BraveNewTalent hires heavy hitting Director of Strategy, Master Burnett

BraveNewTalent, the career social network that helps people and employers engage and build relationships leading to employment and career development, has hired the well-known HR and talent industry professional Master Burnett.

Master will be joining BraveNewTalent in the new year as director of strategy and will be the company’s first hire in its new Silicon Valley Office. BraveNewTalent is based in London with a 30 person strong team but also has an office in Bangalore, India with experienced industry leaders Dheeraj Prasad (former head of education for Microsoft) and Gautam Ghosh (India’s leading influencer on talent communities).

Master will be heading up global strategy for the technology company that aims to change the face of the talent industry via online talent communities.  Master will have a US operations role and will develop the business offering for the US market.  He has over 10 years’ experience as managing director of John Sulivan Associates working with many of the world’s largest employers in their global talent strategy.

BraveNewTalent is aiming to address major problems in the talent employment market by increasing the efficiency of the global human capital market.  Users create their own professional community on BraveNewTalent then follow employers, talent and skills in order to reach their full career potential.  A major product release, which has been in development since the company raised venture capital investment, is due in early 2012.

On the surface, BraveNewTalent supports employers’ recruitment efforts by providing an interactive pipeline of potential candidates through their online talent community. However, the company’s ambitions are much wider – through the talent community BraveNewTalent aims to help employers and employees provide education and training, enhancing their followers’ prospects by improving and increasing their skills before employment.

BraveNewTalent founder and CEO, Lucian Tarnowski, said, “Master is one of the world’s thought leaders in the convergence of talent and technology; it is such an honour to welcome him into the BraveNewTalent family.  The next five years will witness a revolution rather than an evolution in the role technology will play in the engagement, development and recruitment of talent in the global market.  Master will work with the team in order to change the rules of engagement in the industry.”

Master Burnett commented, “BraveNewTalent is the first company in the HR technology market that I have come across in recent years that is doing exactly what the market needs – putting talent first. I am very excited to be joining an exceptional global team dedicated to ushering in a breakthrough technology that is cognizant of all the latest social trends and understands how technology can greater unleash the potential of the emerging global workforce.”
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Press contact

Colin Hallmark/Nina Bass, 3:nine Communications, +44 (0) 207 736 1888 info@3nine.co.uk

Notes to editors
About BraveNewTalent

BraveNewTalent is a career social network helping talent and employers connect and build relationships leading to employment. Users post a professional profile on the site and follow employers to learn more about them and their career opportunities.

BraveNewTalent solves employers’ recruitment challenges by streamlining the recruitment and selection process and providing a pipeline of potential job candidates. It enables individuals to maximise the power of their personal connections to build their careers and enhance their career options. BraveNewTalent can also help employers provide education and training, enhancing candidates’ prospects, improving and increasing their skills before employment.
About Master Burnett
Master is director of strategy at BraveNewTalent. He has been managing director of Dr. John Sullivan & Associates for the last 10 years, where he advised global 2000 companies on the implementation of world-class HR programs.  Prior to joining Dr. Sullivan, Master served as the director of client services and corporate marketing for the Silicon Talent Corporation, a professional recruiting services and advisory firm focusing on early stage ventures in biotechnology, telecommunications, and internet/new media. Master Burnett has also served as an adjunct professor of management at San Francisco State University, where he taught courses on managing technology in human resources.

About Lucian Tarnowski
Lucian (27) is the energetic face behind BraveNewTalent.com. He has been honoured as Europe’s youngest Young Global Leader (YGL) by the World Economic Forum.  He is also winner of the Global Enterprising Young Brit of 2009.  He is on the UKTI (UK Trade and Investment’s) Global Entrepreneur Program with BraveNewTalent being described by the UK Government as a “Technology Company of Exceptional Potential”.  Lucian speaks to audiences around the world about the convergence of Talent and Technology is having on the new generation entering the global workforce.

Our very own Jimmy Kyriacou, who works in business development with our clients, explains how the legal sector has been using BraveNewTalent to get social and find the best talent.

During the last 18 months, I have been fortunate enough to have met with over 60% of the UK’s leading law firms and to have had in depth detailed discussions covering all aspects of their social media strategy, specifically how they will harness the web to attract, engage and nurture quality talent.

As stated in a press release last year law firms have been quick to embrace ‘Social Recruiting’ with early adopters such as Allen & Overy, Eversheds, Pinsent Masons and Addleshaw Goddard who have been using the social networking site BraveNewTalent to build Talent Communities and to ultimately begin building a future Talent Pipeline.

One year later, many other law firms have also been embracing this new technology, so exactly why is the legal sector now taking social seriously?

Nishe Patel, from the law firm Baker & Mckenzie says, “Social media is a fantastic tool that enables us to engage with a wider talent pool than has previously been possible, allowing us to directly communicate with individuals that we might not otherwise reach.For so long , everyone seems to have been ‘fishing from the same pond’, and it has been very difficult to efficiently discover talent that may not exist in traditional circles and social has certainly changed that.” This is a common statement that I hear time and time again.

Anna King, Head of Graduate Recruitment at Simmons & Simmons states, “We believe that social media should be utilised to help the applicant experience, but does not replay the need for face-to-face discussions. Our aim is to be increasingly active through channels that Simmons & Simmons are already using as well as exploring social media for additional ways to connect to students and develop relationships.”

A firm that I have had a close relationship with since early last year is Eversheds. According to Lorraine Petheram, ”We are a 21st Century Law firm. We are always trying to stay ahead of the curve, looking at new ways to attract the best talent.” One example of the firm’s innovation in talent recruitment is @LegalTrainee, an integrated social media campaign which is run by the firm’s trainees. Law students and graduates can actively engage with trainees using social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and BraveNewTalent. The trainees run competitions to win experiential prizes such as a coffee with a partner or a week’s work experience in Hong Kong, as well as answer questions about their experiences securing and completing a training contract at Eversheds. With almost 1000 followers, @LegalTrainee has been hugely successful since its launch in June 2011.

Social media can also be hugely beneficial in allowing some of the law firms based outside London to get their message across to the right audience more effectively. Bond Pearce, a firm based in Bristol has very recently begun to explore Social Media as another effective channel to reach out and engage with potential future employees. I met with Samantha Lee, Head of Recruitment at Bond Pearce earlier this year, just as they started to look at how web 2.0 could be used within Talent Attraction. Sam stated, “Social Media is an excellent recruitment tool, but more than that, it allows us to engage with our future talent in a much less formal way than we have previously. The branding element is also important to us, and we hope that it enhances our image as a forward thinking law firm while giving us the opportunity to raise our profile to a wider audience than our traditional methods allow.

So as exploratory conversations with many firms in early 2010 now shift to a serious social media talent attraction strategy, BraveNewTalent is proud to be embracing the legal sector as an essential partner in this new world of work!

 If you like what you hear, Jimmy would love for you to get in touch. Drop him an email: jimmy@bravenewtalent.com

 Thanks to Legal-Aware.org for first publishing this!

We are very excited to roll out to all new and current users some important new features which means you can kick your career up a gear in two minutes!

Essentially, everything is now a lot cleverer and more streamlined. Now you can:

• Use Facebook to complete your profile in one click
• Connect with your recommended employers and increase your chances of your dream career when you upload your killer elevator pitch
• Invite friends and get your personalised infographic displaying your network reach

How do you do it?

If you’ve been to the site recently you will already have noticed that you can now connect your Facebook and BraveNewTalent accounts. We’ve had the new features in Beta for a little while and have been testing them out, but now we’re letting all of you lovely lot loose on the new version.

First, click on ‘Sign in with Facebook’ and authorise BraveNewTalent. This will take you through a really quick process during which you can pick a photo (or streamline your online image and stick with your Facebook profile pic) and edit your work and education info.

We’ll also suggest some companies you may like to follow – the more organisations you follow, the more job opportunities you’ll unlock and the more interesting your dashboard will be. You get all the updates and news from the employers you follow, so it’s pretty important to start out following some you are interested in.

Then invite your most connected friends – and the more people you invite, the more accurate your infographics will be. Plus, this means you’ll be able to recommend and be recommended jobs, see where they work inside the platform and connect in the answers forum.

The last bit is when you enter a professional status. This is your chance to show those employers you followed  the kind of employee you are. In 140 characters or less, we challenge you to describe yourself, skills, experience… whatever you think will sell you best! This is your elevator pitch – show everyone what you are made of.

You’re done! The whole thing might take two minutes, or you can pimp your profile so it shows you off to your best advantage for as long as you like.

The fun bit: once in your dashboard, you’ll be able to see personalised infographics about your network. You’ll get three graphs – one showing where your contacts went to Univeristy, one displaying the organisations in which your friends work and another telling you what sectors your network covers. Try it out – you’ll be surprised. I was astonished to find out I have quite a few friends working in defence, when I was expecting more on media, advertising, recruitment. Of course, you can also share these with your friends on Facebook.

Once in BraveNewTalent you can post your queries in the Answers forum to get advice form experts and peers, connect directly with employers you’d like to work for and hear first about great opportunities from companies. Plus we’ll be sending you great career advice, tips and updates in the weekly newsletter.

Privacy, not piracy

We’re connecting with Facebook to make it easier for you to make a beautiful, job-winning, career boosting profile and experience, not to nick your data or do anything else dodgy with it. You pick what you share, companies never get to see your Facebook data and you can choose – literally – what face you show to the BraveNewTalent world.

So what are you waiting for – kick your career up a gear in two minutes.

See you on BraveNewTalent!

Cheerio for now

Charlie
Your community manager on BraveNewTalent

PS: We are always looking for feedback and would love to hear from you on our Get Satisfaction page.

Great Companies are built by Great People!

This can’t be more true for us at BraveNewTalent. As we build our India operations , I am so excited to have Gautam Ghosh on board today as our first key hire since I started the journey with BraveNewTalent a few months ago.

I was thinking as to what could be the best introduction for Gautam. I tried the following and here is what the world says about him!

Did a BING search (Being an ex Microsoft!) on Top 25 HR Blogs and it shows Gautam’s Blog in the Top 25 rated by HRWorld and Focus , a network of thousands of leading business and technology experts who are thought leaders, veteran practitioners and upstart innovators in hundreds of different topics and markets.

Gautam is very passionate about Talent Communities. Very evident in some of his blog posts here , here , here and here. Gautam would be leveraging  his strengths to Head the User Marketing and Product Evangelism at BraveNewTalent India. Here is why Gautam joined us!

Look for Gautam’s blog on BraveNewTalent going forward to help connect and have a dialog with the User Community as we build value for businesses in the area of Talent Leadership.

Gautam and I are now joined by the hip on “India User Adoption & Growth” like the proverbial Siamese Twins! We are putting together an awesome 120 days plan. Yeah ! , it’s different from the old fashioned 100 days plan. It is BOLD , NEW AND INNOVATIVE!

Guess that is BraveNewTalent!

Welcome once again, Gautam. It is action time and TALENT is waiting for us.

Let us Go Do!

Dheeraj

By Dave Martin

When I recently announced my exit from my previous company it was met with hundreds of tweets and mails asking me “What Next?”. I was also honoured that quite a few wonderful industry players recommended me on LinkedIn. Thank you to the many people who have offered me their best wishes and support!

The next chapter for me is working with a really great team at BraveNewTalent to empower companies and individuals through community and learning. This game changing company is taking the recruitment industry a leap forwards to realise true value from both social media and mobile

During the last decade  we saw recruitment advertising spend decline rapidly from newspapers to online job boards. Due to the transactional hire cost effectiveness of online advertising the impact has nearly halved the total UK recruitment advertising spend.

An individual job advert in the UK is lost among c500,000 adverts and employer brand is typically stripped from job board search results. Worse still the impact of leaving newspaper media has lead to a dramatic decrease in exposure to “passive” candidates. As consumer behaviour moves online the likelihood of a news reader or car buyer flicking through the job advert pages and getting attracted to a well designed job advert has gone! The web is ironically terrible at delivering a browse experience, instead it is search. Twitter’s explosion on to the web illustrates our desire to browse and connect.

How was recruitment handled prior to our nation being over run with media? It was word of mouth within small local communities where reputation counted for a lot. The next decade will see the digital information age equivalent, it won’t be local or small but it will be community lead recruitment.

Never before have individuals been so connected as today, the mainstream social networks have changed how rapidly and widespread we communicate for ever!

Couple the continuos worldwide growth of the Internet with mobile smartphones which today provide always on connectivity to over 400m users and the outcome is ripe for community participation on a new and fascinating scale!

The impact of talent communities is changing the recruitment industry, before this decade is out, online community driven recruitment will be the primary source for recruiters. The job board will still exist, but as with newsprint the bulk of advertisement may well have been significantly eroded. The speed of change will be faster than it was with newsprint given the existing infrastructure. Today’s landscape is rapidly changing at a wonderful pace.

This game changing community lead vision is taking the recruitment industry a huge leap forwards to realise true value from both social media and mobile. Where executed correctly the individual will see a true value from the community and companies will be exposed to passive and active jobseekers.

Working with a really great team at BraveNewTalent, in my new role as Head of Mobile and Product Strategy, we will empower companies and individuals through community and learning. There will be continued excitement and massive industry shaking innovation.

The BraveNewTalent vision and product is key in shaping the future of online talent acquisition across the world.

I am very pleased to be part of the future, it going to be a thrilling ride!

A new study from Glassdoor.com, a workplace culture website, ranked the toughest companies to interview at, analyzing user comments about the interview practices of specific companies.

Do not be discouraged by this premise, this is just a collection of remarks from people who have been interviewed by really selective companies, but their experiences can help you to be prepared if to work in one of these organizations is part of your goals.

What they do to make the recruiting process so tough is put their job candidates through several rounds of interviews full of brainteasers, technical questions and case study analyses. While a few of the usual suspects were in the top 20, some of them might surprise you.

At the top of the list were: consultancy McKinsey, proprietary trading firm Jane Street Capital and semiconductor manufacturer Cree Inc. Firms like BP (No. 10), Procter & Gamble (No. 12), investment fund Bridgewater Associates (No. 16) and Amazon (No. 18), followed. Notably absent from the top 20 were tech giants like Google and Apple, both notorious for their high levels of competition and challenging interviews.

Some companies made the list for rejecting candidates who made only one mistake during a long interview process. One Glassdoor user, who commented on their experience as a software engineering candidate with eBay, which clocked in at No. 19 in the report, said: “if you screw one interview out of seven, you will not have [a] chance to get hired.”

Sean Brody, recruiting manager at Raleigh, N.C.-based Cree, which landed the No. 3 spot on the list, said: “most of our candidates aren’t local to Raleigh,” which means interviewees are flown in for day-long sessions. Stamina is a factor.

So what can candidates do to get ready? Be comfortable with your skill-set and experience, rehearse responses to interview questions — the common and not-so-common — learn how to bluff, and try not to blow it. But overall, remember that a bombed interview might be a sign that the company wasn’t a good fit for you after all.

Below is the full list of Glassdoor’s Top 20 Most Difficult Companies for Interviews:

1. McKinsey & Co.

2. Jane Street Capital

3. Cree

4. Bain & Co.

5. Boston Consulting

6. Palantir Technologies

7. Teach for America

8. A.T. Kearney

9. Red Ventures

10. BP

11. ZS Associates

12. Procter & Gamble

13. Salesforce.com

14. Altria

15. Oliver Wyman

16. Bridgewater Associates

17. Stryker

18. Amazon.com

19. eBay

20. Gallup

Original source: http://it-jobs.fins.com/Articles/SB130832535393024241/Twenty-Companies-More-Selective-Than-Google?Type=44&reflink=djp_wsjc

BraveNewTalent.com, the social recruiting platform that connects people to employers, has now established its US and India presence following venture capital investment.

Lucian Tarnowski, BraveNewTalent’s CEO said “Social recruiting is becoming mainstream.  It has landed firmly at the centre of recruitment strategies for many global employers. Our expansion into the US and Indian markets allows us to take BraveNewTalent to the global market. Recruiters now recognise the importance of developing talent communities and engaging with potential employees.”

The US expansion comes as BraveNewTalent, whose existing clients include blue chip brands such as IBM, Tesco and L’Oreal, takes part in the UK Government-backed WebMission 2011.  BraveNewTalent is one of 18 companies that are exploring opportunities for growth with key investors, potential partners and other stakeholders in Silicon Valley. BraveNewTalent’s international expansion plans are also being supported by UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) who describe the company as “A technology company of exceptional potential.”

At the start of the year BraveNewTalent secured venture capital funding from Northzone Ventures and two experienced angels – Pierce Casey and Mike Bourne, and has used this capital to fund its entry into the US and Indian marketplaces.

As part of the expansion the company has begun identifying its own potential talent and announced its first strategic hires last week. Maren Hogan, former Chief Marketing Officer of RecruitingBlogs.com, one of the world’s largest recruiter communities, has been appointed as Head of Marketing in the United States. Commenting on her new role Maren said; “I’m delighted to be able to bring BraveNewTalent’s approach to recruitment to the US market. Major employers are now fighting for the best candidates and creating talent communities is something that will play a vital role in their recruitment strategies.”

In India, Dheeraj Prasad, who’s previous role was Head of Education Business at Microsoft India, is now the BraveNewTalent India Manager Director said “It is a great feeling to start-up something new and bold in a marketplace like India, which is one of the youngest nations in the world. I am excited to lead this build up for Corporate India, positively impact so many lives.”

Now that the company has already signed up its first major US client, the focus is on providing a high-quality platform for employers to engage with potential employees.  BraveNewTalent is then planning to implement a new model of online education based on employers delivering skills training to their communities.

London, February 2, 2011: BraveNewTalent.com, the social recruiting platform, has secured an undisclosed amount of venture capital funding from Northzone Ventures and two experienced angels – Pierce Casey and Mike Bourne.

Northzone is one of Europe’s leading venture funds and was first investor in companies such as Spotify, Lastminute.com and Stepstone. As part of the investment, Bjorn Stray, Co-Founder & Partner at Northzone will be joining the BraveNewTalent board. Bjorn is one of Europe’s most experienced venture capitalists in the online recruitment sector having sat on the board of Stepstone between 1996 and 2009, and spent the first three years as Chairman. Bjorn is in a strong position to assist BraveNewTalent with its next stage of international development.

Commenting on the investment Bjorn said, “The evolution of online recruitment from the job board model to a social recruiting model is something I have expected for some time. I have considered many opportunities both from Stepstone’s perspective and Northzone’s perspective, but BraveNewTalent is the first one I felt had real potential to change the industry.  It is our aim to fully deliver value to employers and jobseekers, and in doing so develop BraveNewTalent into a billion dollar market leader.”

On top of Northzone’s unique experience, BraveNewTalent welcomes Pierce Casey and Mike Bourne as angels. Pierce Casey is a serial private investor in the recruitment sector, was co-founder of Walker Hamill and Imprint PLC and is currently Chairman of Norman Broadbent.  In addition he is an experienced Private Equity specialist having been Director of Apax Partners and Alchemy Venture Partners.  Pierce commented: “From my experience in the recruitment sector it is clear that Global HR Directors are seeking a social media tool that is now being offered by BraveNewTalent.”

The company has successfully created talent communities for employers from a wide range of sectors. Among its clients are global brands such as IBM, Tesco, L’Oreal and McAfee. Lucian Tarnowski, BraveNewTalent’s Founder & CEO commented:  “This venture investment allows us to take on the global social recruiting opportunity.  We have a mission to change the face of recruitment and online education and map the global talent market. With new investors who have many years of experience in this sector we hope to fully develop our product and drive the message home that social recruiting should be part of the recruiting strategy for every employer.  We plan to hire some great talent along our way!”

This new round of funding will be used to further develop the BraveNewTalent platform, allowing employers to build, engage, recruit and train talent communities.  In order to support this development, the company plans to make a number of senior level and strategic hires to oversee this new growth phase.  BraveNewTalent will now also begin to expand its operating base internationally as it seeks to deliver global social recruiting services for its clients.

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About BraveNewTalent.com

BraveNewTalent.com builds professional talent communities for employers using social media.  It is an online service that connects potential recruits or ‘talent’ with employers via a social network. Individuals create their own personal profile on the site and follow their target employers. The service is free to access for talent and generates revenue from employers using Talent Words™ to drive targeted people into their communities.  The platform brings together in one place all social media content the employer has – jobs, tweets, blogs, news, pictures, videos and more.  BraveNewTalent plans to implement a new model of education based on employers distributing training and skills to their talent communities in advance of the job.

BraveNewTalent.com was founded by award-winning entrepreneur Lucian Tarnowski, who has been honoured as Europe’s youngest Young Global Leader (YGL) by the World Economic Forum in 2010.

Press contact (for media only)

James Proctor or Colin Hallmark, 3:nine Communications, +44 (0) 207 736 1888 info@3nine.co.uk

Client contact

Jimmy Kyriacou, Head of Client relations, +44 (0) 207 734 0400, Jimmy@BraveNewTalent.com