Jan is the founder and managing director of the company Wollmilchsau, Speaker and Blogger. He lives in Hamburg/Germany.

What movie title best describes 2017 for you?

HurlyBurly (not the plot though).

Your person of the year?

I never thought about that. These two scientists work towards a solution to the problem of microplastics, so they seem to be worthy of the title.

Your favorite album from 2017?

AnnenMayKantereit & Freunde (Live in Berlin)

What are you most proud of this year?

Mastering my first storm experience with a broken sail as a newbie-skipper with a newbie crew.

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

Chatbots were overhyped and seriously bored me.

What disappointed me and still does is the fact that 55% of major German companies still don´t offer a mobile application process.

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

None really. I did see many attempts to move on in all areas of the digitalization of HR but most companies are still in an early phase of the transformation.

Your favorite HR blog in 2017?

I enjoyed the new voices like team-hr.de, hrisnotacrime.com and last but not least dinosaurswilldie.blog

And the best HR event this year?

My personal highlights were the HR BarCamp and the Sourcing Summit which were both crowded with great people and reflect the potential of what HR has to offer for the business.

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

If HR professionals manage to let go of administration and hand it over to automation and self-service, it will become proficient as organization and people developer, cultural influencer, talent marketer and sales unit aka recruiter:

If they fail with that

What should HR professionals do differently next year?

Learn from disciplines like marketing, sales and IT, embrace technology, implement hr analytics and, if helpful for the benefit of HR advancement, pick more fights inside your organization. No one ever achieved anything without pissing some people off ;-).

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

Regarding tools: programmatic job advertising software like our Jobspreader (Of course I have to mention it, but I really believe in it as well)

Regarding the HR community: seizing the challenges of digitalisation and changes on the labour market to shape our organizations to the better for people and profit and finally conquer a seat at the decision makers table.