As a company, you should support your employees and pay for them to attend or speak at conferences not because you're looking for a quid-pro-quo ROI. Don't expect an employee to collect resumes or yield hiring "leads" -- if that is your objective, sponsor the conference, hold a social event, have a vendor booth.

Jan Schaumann may write longer-form posts that break down the intricacies of DNS hacks in 2000 words or more, but here, in around a tenth of that time, he consicely explains the case for employees attending conferences on the company dime. 

For the full article: https://www.netmeister.org/blog/companies-should-pay-for-conferences.html