Ms. Brianna Blaney’s career started with a calling. But it wasn’t exactly her own personal calling: while at university, she was headhunted to be a headhunter.
It’s easy to see why. Ms. Blaney is bright, bubbly, and has a calming presence that makes it easy and comfortable to chat with her. But minutes into a conversation, it’s immediately apparent that she is also driven, focused, and gets results.
This month, Ms. Blaney is being recognized as a BC Business 30 Under 30 winner for her unique approach to recruitment with Envol Strategies and her incredible community contributions. As with many brilliant businesses, Envol started in response to a problem. Ms. Blaney’s first foray into recruitment exposed a significant gap in the industry. “Some of the best companies that we worked with had a really hard time getting people excited about working for them. They didn’t invest in marketing themselves as an employer, so candidates looking for opportunities would never find them simply because they didn’t know they existed,” she explains.
And so, Envol was born. “We work with clients holistically to develop their employer brand and help them market themselves as an employer,” explains Ms. Blaney. Essentially, Envol is applying the tried and true tactics deployed by sales and marketing veterans to people and recruitment. “We help businesses find what it is that they’re all about and what they offer as an employer. They already have an identity – we just help them to understand and define it.”
So, calling Envol a recruitment agency is a bit of an oversimplification. “We’re not solving symptoms; we’re solving problems,” Ms. Blaney explains. “For example, high turnover is often a symptom of much bigger issues. It might be that you’re hiring the wrong people, it could be that you’re not offering the right development opportunities, that you’re not listening to your people, or that you are, quite frankly, not a great employer. Or, it could be that high turnover is just a part of your environment and that’s fine; you just need to manage that accordingly with how you onboard people to get them up to speed quickly.”
Today, just 18 months later, Envol is hitting it out of the park. “To date, we’ve helped clients integrate recruitment technology that has facilitated booking over 18,000 interviews with candidates. We’ve directly saved our clients over a million dollars in placement fees by providing them with alternate solutions. And, we’ve helped clients scale their business to achieve their growth goals,” she says.
Breaking new ground often calls for new tools, and sometimes you have to create the ones you need. “We’re already building another company, a technology platform that uses artificial intelligence to help companies with talent acquisition and recruitment,” she says, beaming. “Essentially, we’re helping businesses automate the functional, administrative elements of hiring through AI, which is more accurate, predictive, and can actually help quantify success and employee performance and identify what that looks like in future candidates.”
Ms. Blaney still isn’t stopping there. For her 30th birthday, she will be launching a new charitable platform, PHIL.gives. Ms. Blaney was raised in a family that was incredibly focused on social impact, and quietly so. She started volunteering at a young age, and served as co-chair for four out of five years of Vancouver Aquarium’s Toast to the Coast. During her leadership, the event saw a $75,000 increase in proceeds. Over the course of five years, Ms. Blaney also helped raise more than $1 million for various charities in Vancouver.
Passion was a flame that grew into a fire. “I wanted to give people like me – young professionals – the opportunity to engage with non-profits and philanthropy in a safe and comfortable environment,” she explains. Ms. Blaney wanted to break down the barriers to giving. PHIL.gives is a quarterly fundraising event: three charities have a chance to pitch, Dragon’s Den-style, and at the end of the evening, everyone gets to vote on which organization will get to take home the pot.
“What I love about the Club is that it’s a recognized place in the city to meet clients and engage with people professionally. It’s great unintentional networking – it’s not contrived, which is so refreshing.”
Ms. Blaney joined TCC in 2014. “What I love about the Club is that it’s a recognized place in the city to meet clients and engage with people professionally. It’s great unintentional networking – it’s not contrived, which is so refreshing,” she says. “The Club is also a great space to hold meetings and events.” In fact, Ms. Blaney and her husband Mr. Hussein Samnani hosted their engagement party at TCC.
Despite Ms. Blaney’s extensive list of achievements, she is incredibly humble. “My parents taught us to do things because they’re the right things to do, and not for recognition. That’s been huge in my life for sure, and a guiding principle for how I dedicate my time,” she says. Her father owns a successful trucking company, and her mother “retired” from her role as stay-home parent to six children at age 50 to become a midwife with her own practice and seats on multiple advisory boards. “I’m lucky to have been exposed to business young. Dinner table conversations revolved around business. My parents gave us the vernacular to engage in society that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. There were a lot of things I didn’t know as a kid, but I knew for sure that I loved business. I love it to my core. I just love solving problems.”
When Ms. Blaney was debating whether to start her own company, she was working in a corporate environment she described as safe, comfortable, and easy. “But Hussein gave me good advice; he said, ‘you have all the time in the world, but no time to waste.’ So basically, go and start.” She did, and safe to say, it’s only just the beginning for Ms. Blaney, and the future is bright.
