Me. talking. What else?
Online Recruitment – BraveNewTalent.com expands social recruiting platform into US.
It’s been announced! Woohoo! I’m with Brave New Talent, as of March 1, as their Head of Marketing, US. That is fancy for swan diving (or belly flopping) into the world of social recruitment from a vendor perspective, as opposed to the benevolent, vendor-blind community management perspective I once enjoyed.
And what a first month! Fresh off the high (and jet lag) of TruLondon*, a smashing success (all props to Bill Boorman and his supportive community), I launched straight into Web Mission, a fast tracked learning session on true UK strartups and the world of venture capital. I spent a good deal of time with my mouth hanging open, trying not to gape at Internet celebrities. Plus the chance to hang out after hours with Sarah White, John Sumser, William Uranga, George LaRocque, and Randy Levinson. Truly, I learned a lot. BUT, no time to rest and reflect! On to Talent Net Live and SXSW!*
Craig Fisher, in some sort of record, managed to organize a fantastic bunch of speakers and topics (most interesting panel –not mine– on location based marketing with Jill and Aaron), thanks much to sponsors SilkRoad, Ajax Social Media, and the always entertaining Monster (in the form of Eric Winegardner and his hilarious and whip smart team). Absent from TNL but not SXSW, Jenny Devaughn of Hodes and Chris Hoyt of PepsiCo. Had I better mapped out my stay in Austin, I may have caught their presos, but I was able to hang with them after hours nonetheless.
*DISCLAIMER: I may delve more into the conferences in future posts, as I took a ton of notes but right now…no
Back to my new gig. AS you might have noted from past posts, I spent a lot of time deciding on the company I wanted to work with. Truth be told, I was lucky to have any options at all. Let me tell you from the job seeker side, there are a lot of really great companies out there in our space and several that were awesome enough to offer me a job and talk about their businesses with me. But there are places that want you and places that need you. There are organizations that you’re a part of and organizations in which you can embed yourself. There are companies that you align yourself with and companies that become a part of your DNA. I believe that BraveNewTalent, for me, is of the latter ilk. No, we’ve not yet entwined ourselves and my impact on the company (and theirs on me) remains to be seen. But I have done my homework, on the company, the founder, the team, the board, the investors, the target markets and the value proposition (as it sits today and proposed) and I chose BraveNewTalent because I believe in it. Plain and simple.
If you’re not familiar with the company, let me try to break it down for you:
BraveNewTalent (the platform) is built for employers. It helps employers by providing a free platform through which they can create a talent community. It’s fairly intuitive and easy to use (if you get facebook, you’ll get this) and allows BNT community members to follow your company. Talent Words, the company’s main product, provides a jumpstart to acquiring to new followers, through highly targeted ads based on passive candidates’ social graphs. Using facebook, LinkedIn, Google Ads and more, we drive the right candidates (who are interested in working for your company at some point) to your community. Employers can then list, segment, engage with and message these candidates through whatever medium they find useful.
BraveNewTalent for candidates is a community. It exists to serve jobseekers navigating the web with career advice, a forum for questions (and answers) and finally as an integrated (non-intrusive) feed that sits on top of facebook, where they can follow the company’s latest releases, financial news, videos, job postings and more. To use a term coined from John Sumser, they can easily manage their “career portfolio” in a place they’re already socializing. Sure the company knows you’re following them, but until you’re invited to their private community, the relationship is defined by YOUR parameters. Once you have been identified as top talent and are invited into the community, you engage with friends of yours that work there, and your communications are private within that space.
