Trevor Vas interviews Master Burnett, at #ERE14

Trevor Vas (@trevorpvas), Director at ATC Events, and Master Burnett (@masterburnett) Director of Strategy at BraveNewTalent, sit down at the US #ERE14 Conference to talk emerging recruitment problems and how AT&T is embracing content to win the fight for talent.

 Lessons from Master Burnett:

• One of the emerging problems many organisations are starting to face is the aging of the workforce and at the same time they’re looking for innovative ways to solve short term talent needs.
• The more people are connected through social, the more they discover organically through content and the less effective classic marketing and messaging is.
• Organisations can use this to their advantage by using content to help drive people -be it talent or potential customers- through a process.
• In terms of recruitment you can use content to both engage and up skill your potential talent pool until they’re the right fit for your organisation.

Watch the video interview or read the transcript below:

Trevor: Master it’s wonderful to catch up with you at ERE again, what are you hoping to gain from the ERE conference this time?
Master: I think I come to ERE every year with the expectation of finding the people in the room who are trying to solve emerging problems, and connect what’s in common with those emerging problems that they’re facing.
Trevor: And what do you think those emerging problems are?
Master: I think you’re seeing a lot of organisations now really starting to experience the front stages of the aging workforce, and you see more and more organisations looking for innovative approaches to solve very, very short term talent needs for a large number of job families.
Trevor: And are you finding that in your business as well, in terms of the customers you’re helping?
Master:  We do. In our space, so BraveNewTalent started out as a talent community platform and we’ve transitioned to knowledge communities, helping any organisation that needs to educate and inform an audience, and move it through a process and do that with content. What we have found is that a lot of the approaches that we used to use for sales and marketing as well as for recruiting, are no longer as effective. As more and more people are becoming connected through social, they’re discovering more through content than they are through classic messaging and marketing. So that move to content, and that move to influence individuals through a process is common in both recruiting, sales and marketing, in almost every industry.
Trevor: So that move to content, can you give us an example of that off the top of your head?
Master: So a really good example is AT&T here in the United States. So let’s say you apply for a role at AT&T and you are, you have the right profile but you’re missing a few critical skills. A classic approach to disposition would simply be to tell you you’re not an adequate fit at this time. AT&T has gone through a very strategic process of identifying 120 different scenarios, and building a disposition experience unique to each of those scenarios, and those disposition experiences involve content. So I might- one disposition code might put you into a process of receiving an initial letter saying “these are the core areas of skill that are important to AT&T, and here are some starting resources that may help you improve your skill proficiencies in these areas”.  A few weeks later you may get a follow up email which says “AT&T is sponsoring a workshop in partnership with Georgia Tech University on this critical key skill, which was an area you were deficient in when you first applied to AT&”. So again they’re using content and service to move people through a process to make them a better fit for AT&T in the future.
Trevor: So Master if someone wants to learn more about your business, what do they do?
Master: Ah, the easiest way is to get people to read www.BraveNewTalent.com and we push people off to different resources, including our own blog, but the space in general is one that is emerging. You can follow the content management institute www.contentmarketinginstitute.com and learn more about the subject of content marketing.
Trevor: Master, thank you for your time. Always love your work.