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Picture of Meghan M. Biro

Meghan M. Biro

Like most people who gravitate toward HR, Meghan loves people. Early in her career, Meghan realized she was a rare people person who understood tech. As a high tech recruiter, Meghan worked with hundreds of companies, from early-stage startups to global brands like Microsoft, IBM and Google. Meghan founded TalentCulture in 2008 to lead a conversation about the future of work with her peers in HR and leadership. These days, she is consistently included in lists of top online influencers and writes about HR tech and talent management at Forbes.com, SHRM.org and a variety of other media outlets. Her career background spans recruiting, tech, marketing, branding and digital media. As an HR tech analyst, author and brand strategist, Meghan is sought after for her ideas about the future of work, is a regularly featured speaker at global business conferences, and serves on boards for leading HR and technology brands.
Picture of Meghan M. Biro

Meghan M. Biro

Like most people who gravitate toward HR, Meghan loves people. Early in her career, Meghan realized she was a rare people person who understood tech. As a high tech recruiter, Meghan worked with hundreds of companies, from early-stage startups to global brands like Microsoft, IBM and Google. Meghan founded TalentCulture in 2008 to lead a conversation about the future of work with her peers in HR and leadership. These days, she is consistently included in lists of top online influencers and writes about HR tech and talent management at Forbes.com, SHRM.org and a variety of other media outlets. Her career background spans recruiting, tech, marketing, branding and digital media. As an HR tech analyst, author and brand strategist, Meghan is sought after for her ideas about the future of work, is a regularly featured speaker at global business conferences, and serves on boards for leading HR and technology brands.

How Facebook Is Recruiting Exceptional Talent Today

Facebook, the largest social network with 1.55 billion monthly active users, is consistently one of the top employers in America. Don’t you wonder how a company with nearly 13,000 employees and 49 offices around the world manage to lure top talent year after year? Let’s examine Facebook’s magnetic appeal and see how we can all learn from it to recruit exceptional talent. Facebook Recruitment Relies on Fit, Unique Tactics, and the Ability to Change Fit comes first at Facebook; if you don’t share common values that drive the rest of the team, it probably won’t work out. “We want to make

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The Real-World Implications Of Workplace And Cyber Bullying

I remember my first encounter with a bully – we’ll call him Paul Bugbee. He chased a neighborhood friend of mine home from school for two years, shouting destructive words, despite his parents’ pleas with the school and Bugbee’s parents. What changed the pattern? My brother, who even at the tender age of nine was more than up to the task of making sure Bugbee regretted his impulse to bully.  Even with my brother’s help, though, the humiliation of being bullied took years to overcome. Fast forward to 2016, and bullying is alive and well. We’ve all read news stories about bullying,

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Dear Leaders: Please Revisit Your Corporate Culture

What makes a great leader? Is it the capacity to inspire loyalty, the ability to articulate a vision, emotional intelligence, or persuasiveness? Does a company need a leader whose values are culture-based, or one whose values are aligned with the needs of shareholders and the marketplace? Maybe it depends, which is why it’s so important for job seekers and future employees to do a bit of digging to ensure the companies they’re interviewing with holds values compatible with their own. Often this boils down to trust. Plain and simple. And yet oh so complex. Searching out the value structure of a company culture is

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Communication Equals Love: A Missing Link In Your Hiring Process

Many of us in HR and Leadership circles – I am among them – bemoan the negativity that springs up during the process of recruiting employees, affecting positive candidate experience and your employer brand.  One would think companies would have a stake in ensuring candidates, whether they are hired or not, have a positive experience with the hiring company and your recruiting process. Others might point out that not getting the job is in itself enough to sour the candidate on the company if he or she is passed over. Yet studies have shown even unsuccessful applicants retain a positive experience of

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#WorkTrends Preview: Maintaining Productivity in a Distracting Work Environment

There is a massive trend right now in the enterprise toward open office environments, and understanding how that trend impacts employees is important. IT should understand the distraction challenges that employees face in different environments. In addition, mobile workforces now face distractions in a wide variety of other environments. On next week’s #WorkTrends show we will be joined by Jennifer Adams, Head of Global Collaboration Markets for Plantronics. We will discuss devices, such as noise canceling headphones, and other emerging technologies that are having a positive impact on productivity, careers, and quality of life. Jen will also help us unpack who

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#WorkTrends Recap: Transforming Businesses into Digital Dragons

As we get farther into the digital transformation, more businesses are turning into digital dragons. So, what’s a dragon, you ask? It’s an agile company fit to adapt, innovate and thrive even in disruptive times. The ever-popular unicorn tends to rely on risky and experimental business models. Dragons, however, are established companies that continue to leverage their original startup mentality to systematically innovate their way to profitability. Built on purposeful reinvention, scalable market dominance, and a commitment to long-term success, dragons are increasing in popularity. During this week’s #WorkTrends show, we were joined by author and CEO Daniel Newman, who recently

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Talent Analytics: A Crystal Ball For Your Workforce?

We’ve been listening to the buzz around Big Data and Talent Analytics for a couple of years now. It has been nearly three years to the day that I wrote about why Big Data is HR’s new BFF. It has a lot of potential, Cloud-sized trove of information that, with the right algorithms and filters – can be turned into actionable insight. The existence of these new streams of verifiable information about potential hires adds a hefty dose of science to one facet of business that, surprisingly, has often felt like more like an art. Sure, the resume looks great and the

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HR Leadership: Proving the Value of the Talent Function

Success for a business of any size hinges on its people and their ability to make things happen. Top talent is expensive — and wasted if it doesn’t move your business forward. Human resources leaders need to understand how the talent function can impact an entire organization and why human capital is a company’s most valuable asset. But if they can’t prove that significance to the rest of the leadership team, they’ll struggle to get the support they need. A well-rounded recruitment program isn’t a bonus; it’s a crucial part of meeting goals. Here’s a look at how HR leadership can prove

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Crowdsourced Technology Is Putting Workplace Leaders And H.R. In The Driver’s Seat

There is something to be said about controlling your own destiny and making your own rules. It’s the reason our workplace has seen a huge shift in the number of workers exiting the marketplace seeking adventure, opportunity and the ability to start a revolution even in the workplace. Over the past 10 years, the startup world has grown out of a need to revolutionize a product, marketplace or industry that was stagnant, moving slowly or failing to adjust to it’s customers needs. This is what the technology revolution is all about. It’s the lure of Silicon Valley and its sister technology

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The Onboarding Experience Matters To Your Future Employees

We talked last week about the need for HR and leaders to be on the look-out for employee potential – a real-time alignment between the business’s needs, new employees in the onboarding and hiring process, and existing employees who may have unrecognized potential. So it’s natural to go back and look at the first piece of the puzzle – onboarding – to see where companies can improve an employee’s first days and weeks on the job with the goal of creating long-term employee engagement and growth. As with so much else in the world of work, long-term employee engagement tracks back to the right

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How To Succeed At Real-Time Talent Alignment

Everyone talks about employee turnover, but does anyone know the real size of the problem? According to a very comprehensive survey from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), nearly 50 percent of hires at a senior level from outside an organization leave within 18 months. That’s a spectacular failure rate, and one no organization can really afford to sustain, over and over again. Guess what? This still seems to be the case today. And employee engagement rates are still not where they should be globally. So why do so many organizations and leaders look for talent outside, rather than promoting from

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#WorkTrends Preview: Transforming Businesses into Dragons

So, what’s a dragon, you ask? It’s an agile company fit to adapt, innovate and thrive even in disruptive times. The ever-popular unicorn tends to rely on risky and experimental business models. Dragons, however, are established companies that continue to leverage their original startup mentality to systematically innovate their way to profitability. Built on purposeful reinvention, scalable market dominance, and a commitment to long-term success, dragons are increasing in popularity. Come learn more about what it takes to be a dragon from author Daniel Newman, who recently co-wrote the popular business book, “Building Dragons: Digital Transformation in the Experience Economy.” Transforming

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People Analytics: Tapping into a Powerful Resource

HR has relied on the use of data and analytics for years but has only recently begun to embrace people analytics. Defined as using a data-driven approach to inform your people practices, programs and processes, people analytics is a powerful resource for HR. After all, human capital is the source of all business success—it makes sense to analyze people to understand and even predict enterprise performance. Recently, HR departments have begun to leverage this powerful tool – and it’s changing the game for many businesses. HR today is all about understanding people and predicting their actions and responses. And, as Josh

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#WorkTrends Recap: Negotiation 101: Never Split The Difference

Negotiation is a vital life skill for anyone. We negotiate every day whether we know it or not. People still are unsure of their negotiating abilities. During this week’s #WorkTrends show, we were joined by former FBI Lead International Hostage Negotiator Chris Voss. Chris helped us explore and understand the art of negotiation. The podcast and Twitter conversation applied Chris Voss’ experience as a negotiator and author to the world of work. We learned why saying, “you’re right” and “yes” are at the root of the vast majority of misunderstandings in the workplace today. Here are a few other key points

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It Takes Talent To Become A Top Recruiter

Job seekers these days have few advantages when applying for jobs if they don’t have an inside contact to smooth the path. The best recruiters make it easy to connect and make it possible to forge a working relationship with the brand. A recruiters job is to find top talent, yes, but a big part of that job is defending the brand against bad hires – think of Zappos’ practice of buying out employees who don’t “fit” quickly. And they continue to innovate. Zappos’ is currently doing a great job of spotlighting their recruiters. A brand win, win. This means, as with in-the-trenches HR,

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Prevent Employee Burnout With These Five Tips

Stress kills. And sadly, this is not hyperbole. Job-related pressures are among the biggest sources of stress for American adults, and it’s getting progressively worse, year over year. Chronic, high levels of job stress can lead to increased rates of heart attack, hypertension, chronic pain, as well as other disorders. Every industry has its unique stressors. But, whether you’re a doctor or a delivery person, work-related stress shares “across the board” common factors—a check list, if you will—of work related triggers. The World Health Organization describes it like this: Work-related stress is the response people may have when presented with work demands

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4 Ways To Be A More Resilient Leader

Sundays are Breakfast with music time (Could be Arcade Fire, or Keith Urban, or Tamar Braxton, or Mogwai, or any variety of other eclectic stuff I listen to every day, but those are stories for another day). This week I’ve been thinking a lot about what it takes to be a resilient person. Sunday morning, there was Ringo from the Beatles, belting away “I’ll get by with a little help from my friends”. What song could be a better anthem for resiliency? Why resiliency? Last week I wrote about employer brand and candidate experience. Subsequent conversations with friends, family and clients made

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Your Employer Brand Owns The Candidate Experience

By now we’ve all seen the October 2013 Gallup report on employee engagement, The State of the American Workplace. Words that come to mind when I re-read the report:  bummer, disheartening, bad news.  But I also wonder: what exactly did we expect? Look around you, managers, and you’ll see disengaged employees with the Zombie stare, some with the sour look of the disappointed, a few with the overly positive, can-do smile, trying desperately to make things work. A lot of this is the fault of a poor connection between managers and line-of-business employees and it inevitably trickles into a broken recruitment and communication process

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#WorkTrends Preview: Negotiation 101: Never Split The Difference

Negotiation is an important skill for any professional. Career advancement often depends on negotiation, but most people are uncomfortable or unsure of their negotiating abilities. During this #WorkTrends, former FBI Lead International Hostage Negotiator Chris Voss will help us explore and understand the art of negotiation. Come learn why saying, “you’re right” and “yes” are at the root of the vast majority of misunderstandings in the workplace today. This exciting podcast and Twitter conversation will apply Chris Voss’ experience as a negotiator and author to the world of work. Do you want to know why “That’s right” is the gold standard

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#WorkTrends Recap: Modern Compensation: Putting People First

When companies start to work on their compensation plans, they often do so with spreadsheets and formulas, far removed from either the people impacted by compensation or the organizational objectives. Modern compensation brings people front and center in the pay business, creating a win/win situation between organizations and individuals. On today’s  #WorkTrends show, we were joined by special guest Tim Low from PayScale. We discussed the idea of putting people first in compensation plans and why that makes a difference in business. Here are a few key points Tim shared: How to use modern compensation practices to engage, motivate and reward

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Create A Vocabulary That Inspires Employee Engagement

It’s official. Employee engagement is the new black. I’ve been writing and thinking a lot about it lately, as have others. The very notion of how leaders and employees engage has slowly morphed away from ‘companies have to do this because employees want it’ to ‘companies have to do this even though employees don’t trust it 100 percent’. I’m not saying employees don’t seek engagement; I’m simply saying many have reasons to doubt corporate engagement programs as they stand today. We are still in a process of finding what really works. This revelation came after I’d read a series of interesting

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The Power of Professional Prospecting

HR: Why Social Media Policy Matters More Than Ever

Social media has been around for a while now. In fact, social media applications have never been more mainstream than they are today. Facebook, not surprisingly, is the big winner, with nearly three-quarters of American adults liking and posting and sharing daily—a number that jumps to a staggering 82 percent when you pinpoint the 18–29-year-old age range. Then you have the rapid growth of the visual-sharing social platforms: Video is on a fast climb to the top when it comes to social media popularity, and if you haven’t already, you should familiarize yourself with Instagram Video, Facebook Live, and Snapchat. So, you would assume most

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5 Ways To Reinvent Your Recruiting Strategy

A client of mine is a multinational company with a vibrant, fast paced culture has been through the ringer lately. We talked about the talent issues they are dealing with, which were precipitated by losing two big accounts. The hit to income and profits distracted the CEO, and eventually, after months, led to a restructuring of the business to focus on different verticals. Suddenly everyone was tasked with business development, even junior staff. Needless to say, not everyone is comfortable with sales, so it didn’t go very well. Things got worse. The loss of revenue and shift in focus to new

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Employee Engagement Is A Leadership Commitment

It seems like so much of what I do these days seems to revolve around storytelling and brands. I thought it would be useful to look at employee engagement through the lens of the five Ws – who, what, when, where, why – and one H – how – to frame up how companies can do a better job of mastering employee engagement. Employee engagement is center stage in HR and The World of Work right now for good reason. Engaged employees are better producers, they’re more committed to the organization, and they are in it for the relative long haul. One study

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Recognize, Reward And Engage Your Multi-Generational Workforce

I was at the Genius Bar the other day soaking up the smarts and getting an introduction to the benefits of backing up data before updating to a new OS. As is so often the case at the Apple store, I found myself working with people from several generations. They seemed to be collaborating with relative harmony and purpose to ensure my data wasn’t lost forever, they seemed for the most part happy, and they seemed engaged in their jobs – from the store concierge (no, not a greeter, and not a Baby Boomer either) to the flight deck controller at the Genius Bar,

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