Meet the Talent Marketing Board Membership Director, Kurt Vanderah

Speakers: Kurt Vanderah, Membership Director

Kurt Vanderah: Hi, I'm Kurt Vanderah. I'm the Membership Director with the Talent Marketing Board.

Kurt Vanderah: So our communities have all kinds of ways to interact. There's emails, and there's calls, and there's meetings. The Membership Director is the person who acts as sort of the connective tissue, trying to figure out who is it that has a problem? Who is it that needs something solved? And who is it that might be able to provide that kind of experience or that kind of perspective or sometimes just be a shoulder to lean on? So as a Membership Director, we need to know how to connect people who, which personality types match up best, who's got the experience that's going to help somebody get the answer that they need, so they can save time, so they can save money, and hopefully make a friend along the way.

Kurt Vanderah: So I've worked here all told for about 11 years now. It's hard to say there's one favorite memory, but I can give you the most recent one. Just today, a member reached out and said, 'We just had a demo with this vendor, and we had our socks knocked off. But are they really as good as they say? Is there anybody who's worked with them? And could you let me know?' I reached out to a couple of members, and they both said, 'Yes, we'd be happy to share our experience working with this group.' And we were able to make connections. So they went from a demo in the morning to having two people who could vouch or verify -- or not -- the validity of that vendor's sales claims all in the course of one business day. I love being able to turn around that kind of help for a member that quickly.

Kurt Vanderah: It's gonna sound weird, but I think the biggest surprise is that we are who we say we are. We're only connecting billion-dollar companies, we're not sponsored or biased or selling anything during the course of membership. You'll never be exposed to a sale. And I think a lot of people say, 'Well, that is what everybody says, and that they're gonna be taken care of.' I'm here to build relationships. That's the extent of it. And the only way to build relationships is to give people what they need, and what they're looking for in the most direct way possible. I think the generosity of this group is probably the secondary surprise. People even in competitive industries are so willing to share with one another, because they know how hard it is to invent the wheel, and they don't want to do that themselves. That you've got people -- big fish in a very, very small pool -- willing to connect with one another, to say, 'I'm willing to help another person.' That's the sense of generosity that I think comes as a surprise perhaps to some people in the group. I'd like for it to be just what they're used to after they've been part of the group for a while. I think the last thing that they might be surprised by is just how handsome their Membership Director is.

Kurt Vanderah: I think because we're so selective about the types of companies that we allow to join. We say you have to have at least 10,000 employees to be a member. Our average is closer to 77,000 employees. There's not another organization out there that's going to connect you with people who work at companies the size of yours. Just about every conference you're going to attend is going to have a panel with vendors on it. Every virtual event where you're gonna hear about employer brand and recruitment marketing is going to involve a company that might only be a few dozen or several 100 individuals or employees big. Here, you're talking with national, if not international companies -- about half of our membership has an international footprint. And the opportunity to connect with them, and exclusively them, gives you a perspective you're just not going to find anywhere else.