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I am a manager in the cybersecurity division where I work and have been in management for the past 7 years. The cybersecurity division budget was recently increased and for much more than I had expected. Senior management had stated a key divisional goal for this year was to expand talent by a certain headcount.

As a result of the increased budget, my team was approved for a second in person attendance at the 2025 Black Hat Conference in August to be held in Las Vegas. My team has 6 open headcount positions that I am looking to fill to include threat hunting engineers, pen testers, and security architect. We have requested booth space and a sponsor role. I and my team of 5 who are planning to attend want to set up a "Lightning Recruiter" introductory sessions to reach as many candidates as possible and collect as many resumes onsite as possible at the conference.

This will be my team's first time recruiting candidates at an industry conference using the lightning recruiter format in lieu of individually meeting with candidates organically. Some of my teams concerns:

  • Traditional time slot of 10 - 15 minutes per candidate may be insufficient to screen professional background well.
  • That candidate experience at our recruiting booth will be chaotic due to high volume of candidates we are expecting as we are a very large corporation and professional contacts who have attended Black Hat conferences in the past said candidate volume was heavy.

In a scenario where an open format lightning recruiter format of introductory interviews are planned for targeted roles at industry conferences:

  • How can the extremely fast and tight time slot of 10 - 15 minutes be used to sufficiently screen for role suitability and legitimacy of past professional experience?

  • How can candidate experience chaos be minimized if high number of candidate volume can be expected and there will be limited time and bodies to screen the prospective employees?

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    Can you give a link to some kind of article showing how this "lightning recruiter" is supposed to work? Commented Jun 4 at 5:43
  • How big is your booth? Do you have a chance to give candidates a timeslot for later at a different place (or maybe different area of your booth) or is it just the chaotic "front desk" area where you somehow have to make do? Commented Jun 4 at 5:55
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    What is the goal here? To fully interview a candidate or just to get a shortlist of resumes that you will headhunt later on down the track? Commented Jun 4 at 7:09
  • @TheDemonLord - fast initial screening and introductory interview of the candidates , and hence the name lightning. This format deliberately avoids in depth review Commented Jun 4 at 11:27
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    If it were possible to "sufficiently screen for role suitability and legitimacy of past professional experience" in 10-15 minutes, wouldn't people be doing it in regular initial interviews? Why is doing it at a conference any different? Commented Jun 4 at 11:40

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You can't do a full interview in 10-15 minutes, so I would try and focus on the elements that are most important to do in person.

There are lots of things that you want to evaluate during the recruitment - such as their right to work, qualifications, past experience, technical knowledge, soft skills, cultural fit and attitude. Some of those are easy for your HR department to verify, or for you to determine from their CV and references - so those aren't a priority here.

But when I'm interviewing, their attitude and approach is usually the most important thing. Someone with a great attitude and drive but weak technical skills will be good in a year; someone with good technical skills and a crap attitude will always be crap.

So what I would do is:

  • Signpost your clear hard requirements (right to work, nationality, qualifications, years experience, etc) - and make it clean that anyone who doesn't meet these will be immediately rejected.
  • Ask candidates to give a one minute pitch of themselves, so you've got a quick intro to them before you start asking questions.
  • Focus the time you have on trying to understand their attitude and approach - is this someone who has the drive that you want, and who's aligned with what the company is trying to do.
  • Be strict on timings. Get people to sign up for a 10 minute slots, have a visible clock, and cut it off at the 10 minute mark. If someone is late or waffles on, then tough - that shouldn't impact the next person in the line.
  • Make sure you have a really good note taking process - you're not going to much time for each candidate or downtime between them, so you need to stay on top of your paperwork so it doesn't all get jumbled up.
  • Have a quick easy booking system (even if it's just a piece of paper with time slots where they put their name) - so someone can book a slot and come back later.
  • Schedule regular breaks in their for your staff to stretch their legs, get a drink, catch up on admin, etc. Don't try and book them solid all day.
  • Have some fun stuff on your stand for people who are waiting. Simple hacking puzzles, cool tech to play with, an old arcade machine, etc.

And then hopefully at the end of this process, you come away with a list of people who meet the hard requirements for the role, who have good attitudes and approaches, and who you want to work with. Then it's time for HR to do their background checks/etc, and you can invite those handful of people to more in-depth interviews to dig deeper into their technical skills and confirm that they're up to the job.

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  • Triage it, basically. A few people might fall in to the "must hire" group, most of the rest are really "maybe". Commented Jun 11 at 11:10
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How can the extremely fast and tight time slot of 10 - 15 minutes be used to sufficiently screen for role suitability and legitimacy of past professional experience?

Unless you're standards for "sufficiently" are very low I'd go so far as to say you can't - sure, you can weed out the obviously unsuitable but finding some people you don't want to hire is of limited use compared to finding some that you do.

So instead of attempting a full speed-run of the interview process in such a tight time-slot you're going to have a much more productive time (and a less stressful one for yourselves and the candidates) if you instead treat it as more of an enhanced initial screening. Approaching it with the goal of establishing a shortlist of candidates who merit a more in-depth interview is going to give you a much more achievable "sufficiently" standard to meet.

As an additional benefit you also open yourself up to a wider pool of potential applicants, those who perhaps aren't actively looking and therefore haven't approached their attendance to the conference by preparing to "interview" might be more inclined to engage in a lower-pressure session. The flipside is also true - prepping for a 10-15minute interview where you have such limited time to convey your suitability for a role (one you don't know the specifics of beforehand) and your work history would be a very specific kind of preparation. If a pro-active candidate hasn't done that because they don't know that such an interview is happening then they risk giving a sub-standard performance and negatively affecting a potential employer's view of them.

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    My experience of these of these chats at conferences matches this, they were used as a relaxed, but enhanced initial screening. They were not a "lightning" interview Commented Jun 4 at 11:38
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    Basically, you are hoping that someone good just accidentally crosses your path. It is possible. Before the internet, options for finding new jobs or new employees were pretty limited. Like a dating site without the 'site' part. Commented Jun 11 at 11:08

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