This interview is a component of Workology’s HR highlight series, where we highlight influential HR leaders who’re shaping the long run of labor through daring ideas and real-world impact. For this post, we’re talking to Rhona Barnett-Pierce, Founding father of Workfluencer Media.
Rhona Barnett-Pierce is the founding father of Workfluencer Media, where she helps Talent Acquisition and HR leaders amplify their influence through strategic video and content creation. With a background leading Talent Acquisition teams across Talent Marketplaces, SaaS, and Media, Rhona brings a novel mix of recruiting expertise, employer branding insight, and private branding technique to the long run of talent attraction. She can be the host of the Workfluencer Podcast, where she highlights the true stories of execs using authentic content to shape the long run of labor.
Known for her engaging approach and practical insights, Rhona makes a speciality of helping recruiters and HR leaders construct trust, credibility, and meaningful connections through storytelling and short-form video content. Her work focuses on empowering Talent Acquisition professionals to develop into confident content creators who stand out online while staying true to their authentic voice. Whether she’s coaching leaders on personal branding, designing thought leadership strategies, or leading workshops on content creation, Rhona is enthusiastic about transforming how organizations connect with talent in a more human and impactful way. Connect with Rhona on LinkedIn or follow her newsletter for insights on recruiting, branding, and the evolving world of labor.
5 Questions With Rhona Barnett-Pierce
You’ve built a profession on the intersection of Talent Acquisition and content creation. What made you realize content was becoming essential to modern recruiting?
I didn’t figure this out as a recruiter. I figured it out because the candidate no one was calling back. After I moved to the US from Panama, I’d left an actual profession behind. I’d quit my job as a Regional Operations Manager at a software company, landed in Tulsa, after which went years and not using a single interview. I wasn’t getting rejections, I used to be getting silence. All anyone had was a resume: a reputation they couldn’t place, a location, an inventory of corporations they’d never heard of. So that they filled within the blanks and moved on.
So in 2013 I recorded a 90-second video about my background and added one line to the duvet letter field on every application: “Please watch this short video to learn more about me.” I didn’t change a thing about my resume; same titles, same “unknown” corporations, and the interviews began coming, because people could finally see me and stopped guessing. Years later I watched the very same thing work from the hiring side, after I suggested that a hiring manager create a 90-second video for a job we were struggling to fill. The video pulled in additional qualified applicants than the previous three job ads combined. That’s when content stopped being my personal hack and have become my talent attraction and retention strategy.
Here’s my full talk at RecFest USA 2025 titled Every Story is a Recruiting Story. I shared more about my story there and the way teams can find stories in on a regular basis moments.
What are the most important mistakes corporations make when attempting to create recruiting or employer brand content?
The most important mistake is ignoring the most effective content you’ve got: your individual employees. Corporations pour budget into polished content from marketing, recruiting, the brand team, and candidates can smell it. No one trusts the official account. People trust people, specifically those within the trenches actually doing the work. Your engineer talking about what she’s constructing is value greater than any careers page, because she has nothing to sell and no reason to spin it.
So the true mistake is sitting on that. Corporations lock their employees down, route the whole lot through approvals, and tell people to remain off LinkedIn as an alternative of letting them post. What they needs to be doing is the other: giving employees the liberty to share online in their very own voice, unscripted, even when it’s messy. That’s employee-generated content, and it’s essentially the most credible thing an organization can put out. The businesses that get this don’t manufacture trust, they let the individuals who have already got it do the talking.
Through your podcast, you’ve talked with professionals shaping the long run of labor through content. What themes or trends are you hearing repeatedly immediately?
The loudest one immediately is people treating a private brand as profession insurance. The last couple of years have been brutal in corporate America, and HR and TA have taken a few of the worst of it. The people I discuss with watched it occur, or it happened to them, they usually got here out of it unwilling to have a single point of failure again. So that they’re constructing portfolio careers: multiple income streams, monetizing their very own expertise as an alternative of renting it to 1 employer. That appears like brand partnerships, speaking, consulting, coaching, fractional work, even launching their very own products. And almost every one in every of those paths starts the identical way, with being intentional about your presence online and the content you place out. The content is what attracts the opportunities.
The opposite theme I keep hearing is a backlash against sameness. As everyone leans on AI to supply more, most of it’s beginning to sound equivalent, and the people actually breaking through are those with an actual viewpoint and an actual face attached to it. That connects back to the primary theme, because constructing a brand should never be about stopping a layoff. There’s really nothing you may do as an worker to regulate being laid off. What you may control is what you’ve built on the side and who already knows your work if you need it. That’s what a private brand really is: not protection from the hit, but a head start on what comes next.
How has AI modified the best way recruiters and HR professionals approach content creation, branding, and candidate engagement?
AI lowered the barrier to producing content to mainly zero, and the very first thing that did was flood everyone’s feed with sameness. Recruiters and HR teams can now generate per week of posts in a day, and a variety of them are, so candidates are scrolling past an ocean of content that’s technically wonderful and completely forgettable. The irony is that the more everyone leans on AI to scale, the more precious a real human voice becomes, since it’s the one thing that stands out. I’ve began calling the individuals who chase visibility this manner with none real viewpoint “Fluffluencers.” A lot of output, nothing behind it.
So the best way I see it, AI raised the stakes on being real somewhat than lowering them. It’s an amazing tool for the parts that needs to be invisible, the editing, the repurposing, the primary rough draft you’ll rewrite anyway. Where it goes mistaken is when people let it generate the actual considering, because candidates can feel when there’s nobody there. The recruiters and HR pros who’ll win with AI are those using it to remove busywork so that they have more time to say something only they may say. Those who use it to avoid having a viewpoint are going to mix into the noise.
Looking ahead, how do you see personal branding and content creation continuing to influence hiring, recruiting, and the candidate experience over the following few years?
My predominant prediction is pretty easy: should you’re not leaning on actual human voices, your employees, creators, customers, you’re going to struggle to draw people. And I don’t think that’s a daring take, I feel it’s just where the whole lot is already headed. Take a look at how anything gets marketed now. Products, services, software, all of it runs on real people talking to real people, because that’s who we trust. Hiring has all the time followed consumer marketing trends, and it all the time will, for the plain reason that we’re hiring humans. The brand account doesn’t move people anymore. The person does.
So personal branding and content continue to grow in hiring not since it’s a clever recruiting tactic, but since it’s how the entire world now decides what to trust and who to hearken to. The businesses that get this can have their people visible and talking, in their very own voices, well before a candidate ever lands on a job posting. Everyone else will keep wondering why their roles aren’t attracting anyone while their competitors quietly develop into the place people already feel like they know. That’s the shift. It’s probably not about recruiting in any respect. It’s about catching as much as how people already make decisions.
RESOURCES
Rhona Barnett-Pierce on LinkedIn
Rhona Pierce | Talent Strategy (@rhonabpierce) • Instagram photos and videos