Maren Hogan

"Im scared to death to take this job, and that's why I know it's the right job." Maren Hogan

Welcome to a Talent Acquisition Channel Podcast on TotalPicture Radio, with Peter Clayton reporting. Joining us today is the one and only somewhat conference fried and jet lagged Maren Hogan, AKA Marenated. I contacted Maren several months ago when she had decided to make a career change and now, due to the magic of Skype and timing, we can talk about it!

Here's the announcement...

"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."

TotalPicture Radio Transcript: Maren Hogan Interview

Peter: Welcome to an Talent Acquisition Channel podcast on TotalPicture Radio. This is Peter Clayton and joining us today is the one and only gallivanting and somewhat conference fried and jetlagged, Maren Hogan, a.k.a Marenated. I contacted Maren several months ago when she had decided to make a career change and now due to the magic of Skype and timing, we can talk about it.

Maren, thanks for joining me on TotalPicture Radio.

Maren: Thanks for having me, Peter.

Peter: You have been hitting all of the hot spots TRU London. You went to Web Mission in San Francisco and just recently were at SXSW down in Austin. Tell us a little bit about some of the events you've been to and some of your observations.

Maren: Wow, it's been a bit of a whirlwind and all of the events were different. As you mentioned, the first one for me this year was TRU London, obviously in London. Bill Boorman's conference or 'unconferences' are always an event. We call it controlled chaos, and the interesting thing about it is a lot of the top minds in social recruitment you'll find there, and it's an unstructured conversation where we talk about the latest and greatest. I always enjoy his events and this one was probably the top one that I've been to so far.

That was followed by Web Mission, which is basically the top 20 startups in the United Kingdom go over to the US and are met with successful startups there in the US or people who have taken their companies from the UK and set up US shop, so to speak, and they learn just a lot about how to conduct business, what is expected over here and since BraveNewTalent, recently incorporated I think as little as two weeks ago here in the US, that was an excellent place for us to be and we met so many amazing people. It was a true learning experience, even for the token American in the group, so I really, really liked that.

Immediately from San Francisco, I hopped on a plane to Austin for my first ever South by Southwest and also TalentNet Live, I should give a shout out to Craig Fisher who did an amazing job organizing that. Every single one of these events has been a completely different experience. I did not stand in line for an iPad 2. I need to get an iPad 1 first. Somebody send a memo to Lucian Tarnowski tell him to get me an iPad.

Peter: Let's talk about BraveNewTalent. As of March 1st you are now their head of marketing in the US. Who is this company and what are you going to be doing?

Maren: Let's start with the company. BraveNewTalent was started about two years ago by Lucian Tarnowski who I already gave a shout out to. His goal was to revolutionize recruiting, more specifically social recruiting and what we do in a nutshell is build talent communities for employers. In the UK, we have employers like L'Oreal, Tesco, IBM that we're working with to basically build a very, very highly targeted candidate engagement forum, or community as it were. We're just starting to get some of the numbers of out of those and they're looking really, really good, so we're excited to bring those same numbers into the US.

What I will be doing is precisely that; I'll be setting up a pilot program, contacting 8 to 10 visionary companies here in the States, setting them up with our platform, helping them build their first Talent Words campaign, which is our flagship product, and then just taking the metrics, taking their feedback, seeing if they come up with innovative uses of the product for both recruiting, workforce planning and employee engagement.

Peter: Does this connect out with Twitter and Facebook or how was this different from other ways or the ways companies can connect with talent today like LinkedIn?

Maren: One of the ways that this is different is that BraveNewTalent was built for Gen Y. It's built on top of Facebook which as you know has nearly 600 million people interacting on it on a very regular basis. It's a very consistent way to get in touch with people and the data that's being collected as part of your total social graph tends to be a lot more extensive. One of the things that I've always been interested in from a recruiting perspective is how it intersects with marketing. That's kind of always been my flag that I've been waving in the area, and I think that we're learning a lot from consumer marketing and that particular viewpoint is something that drove Lucian to start BraveNewTalent.

LinkedIn is really, really great for people who are already established in their careers, but when you are a brand new grad and you go to log in to LinkedIn, you have to build your network almost from scratch and we feel like that's an untapped market.

Some of the ways that we differ from some other Facebook recruiting solutions is that we're not really about job posting. One of the things that we believe is fundamentally broken – I'm going to probably tick off a lot of people with this is that we wait until there's a job posting, we wait until there's a need and then we sort of do job posting, triage recruiting, effectively creating a sort of a bottleneck, when in actuality it could be with the effectiveness in talent communities, it could be much more cyclical and there could be a lot better planning happening around this space. Particularly with Gen Y and grads, we know when they're graduating; there's a lot of college recruiting solutions that have won awards but we feel like this is something unique and it's cost effective for the employer and it's something that allows them to engage before, during and after campus visit.

Peter: How does BraveNewTalent work for talent for people who perhaps are out looking for a job?

Maren: So the other side of BraveNewTalent and you'll hear me refer to this a lot, there is BraveNewTalent, the platform which we've just been talking about, but you're talking about BraveNewTalent, the community and that is specifically for users. We go out, we have a Facebook page, we have an app.

First of all, you log in. It sits on top of Facebook. It's not intrusive. We don't ask for every permission in the book, but it basically says, "Hey, your friends work here; you might want ask them what that's like." First off, you can get a ton of career advice. We're building out the career resources section. Obviously, you can follow any company that you like and you would be treated as an organic follower. Say you want to work at McAfee and you go and you follow them. You find out about jobs that they have before they're posted. You find out about what the hiring managers are looking for. You learn news releases in the case of any startups or companies like that, you would learn financial news, all of which can really help you gauge the path that you're going on, particularly if you want to work for a particular company, so that's one thing.

The second thing is you find out which of your friends work at these companies so that you can connect with them, kind of get the inside track.

Third, you can engage with the hiring managers and the recruiters because maybe you're not going to look for a job today; maybe you're looking in six months or maybe you're just interested in that company as a long-term play. This is a chance to build that relationship before the job becomes open because as you know, a lot of jobs are filled before they even hit the job boards.

Peter: Absolutely. I interviewed Rick Marini a couple of weeks ago who started BranchOut which I'm sure aware of, so how does your product differ from what Rick is trying to do with BranchOut?

Maren: I think the first and most obvious way that our product differs is that it is far less intrusive. I mean no disrespect. One of the reasons that people are scared of social recruiting and scared of using their social graph to attract team players – and I'm saying this from the community side – is because they don't know what's going to happen. When you click on this, you don't know if all of your friends are going to find out that you're looking at this employer. If your boss is on Facebook… there's a million reasons that you might be wary of blending social and professional.

BraveNewTalent, it's built on top of Facebook and it's very, very subtle and you use it when you want to. It doesn't let all your friends know that you're looking, it doesn't mass message, and that's something that we believe is unique.

In addition to that, we're also building these talent communities on the backend. We're very, very much involved. Our entire development team, the Talent Words campaigns that we run are, we believe, far more targeted than anything out there.

Finally, I think that we have a phaseal process that we're rolling out, and one of the things that's really interesting to us is the education's piece and we would like to find a way to map the world's global talent. This is something you'll hear a lot coming from us in the next few months in that education is also broken. Everything is broken, that's our message. ☺

Education is not serving companies the way that it was originally intended to. We had the industrial revolution and we had education models that were built to service that. Now we're in the information age and some of our education models are not servicing that quite so well. So since companies often have a structure that's larger than some countries, we're trying to find a way to help companies identify and attract talent even sooner than they're currently able to and be able to develop skills that they see out there in the market to, again, prevent these sort of bottlenecks and better educate the emerging workforce.

Peter: To your point, companies are desperate to find people who have the skills and the education that they need moving forward and that's why a lot of companies today are out self-funding programs and community colleges and universities to make sure people get the kind of education that's required today.

Maren: Yeah, every time I look at the statistics and every time a new statistic comes out, it shocks me more and more. Corporation's expectations are rarely being met (say that five times fast ☺). It's true and so we really want to address that because there is so much talent out there and it's always in New York or Silicon Valley or various global places where we see these things popping up. It's just because those people have the resources and they're in the particular spaces where those things are happening, but there is talent that exists all over the world and Lucian's work in the world economic forum has really helped him build tools and sort of build the infrastructure for this education piece and that's really something that we don't believe anyone has or that anyone is offering. It's sort of a very long-term play.

Peter: Back to London for just a second, because I'm interested to hear your perspective and to hear, is the conversation in Europe especially around talent acquisition and recruiting the same conversations that we're having here in the United States?

Maren: They are not. I spoke with several people in the UK about this, Nat Alder, Andy Headworth – just some really, really smart social recruiting – they're going to hate this – gurus over there. What I found is that they are much, much farther along than we are in the mobile recruiting space. It's much higher sophistication in terms of that, but in terms of social recruiting, they're still sort of developing case law. I would say they're about 18 months behind us which that gap is closing because they're learning from our mistakes, right; so they're not making the same stumbles and tumbles that we did and obviously, work laws are different there, recruiting laws are different there, their HR is structured differently than ours is, but they are learning quite a lot from some of the mistakes that we've made. I think that their sophistication in mobile recruiting is really going to serve them well just because of the penetration – the mobile penetration in the UK and in Europe is much higher than it is here in the States.

Peter: I'm curious to know, Maren, and you've written about this on your blog a lot that you had various offers from various organizations and as you were deliberating what you wanted to do next with your career, what made you decide to choose BraveNewTalent as the place to hang your hat?

Maren: That's a great question. When I first got back into the job scene, I thought, okay, I need to find a place that makes sense for me. I don't think I'm a maverick in any sense of the word, but there comes a point in your career when you're a little bit not employable and that makes you the ideal employee for a startup. And while I have worked with multiple startups, I really truly believe in the mission of BraveNewTalent. I think we have a fantastic product now for recruiting. I believe in the long-term mission in terms of transforming education. I also feel that there is much work to be done in bringing a company over into the US and that's something that really excites me. I told Lucian and his team – which they're a fantastic team by the way, all very, very smart people and most of them much, much younger than me.

Peter: Doesn't that just piss you off?

Maren: Oh my goodness! I walked into the office and it was like Tales From the Cryptkeeper. Is this really happening to me.

Peter: They're all 26 years old! What happened!

Maren: I really don't know. I remember being the ingénue at some point and somewhere along the line, it was like oh, I'm not the young buck on the scene anymore. I told them I'm scared to death to take this job, and that's why I know it's the right job. I'm the type of person that I would like to say that I rise to a challenge, I work well under deadline, I enjoy the pressure and educating the people that I call colleagues and the people that I call friends about this solution is not going to be easy. It's not going to be a one of sort of like, "Hey, this is what we do. It's real simple. You just A, B, C, and D." You know it requires a lot of in-depth analysis. It requires a lot of, like I said, case studies, white papers being written on this because even though we're farther ahead than the UK, talent communities doesn't necessarily mean what we think it means and I think that what BraveNewTalent is doing is building true communities and I believe in that. I've always enjoyed the intersection of recruitment and marketing. I think that again, we have a lot to learn from consumer marketing in HR and I think this is the best place for me to do that.

Peter: That's exciting. Is BraveNewTalent now live on Facebook in the US?

Maren: It always has been; however, what we're trying to do is we're trying to take it slowly. Really, really look at the metrics, so that's why the pilot program will run from now until September and anybody who wants to be a part of it can certainly let me know, but we're only taking a select few companies and we're talking to some really great companies that have great consumer brands. Starbucks just signed on. I can't tell you the rest of who we're talking here in the US, but you'll be hearing some big names come out of us very, very soon, so we're very excited about that.

Peter: What did Starbucks find so appealing about BraveNewTalent? That's a company that is, I would say, very engaged out there in social media platforms. They're all over Twitter, they're all over Facebook. They're one of the companies that have done a really great job even internally in connecting up all of their employees.

Maren: I think there are multiple answers to that question. The first one is that consumer marketing should drive what we do in recruitment marketing, but it can't replace it, and so when you have an amazing consumer brand like Starbucks does, and even an amazing employer brand like Starbucks does, you have to find a way to own each one of those segments. And when it gets sort of massive and multi-tentacled like theirs is, you want to make sure that nobody falls through the cracks. That's why sometimes when I speak with people, I say this is a bit of a workforce planning solution. This is a bit of an employee-engagement solution in the long term because you're making sure that you continue to engage those people, because they might not need a job right now, right?

Peter: Right.

Maren: We're trying to sort of get the 'right now' out of the way and something that's a little bit more solvable and has a little bit more return on investment for the people who are in the trenches – hiring managers, recruiters, etc. So I think Starbucks also really appreciated our numbers. We're just getting the first numbers out of those. We recently had one of our clients tell us that BraveNewTalent community members were twice as likely to get hired as anybody else, any other source of hire that they we're looking at. Those are exciting numbers. When you really look at the cost and you break it down, BraveNewTalent makes sense.

In addition, our solution has a fixed cost, which I think is really exciting for large corporations when they're trying to get their budgets done. So many people will do, "Oh, here's your monthly cost and then here's a credit." Well, that credit is often exceeded when you get into the real cost of hiring X amount of people, and in the case of Starbucks or any other large brand like that, when you're hiring that many people or looking for that many people to fill up your community, that gets really expensive really fast and the bills skew wildly out of control. This is a great budgeting tool because we do have the fixed costs.

Peter: I was at an event last week, Bloomberg Media Summit, and one of the people whom I met there is Pete Zillig who is Chief Executive Office of Euro RSCG New York, a very large global advertising agency. A couple of the comments that he made in his panel discussion just really excited me. One of them being that he really sees what we are dealing with and corporations are dealing with today as being very transparent and that organizations and corporations really need to have a clear voice and authenticity. Coming from a guy who is in the ad agency business, I found that really refreshing.

Another thing he said is we're trying to bring in really young people and empower them to really affect change within our organizations because we realize they're the tech natives, they're the ones who really understand this and they have a lot to offer. I think companies are starting to recognize, first of all, the transparency that exists out there and the fact that they really do need to be authentic if they want to engage the Gen Y'ers that your organization is trying to engage.

Maren: Exactly. And again, like I know I sound like I'm just beating the drum on this, but that's another example of taking the torch from consumer marketing and saying okay, this is how we engage them on the consumer side. How do HR professionals, hiring managers… managers period… come in and say how do we engage them internally or before they ever even enter our workforce. How do we empower them on the one hand but also ensure cultural fit, information capital that exists within the company; how do we make sure all of that gets to them in a way that's efficient?

We know that there are project workers but yet new studies are coming out saying they want long-term stability, so really how do we reach these people. We're getting statistics from all over the place. We don't know which ones are right. Hiring managers aren't sure exactly how to approach this issue and we're saying build the relationship before you have the need and it's really a simple concept but it's very interesting to see how it's precisely following in the footsteps of consumer marketing, ad agencies, etc. in what they're thinking, and we're really excited about that because they have been sort of the trailblazers in this area for a long time.

Peter: I think companies are starting to wake up to the fact that a lot of the applicants out there, the job applicants are also their customers, so they might want to treat them a little bit better than just ignoring them.

Maren: Exactly and now, there's a flip side of that coin, right? The first side – and I remember first hearing about this way back in Kennedy like four years ago – Whirlpool was speaking and they were saying the same thing; we're a consumer brand so we can't ignore people. Our employer brand has to be amazing and we have to stay on top of it and looking for a CRM that would work with their ATS and as far as I know, that product hasn't been invented yet but talent communities are a fantastic way to do that.

The flip side of that coin is you have consumers that never ever want to work for you and so hitting your consumer with jobs all the time is you're going to get customer fatigue, right?

Peter: Right.

Maren: They don't care about that. They're going to tune you out. They're going to unsubscribe from your email, whatever it is. And so you want to make sure that those two groups, they can interact with each other and you're treating them both well, but they're also segmented, so you're telling exactly who you need to the right message.

Peter: Maren, what haven't we discussed that you think is important for people to know about BraveNewTalent?

Maren: I can't tell you too much detail but we're currently working on some really exciting new features that I think people are going to be excited about. I think I haven't given a plug for people in the US to give me a call if they'd like to be part of the pilot program, and that's happening pretty quickly, so either give me a call – and Peter can give you my contact details at the end or I can – or speak with me at ERE, which brings me to my next thing that I haven't mentioned – I am handling the ERE Charity Poker Event this year. Anyone that would like to sponsor, all the money is going to a really good cause, so it's Save the Children in Japan Earthquake Fund.

Peter: That's fantastic.

Maren: So you can also get in touch with me for that as well.

Peter: It's been really get to have an opportunity to catch up with you and I really look forward to seeing you at ERE in a couple of days.

Maren: Yeah, I look forward to it too, Peter. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Maren Hogan Biography

Maren Hogan is a marketer and community builder in the HR and Recruiting space. She recently accepted the position of Head of Marketing, US for BraveNewTalent, a social recruiting platform that builds talent communities for employers and allows candidates to navigate their career path more effectively. A seasoned advocate in the areas of social media, recruitment and HR marketing, she previously held the position of Chief Marketing Officer for RecruitingBlogs.com and was among the first contributors to Fistful of Talent. Hogan has built three successful communities and built brand strategies for over 70 companies in various sectors (both B2C and B2B). You can connect with Maren on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, as well as read her latest posts on BraveNewTalent's Blog and Marenated.

Maren Hogan is a head of Marketing, US for BraveNewTalent, a social recruiting platform that builds talent communities for employers and allows candidates to navigate their career path more effectively. You can connect with Maren on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, as well as read her latest posts on BraveNewTalent's Blog and Marenated.

About TotalPicture Radio

TotalPicture Radio is interested in hearing from you, our listeners. Please share your thoughts and opinions on our podcast with Maren. Visit her feature page in the Inside Recruiting Channel of TotalPicture radio - that's totalpicture.com.

This is Peter Clayton reporting.  Thank you for tuning in toTotalPicture Radio, we produce broadcast quality interviews connecting companies to their customers, prospects, employees, and passive candidates.

TotalPicture Radio: the voice of career and leadership acceleration. At TotalPicture Radio, we produce broadcast quality interviews that link companies to customers, prospects, and passive candidates. Working with press credentials, TotalPicture Radio covers many leadership, HR and recruiting conferences and events throughout the year. Through our unique, highly targeted podcasts interviews, TotalPicture Radio can extend the conference, continue the conversation, provide valuable content and information for our sponsors. To receive a free media kit and for more information, please call 203-292-0012 or email  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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Peter Clayton, Producer/Host, is an award-winning producer/director of radio, television, documentary, video, interactive and Web-based media who has created breakthrough media for a wide array of Fortune 100 clients.