Trevor Vas

Organisations must rethink how they measure success, the capabilities of their talent teams, their operating model, their use of workforce and market intelligence, and how AI is changing the work itself.

• The central question, as they put it, is no longer "Who do we hire?" but "How should this work get done?"
• That reframing separates advisory work from strategic recruitment in their account.

In an update to a talent advisory white paper, Vas notes that the first version, co-published with Simon Townsend three years earlier, drew more than 400 downloads.

• Version two adds input from Martin Warren, lists the five areas organisations must rethink, and covers why talent advisory has struggled to gain traction, a SWOT analysis of where it stands, and seven questions for talent leaders.
• They describe it as a practical update rather than an academic paper.

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They argue that talent acquisition is best placed to lead that decision because it already sits closest to how workforce needs are translated into hiring. They present this as the next step beyond talent advisory, not a relabelling of it.

Vas sets out the prediction in the updated white paper and repeats it in a post gathering the advisory article series in one place. The post also includes "Talent Advisory in 2026," which they say explores how advisory is becoming less about strategic recruitment and more about helping organisations navigate a changing landscape.

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Organisations assume everyone else has already made the change, making it easier to defer the harder internal work of measurement, capability and operating model. They link the gap directly to how success is measured and how the function is structured.

In the updated white paper, Vas makes the argument with a deliberately blunt comparison: "Talent Advisory is a little like teenage sex.

• Everybody is talking about it, everybody thinks everyone else is doing it, but very few organisations are doing it well."
• The post links that gap to how organisations measure success, the capability of their talent teams, their operating model, their use of workforce and market intelligence, and how AI is changing the work.

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They connect agentic AI and automation to internal mobility, skills-based hiring, borderless talent and AI agents working alongside recruiters, and describe the current task as keeping the human in the loop. The practical question is how a talent function should decide the mix of people and agents, not simply whether to adopt a tool.

The advisory article series Vas points readers to includes "The 3 Attributes TA Functions Need to Solve the Automation Conundrum" and a piece on using ChatGPT to assess candidate inferred skills in support of internal mobility.

• In the ATC retrospective, they describe the talent pool as having moved from a database of passive candidates to internal mobility, skills-based hiring, borderless talent and AI agents working alongside recruiters.
• They say talent acquisition has shifted from filling roles to advising the business on its workforce.

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Their account of the event also makes a case about where expertise now sits: the first conference brought in keynote speakers from overseas, while the current Australia-and-New Zealand-led programme reflects a more mature local market. The 2026 programme carries the advisory and workforce-planning themes they write about.

Vas measures the community's scale by noting that ATC regularly draws more than 400 people, online events grew to around 1,200 during the COVID years, and the event has recorded roughly 10,000 attendances over 20 years. The same post names conference managers and directors, including Karen Ly, in the role since 2009, and Jo Vohland, as well as sponsors who have backed the event since its first year.

Vas co-founded ATC in 2006 with Kevin Wheeler, Catherine Vas and Horace Chai; Martin Warren joined soon after.

• The first event ran in 2007 under the theme "Dip Your Toe into the Talent Pool."
• Twenty years on, they contrast the early reliance on international keynotes — including Gerry Crispin, Glen Cathey, Bill Boorman and Chris Hoyt — with a programme led by ANZ practitioners including Fiona Lund, Edan Haddock, Derek Del Simone, Robyn Hill, Marrin-Boyd Andrews, Tosh Onishi and James Witcombe.
• They note that recent themes have shifted, and that ATC2026 UPLIFT, running 13–14 October at Fed Square in Melbourne, covers agentic AI in talent acquisition, moving talent upstream into workforce advisory, skills and internal mobility, and proving talent acquisition's commercial value.

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The ideas are presented through jointly published frameworks, named contributors and posts that often ask readers a direct question or tag practitioners for their views. The arguments come with working resources — white papers, article trails and conference sessions — rather than standing as opinion alone.

Vas credits Simon Townsend and Martin Warren on the talent advisory white paper and article series, and says the articles draw on client work across varied industries.

• Responding to a Martin Warren blog that walks through a real-life talent advisory scenario at strategic and tactical levels, they write that it prompted them to consider whether current talent acquisition professionals would be equipped to take on the scenario.
• They invite named practitioners including Craig Williams, Sarah Hurren, Amanda Polson, Andy Cross and David Manaster to comment.
• The advisory post asks readers whether their organisation has moved beyond talking about talent advisory and changed how workforce decisions are made.

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Start here for the clearest account of the main community platform and the long-run argument behind it.

Trevor Vas traces the Australasian Talent Conference from its first event in March 2007, themed "Dip Your Toe into the Talent Pool," when the keynote came from a casting director who recruited 4,000 extras for Lord of the Rings and King Kong.

• The post names early international speakers such as Gerry Crispin, Glen Cathey, Bill Boorman and Chris Hoyt, then contrasts them with a current programme led by ANZ practitioners including Fiona Lund, Edan Haddock, Derek Del Simone, Robyn Hill, Marrin-Boyd Andrews, Tosh Onishi and James Witcombe.
• They describe how the meaning of the talent pool has changed from a database of passive candidates to internal mobility, skills-based hiring, borderless talent and AI agents working alongside recruiters, and how TA has moved from filling roles to advising the business on its workforce.
• The post also records ATC's founding in 2006 by Kevin Wheeler, Catherine Vas, Horace Chai and Trevor, later additions such as Martin Warren, and event scale: more than 400 people regularly, around 1,200 online during COVID, and roughly 10,000 attendances over 20 years.
• It closes with ATC2026 UPLIFT at Fed Square, Melbourne, on 13–14 October, focused on agentic AI in TA, moving talent upstream into workforce advisory, skills and internal mobility, and proving TA's commercial value.

For brands planning a campaign

For a recruitment technology company targeting enterprise talent teams, this post offers a ready-made evidence base for a collaboration on how TA work is being redefined. A webinar or thought-leadership piece could use Vas's timeline to frame the shift from transactional recruiting to workforce advisory and agentic AI, with ATC2026 as a live audience and community proof point.

Start here for Vas's central framework and prediction about workforce configuration.

Vas argues that the problem with talent advisory is not awareness but adoption: organisations understand the term, yet very few have changed how they work.

• They note that a white paper co-published with Simon Townsend three years earlier received more than 400 downloads, and that version 2 includes input from Martin Warren.
• The post lists what organisations must rethink: how they measure success, the capability of talent teams, their operating model, their use of workforce and market intelligence, and how AI is changing the work itself.
• Vas introduces "Workforce Configuration" as the next evolution: helping organisations determine the best combination of Build, Buy, Borrow and Bot before defaulting to recruitment, with TA best placed to carry out that function.
• The updated paper covers why talent advisory struggled to gain traction, AI's impact on workforce decisions, a SWOT analysis, and seven practical questions for talent leaders.

For brands planning a campaign

This is the strongest conceptual anchor for a campaign aimed at enterprise talent teams moving from transactional recruiting to advisory and workforce planning. A recruitment technology platform could build a webinar or gated thought-leadership collaboration around the Build, Buy, Borrow and Bot framework, using Vas's adoption-versus-awareness argument to avoid generic advisory messaging.

Start here for the practical article trail Vas recommends to TA teams.

Vas responds to TA leaders looking to talent advisory as a way to stay relevant and add transferable value.

• The post lists practical resources created with Martin Warren and Simon Townsend: "Talent Advisory in 2026," a white paper on moving from talent acquisition to talent advisory, an article on understanding a TA team's readiness to become talent advisors, "Collaboration: The Real Seat at the Table," "The 3 Attributes TA Functions Need to Solve the Automation Conundrum," and a piece on using ChatGPT to assess candidate inferred skills for internal mobility.
• They say the articles are based on client work across varied industries.

For brands planning a campaign

This post shows that Vas's advisory material runs from strategic framing to implementation detail, including readiness, collaboration, automation and inferred skills. A technology partner can map its product or service to those specific implementation stages rather than pitching a broad platform message.

Start here for a signal of the collaborative, scenario-driven discussion they value.

Vas endorses a Martin Warren blog that walks through a real-life talent advisory scenario at both strategic and tactical levels.

• They say it made them consider whether current talent acquisition professionals are equipped to handle that scenario, and invite named practitioners to comment.
• The post shows Vas publicly engaging with scenario-based advisory content and convening discussion around it.

For brands planning a campaign

A campaign collaboration could use the same scenario-led format: take an enterprise talent team through a realistic workforce decision at strategic and tactical levels, then invite practitioners to respond. This suits a webinar or roundtable more than a static article.

Start here for a short orientation to the current event and its Uplift theme.

A brief invitation to ATC2026 frames the event theme, Uplift, as a response to an industry and capability set being challenged by the economy and technology.

• Vas says the theme is designed to help people thrive and enjoy the journey.
• The post confirms the event framing and their role in promoting it.

For brands planning a campaign

Useful as event-channel evidence for a launch or sponsorship conversation, this post works best alongside the more substantive ATC history and talent advisory posts.

They say becoming a talent advisor requires organisations to rethink how they measure success, the capability of their talent teams, their operating model, their use of workforce and market intelligence, and how AI changes the work itself. The central question is not "who do we hire?" but "how should this work get done?"

Vas and Simon Townsend wrote a talent advisory white paper, now in a second version with input from Martin Warren; more than 400 downloads are cited for the first edition. Follow-on articles cover team readiness, collaboration, automation and AI-assisted skills assessment.

For brands planning a campaign

A recruitment technology vendor making this argument should seek collaboration on the advisory case, not a product demo. Vas already publishes the framework and vocabulary, so a webinar or co-authored piece would work best on the operational question their material keeps returning to: what has to change inside a talent function before it can advise the business.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3

They say talent acquisition is the function best placed to make that decision, and frame workforce configuration as the next step beyond talent advisory.

Vas presents this as a prediction in the updated white paper and repeats it in an article round-up alongside a SWOT analysis of where talent advisory sits and seven questions for talent leaders.

For brands planning a campaign

This is the strongest hook for a platform that sells skills intelligence or workforce planning. A session or written piece could test the build-buy-borrow-bot sequence against real enterprise cases, with Vas supplying the decision framework and the vendor supplying data or tooling.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

They treat the gap as a change-management problem rather than a terminology problem, tying it to how success is measured and how the function is structured.

For brands planning a campaign

Vendors can use this as a starting frame for enterprise content: not 'why you need our product' but 'why the last five years of advisory talk did not change how workforce decisions get made.' Vas is a credible voice for that critique because they publish the framework, making a sponsored debate or panel a better fit than a one-sided white paper.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The first event ran in 2007 under the theme "Dip Your Toe into the Talent Pool."

• ATC regularly draws more than 400 people, its online events grew to around 1,200 during the COVID years, and Vas counts roughly 10,000 attendances over 20 years.
• ATC2026 is scheduled for 13-14 October at Fed Square in Melbourne under the theme UPLIFT, with 400-plus talent leaders covering agentic AI in talent acquisition, moving talent upstream into workforce advisory, skills and internal mobility, and proving the commercial value of talent acquisition.

For brands planning a campaign

For a platform vendor, ATC offers a concrete activation route: sponsorship, a session, or one of the peer discussion groups running across both days. The 2026 agenda already matches the advisory-and-workforce-planning positioning a vendor would want, so the pitch is alignment with an existing program, not inventing a new event.

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They say the program is now led by practitioners from Australia and New Zealand, naming Fiona Lund, Edan Haddock, Derek Del Simone, Robyn Hill, Marrin-Boyd Andrews, Tosh Onishi and James Witcombe, and read that shift as evidence that the local market has matured.

Vas credits specific local and international speakers, but a brand would need to ask which of them might take part in a new campaign; the 2026 session line-up was not available for this section.

For brands planning a campaign

A vendor entering the ANZ market can draw on ATC's regional credibility rather than import a global name. Pair an international product story with a local practitioner who can test it on stage or in a written piece.

Examples: Source 1

Vas links agentic AI and automation to internal mobility, skills-based hiring, borderless talent and the idea of AI agents working alongside recruiters, framing the current question as how to keep the human in the loop. One article listed under their advisory series covers using ChatGPT to assess candidate inferred skills and support internal mobility.

For brands planning a campaign

A vendor selling AI in talent should avoid the generic efficiency pitch and take the workforce-design angle Vas uses: what the mix of people and agents should look like, and how a talent function decides. A joint session on that decision, with a practical case, would match Vas's current interests.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3

They co-author with Simon Townsend and Martin Warren, thank sponsors and a long-running event team, and publicly tag practitioners when seeking their views. Their response to a Martin Warren blog on a live talent advisory scenario is short but specific: Vas highlights the strategic and tactical levels of the scenario, asks how current talent acquisition professionals would be equipped to take it on, and invites named practitioners to comment.

The formats are a short white paper described as practical rather than academic, a series of linked articles, a conference program, and short LinkedIn posts that credit collaborators and ask readers a direct question.

The post responding to Martin Warren is brief, so it shows what Vas values in a practitioner scenario rather than a detailed position. Ask for the full blog and white paper texts to assess the argument in depth.

For brands planning a campaign

A partner should expect to publish with named co-authors and have the work quoted and discussed rather than controlled. The best fit is a practical paper or article series with a clear framework and an open question at the end, not a tightly scripted brand asset.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3

They write about “our agendas” and the 20th ATC event in 2026, and thank sponsors and attendees. Ask for their current ownership share.

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Buntin’s post on accountability says TA earns a place at the strategy table by owning outcomes, providing real market intelligence and operating as a full business partner. That echoes Vas’s shift from hiring to advisory and workforce planning.

Buntin’s work pairs an interview with a named TA leader and a look at manufacturing’s sector perception problem, then turns to accountability, governance and global consistency. Vas builds and publishes a named framework, moving from talent advisory to workforce configuration, backed by co-authored white papers and a conference programme.

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Carlson says recruiting drives revenue, that time-to-fill, cost-per-hire and requisition counts are insufficient measures, and that workforce planning beats requisition management. Vas makes a similar case for replacing transactional recruiting with advisory work.

Carlson writes from the operator’s side, sharing numbered lessons on building and scaling TA functions and making a metrics-first case framed around revenue risk. Vas’s work is framework- and community-led, centred on advisory white papers and a regional conference, with a broader reach into AI and the build-buy-borrow-bot mix.

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Stallings promotes and speaks at TalentNet Live in Austin, while Vas co-founded and programs the Australasian Talent Conference. Each uses a conference to convene talent acquisition practitioners and carry ideas into a programme.

Stallings promotes conference sessions on leading through change without burning out, with session line-ups and discount codes. Vas connects an event to a published research position, an article series and a regional market shift.

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The two posts make the case that accountability — owning outcomes, mistakes and difficult conversations — earns talent acquisition a seat at the strategy table, and that global consistency and governance across regions can be built without flattening local nuance.

• The second post offers a specific sector example: manufacturing's perception problem among early-career candidates, with concrete moves such as rebranding the work, mobile-first apply processes, transparent pay, and high-school or apprenticeship pipelines.
• This suits a webinar or paper aimed at helping a TA leader win the internal argument for a role in workforce decisions, or reaching an audience where the obstacle is how an industry is perceived rather than how a team is structured.

Buntin's posts report on someone else's interview and a SHRM article rather than publish a framework, leaving a vendor to carry more of the content load and with less to anchor a co-authored asset to.

• Trevor Vas's posts do not point to an Australia and New Zealand audience, a conference platform or a research paper, and they do not make the build-buy-borrow-bot argument.
• The trade-off is a sharper internal-credibility message, a ready-made framework and an established event channel.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The posts argue that structure enables speed, workforce planning beats requisition management, the right metrics create accountability with leaders, and hiring managers are the biggest variable in whether outcomes hold.

• The second post goes further: hiring speed affects revenue velocity, time-to-productivity affects customer outcomes, talent gaps carry an opportunity cost, and TA leaders should be able to answer questions such as what revenue is at risk if they do not hire.
• For a campaign session aimed at justifying budget for advisory work at the top of the house, rather than explaining how an advisory function operates day to day, Carlson is the stronger choice.

The posts offer a lessons-learned list and a revenue argument, not a published framework or research asset.

• They do not point to a white paper, article series, conference platform, or an ANZ-specific or event audience for a vendor to build a co-branded session around.
• Carlson would sharpen the commercial case, while the operating-model territory and audience concentration needed for the campaign would need to come from elsewhere.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The two posts promote TalentNet Live in Austin on 13 March 2026, where Stallings co-leads a session called Leading Change Without Burning Out with Jim Durbin.

• They also list a practitioner line-up including Craig Fisher, David Armano, Elaine Orler and Jess Miller-Merrell.
• This suits a vendor seeking event-based reach, a people-side theme around change and burnout, and a ready-made panel of speakers to share a stage with in a market the campaign does not otherwise touch.

Both posts promote an event and a discount offer, showing a speaking slot rather than a published framework, paper or method a vendor could co-author.

• The theme is change leadership and wellbeing, the market is the United States, and the posts do not discuss advisory, workforce-planning or workforce-configuration material.
• Choosing this alternative trades an ANZ enterprise advisory focus for a US event audience and a different subject; the vendor would need to bring its own content spine.

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