing model designed to support unprecedented workforce growth.
• Explore how combining AI-enabled talent discovery, advanced sourcing methodologies, and dedicated pipeline ownership is creating a continuous flow of qualified operations and engineering talent for the business’s most critical hiring needs.
• Uncover the operating model, change management approach, and success measures being used to improve workforce plan attainment, accelerate hiring outcomes, and build a scalable alternative to agency-dependent growth.

• Learn how Kelso Industries is transforming Talent Acquisition into a strategic business capability that supports one of the construction industry’s fastestgrowing acquisition-led organizations.
• Explore how AI-enabled forecasting, standardized planning processes, and proactive talent mapping are helping leaders anticipate workforce needs before they become business-critical challenges.
• Uncover how Kelso Industries is positioning Talent Acquisition as a driver of business growth by accelerating candidate identification, improving hiring manager confidence, and building a scalable framework to support growth toward 5,500+ employees.

• Learn how Skillit is using AI-powered hiring infrastructure to unlock existing craft labor supply and connect employers with qualified skilled workers more efficiently.
• Explore how scalable workforce matching and deployment models can accelerate workforce growth, improve productivity, and help convert new entrants into long-term contributors.
• Uncover how leading employers are expanding access to craft talent, reducing labor constraints, and creating hiring models that can scale across construction and other skilled-trades industries.

Join all three speakers for an interactive audience-led Q&A designed to unpack the strategies, challenges, and lessons behind their approaches to proactive sourcing, workforce forecasting, and talent planning. Ask your questions, compare perspectives, and gain deeper insight into what it takes to anticipate hiring demand, improve workforce readiness, and build a more forward-looking Talent Acquisition function.

Work alongside your peers to reflect on the ideas shared throughout this section and build a practical action plan for strengthening workforce forecasting, talent visibility, and pipeline development. Discuss potential barriers, exchange experiences, and identify the first steps needed to move from reactive recruiting to a more proactive and scalable Talent Acquisition strategy.