What is Talent Craft Sessions?

Talent Craft Sessions (TCS) is a new kind of recruitment event. Born out of frustration with the usual format of talks, panels, and networking drinks that leave people inspired but empty-handed, TCS was designed to flip that script. Co-created by Avery, TimeToHire, and TwentyTwo, and hosted at Young Capital's office, the first edition brought together recruitment professionals and business executives for an evening of real conversation, workshops, and actionable takeaways.

The idea was simple. Recruiters talking to recruiters is great, but it only gets you so far. When business leaders join the table and share what they actually need from recruitment, and what they're not getting, that's where the real learning happens.

Too much talking, not enough doing

That was the number one piece of feedback from the recruitment community heading into TCS. Events are full of impressive speakers sharing their experiences, but attendees leave with nothing concrete to implement the next day. TCS was built to change that.

Instead of just a panel and dinner, the evening included two rounds of workshops that were recorded so participants could challenge each other in real time. The plan? Turn those conversations into a holistic report shared with all attendees the following week, complete with what to implement and how.

"Too much talking, not enough doing. This is what we keep hearing from all the events. People are leaving with nothing to implement the next day. And this is what we want to start changing."

Bringing the business to the table

One of the biggest shifts TCS introduced was inviting people from outside recruitment into the conversation. Finance leaders, hiring managers, business executives. The kind of people recruiters serve every day but rarely sit across from at industry events.

The result was a different energy. Conversations about the real cost of a mis-hire in a finance role. Discussions about how long onboarding actually takes versus how long companies pretend it takes. Honest talk about what hiring managers should take more seriously and where they need to listen to their recruiters more.

One panelist put it bluntly: the worst thing that can happen is hiring the wrong person in a finance role, and most companies underestimate the true cost of that mistake. Another challenged the room to think about hiring more complex teams in terms of personalities, including neurodivergent talent, and building teams where people actually feel happy about what they accomplish together.

What people walked away with

The workshops weren't just discussion for the sake of discussion. They pushed participants to rethink how they approach hiring from both sides of the table. A few themes stood out.

Hiring managers need to take hiring more seriously. Not as a side task, but as a core responsibility. That means investing the time, understanding what you're really looking for, and listening to your recruiters who can help you get there.

"We should take hiring management much more seriously. We should really understand what we're looking for, invest the time, and listen to our recruiters who can help us with it."

The concept of "doing more with less" came up repeatedly, not as a cost-cutting slogan but as a challenge to rethink how hiring managers and recruiters work together. Better processes, better alignment, better outcomes without throwing more headcount at the problem.

And one message that resonated across the room: love the process and commit to it. Recruitment isn't a transaction. It's a craft. And like any craft, it rewards the people who show up consistently and take it seriously.

What's next

The first Talent Craft Sessions was an experiment. A small, intimate format that brought recruitment and business together in a way that most events don't. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and the team is already working on volume two: bigger, louder, and with even more depth.

If you're in recruitment and tired of events that sound great but leave you with nothing to bring back to your desk on Monday morning, TCS is being built for you.