Irish cloud firm Sonru inspires CERN on recruitment

25 Nov 2011

World Wide Web co-developer Robert Cailliau (standing, right), at the interactive future of recruiting conference at CERN last week. Image courtesy of the CERN Jobs Facebook page

CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, was last week transformed into an internet hub when World Wide Web pioneer Robert Cailliau gave the keynote at a CERN recruiting seminar. CERN said it was inspired by Irish company Sonru’s breakthrough video interviewing technology to hold the event.

Belgian informatics engineer and computer scientist Cailliau is renowned for having worked with a Tim Berners-Lee to develop the World Wide Web. He also has a close relationship with CERN, as he started working at CERN a fellow in the Proton Synchrotron division in 1974.

Cailliau gave the keynote address on the future of recruiting to some of the largest organisations globally such as the World Health Organization, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Global Fund, the European Parliament, Oracle and Shell.

Other speakers included Gabriele Silva of L’Oréal; Yves Quitin, director-general for Personnel & Administration at the European Parliament; plus gurus and influencers such as Steve Evans, Tom Chesterton and Antoine Lhosmot of Potentialpark.

Irish company Sonru’s award-winning video interviewing technology was showcased at the CERN Recruitment and Sourcing Best Practices Seminar.

”The goal of this seminar was for practitioners to openly share best practices – what works & what doesn’t work. Sonru technology was of clear interest to many for its innovative role in reducing costs and increasing quality of hire in the recruitment process,” said James Purvis, head of Recruitment at CERN, at the time.

Robert Calliau

Robert Calliau pictured sharing his internet insights at the event. Image courtesy of the CERN Jobs Facebook page

CERN has been using the Co Wexford-based Sonru’s cloud-computing based video interviewing technology since January of this year for its recruiting of scientists and researchers from across Europe, explained Fergal O’Byrne, group CEO of Sonru, this morning.

O’Byrne said that through talks with Sonru earlier this year, CERN got the idea to establish the best practice seminar to openly share ideas and techniques and to showcase innovation in recruitment technologies such as Sonru. CERN’s Purvis credited Sonru’s marketing manager Joy Redmond as co-founder of the event in his opening address last week.

The inaugural annual event brought together a who’s who of international recruitment professsaid that through talks with Sonru earlier this year, CERN got the idea to establish the best practice seminar to openly share ideas and techniques and to showcase  innovation in recruitment technologies such as Sonru. CERN’s Head of Recruitment, James Purvis credited Sonru’s manager Joy Redmond as co-founder of the event in his opening address last week. ionals. The presentations were streamed live (from the home of the WWW) and generated significant traction among the twitterverse.

Other speakers included David Bearfield, director of the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO) and  Keith Robinson, founder of SiteAdvisor Group/RCEuro.com. Topics ranged from issues from the jobseeker’s perspective to modernising recruitment in Brussels to vision and tools in sourcing and video screening (Sonru).

CERN recruitment conference November 2011

Sonru founder Ed Hendrick pictured far right with other attendees at the CERN recruitment conference last week

Sonru founder Ed Hendrick also co-presented a paper with Dr Sue Morison, from Queen’s University in Belfast, whose most recent work has involved

the development and implementation of multiple mini Interviews (MMI) to select students for the undergraduate dental course from both home and overseas. 

Their presentation showed how Queen’s has developed an online MMI for overseas students to replicate the face-to-face process used with home students in a valid and reliable way using Sonru.

Carmel Doyle was a long-time reporter with Silicon Republic

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