Oscar is Founder of Evertalent, Lead Talent Acquisition at Wehkamp, Speaker and Independent Photographer and lives in The Netherlands

What movie title best describes 2017 for you?

Tomorrow never Dies – Tomorrow is always there and some point it will become today. Be open for change and continue to innovate (apologies for being a big James Bond fan).

Your person of the year?

My family means the world to me. Other than that, Hung has already been mentioned by Kasia, but what the h*ll. After all he’s the Puppet Master and has again been very inspiring this year 🙂

Your favorite album from 2017?

No albums for me. Having helped building the Sonos team in Europe I’ve been a fan of the product from day one, giving me the freedom to play any song I like.

What are you most proud of this year?

Two things really. As an independent recruiter I have had the amazing opportunity to share my passion for recruitment on quite a few international stages in Europe this year. I love the vibe and at the same time it allows me discover how recruitment is being dealt with in other countries and to stay up to date with the latest development. It’s also fantastic to see how many others are equally passionate about continuously innovating and improving our profession.

I have also been able to successfully set up a new business, very much related to my (other) passion for photography.

What HR tool or trend disappointment you the most in 2017?

Disappointed probably is a bit too big I would say. There’s some technologies that I would have loved to see become already a bit more mature and widespread, such as facial analysis, analysing a person’s micro-expressions to predict personality. Maybe the same for chatbots. Still a lot of chatbot fails, but it’s early and I’m just too impatient. On another level a lot of the technology that surrounds us already is so much more powerful than we can possibly imagine, but privacy regulations are simply preventing it to happen.

And what tool or trend really did live up to the hype?

Machine Learning in general. Impressed by the rate of this development and very much looking forward to what 2018 will bring. Closely watching this area.

Your favorite HR blog in 2017?

Going to disappoint you here, as don’t really have one favourite. I love curated newsletters like recruitingbrainfood.com, from (again) the brilliant Hung Lee. Other than that Facebook Groups are my favorite place to go to catch up on the latest stories.

And the best HR event this year?

I have been to many. The Sourcing Summits are great for the amount of tips and tricks being shared and Social Recruiting Days in Berlin is incredibly well organised with fantastic speakers. Both have a fantastic vibe. Then again, I still like the more intimate spirit of recruiting unconferences like TRU and HRU, where a lot of knowledge is being shared and interaction is the key element.

Which GIF best describes your vision of HR 20 years from now?

It’s the Google Dancing Dots and specifically this one. It represents a lot of things in one GIF: listening (to candidates and customers), being always on, engagement and innovation.

What should HR professionals do differently next year?

Spend more time outside their own organisation, think outside the box, learning from others, experimenting and innovating. It’s definitely changing, but we’re not there yet.

What will be the “next big thing” in Recruiting?

According to Amara’s Law ‘We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run’. We’re still in process of innovating the current thing and I’m counting on Voice, conversational AI and computer vision to have an even stronger impact on the technology side of both recruiting and the Future of Work. In the meantime, my biggest dream still is to create the ultimate candidate journey.