“But will it be personal?”
That’s the question that was on my mind when I heard this year’s Talent Brand Summit was going virtual.
I didn’t have the opportunity to attend a #TBSummit in years past, but I heard stories from the TBA community of lazy rivers, tomahawk tossing, and serious chats around the campfire in between bites of s’mores. This summer, I, too, was ready to wave goodbye to my family and be dropped off at the official Summer 🎯 Camp for Employer Branding and Recruitment Marketing nerds.
We all know what happened next... COVID-19. The TBA Board made the right call to keep Summit attendees, facilitators, and the greater community healthy and safe.
This summer, over two days in July, I had the privilege of attending the first virtual Talent Brand Summit from the comfort of my kitchen table.
Here’s how the #TBSummit created community, connection, and a space for learning while competing for my attention with my dog, spouse, and the UPS delivery driver.
The Hosts with the Mosts
Summit cohosts Will Staney and Bryan Chaney are master experience creators. And as practitioners, the TBA community, composed of Talent Branders, Recruiters, Employer Branders, Recruitment Marketers, and Employee Engagement-ers, have high standards in this arena. We get it from Simon Barrow, the Father of Employer Branding who says, “EB thinking is about creating and managing every aspect of the employee experience.”
“EB thinking is about creating and managing every aspect of the employee experience.”
Bryan and Will set the tone of the summit. For 2.5 days, they put themselves out there. They challenged the community to create real connections, and they attempted to break the Internet with their most excellent wigs (the theme was an 80s arcade-inspired adventure) and their in-sync yoga poses during stretch breaks.
Dead air can be all too common in the virtual space. We’ve all attended virtual happy hours that fall flat between nervous gulps of IPA. But that was far from my experience at the TBSummit. I credit the success of the event to the extra work that the co-hosts, TBA Board, and volunteers put in to create an intentional and engaging experience in this new format.
Active Learning, Knowledge Sharing + Inclusion
The TBSummit wasn’t a series of TED Talks by people with suspiciously perfect composure and hand gestures. There were no vendor pitches. This was a summit with presenters who are active and passionate Talent Branders, like us. The presenters were our peers, colleagues, and new friends from organizations like Instacart, Vital Farms, Salesforce, Lyft, Alaska Airlines, Facebook, and more. They led us in roundtable discussions with breakout groups on topics like (click to read session recaps):
The breakout group exercises kept attendees engaged and actively learning about the topics presented. They also allowed for networking and information sharing on everything Talent Brand related.
If you’re an introvert like me, new to an industry or field, or maybe you’re a woman (study: women ask fewer questions than men at conference talks), you might be hesitant to speak up at a jumbo conference full of strangers. The breakout rooms and structured exercises gave space for everyone to contribute their ideas and best practices. After the first breakout session on day one, I felt comfortable with the group-at-large and sharing my knowledge.
Although we all have unique experiences to bring to the Talent Brand table, one of the values of the Talent Brand Alliance is Be Humble: There are no experts. We seek to understand first in our interactions.
That’s a value lived by the TBA community and one that helped to create an inclusive conference.
Community + Connections
Space was carved out throughout the summit for networking. And before I scare you and leave you there, networking at this event felt different.
We went deeper than your usual conference small talk. In small breakout rooms, we talked about the future of our industry, challenges we were facing, how our roles have evolved during the pandemic, and our responsibility as practitioners shaping the businesses we serve during this time of awareness of racial inequality and the evolution of work.
So, yes. It was personal and it was collective. Someone wise once said if, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
If you want to go deep into the world of Talent Branding, go to next year’s #TBSummit.
About our TBA member Kallie Hinton
Kallie loves a good Employer Value Proposition and is passionate about the intersection of Employer Branding and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Most recently, she was an Employer Brand Strategist at Alaska Airlines, where her communications celebrated employee diversity and influenced company actions in hiring and inclusion practices.