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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.

Yes, Recruiting Is Retention: #TChat Recap

When I talk to other recruiters and ask them what job #1 is, they’ll say it’s recruiting. And when I ask them where talent retention fits in their job descriptions, I often get a blank stare — or a slow head shake. But yesterday, during TalentCulture #TChat, I saw many nods of assent. We really enjoyed the topic, by the way: Putting recruiting and retention together is important to finding and growing outstanding teams of talent for employing organizations. Not everyone will agree with me on this notion, but who is responsible for retaining talent? In talent pro circles, the dynamics

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Recruiting is Retention: Yes or No? #TChat Preview

Hey, folks — by the time you read this I’ll be headed to sunny San Diego for ERE Expo 2012 Spring, a longstanding and educational conference put on by the folks over at ERE. I’ll be shaking hands with, sharing meals with and talking to an awful lot of recruiters. And if there’s one stance sure to get recruiters talking, it’s the one we’ve chosen for this week’s “#TChat, the World of Work“: Is recruiting retention? Of course not, some scoff. Obviously a recruiter’s job is to find the right fit, to place the right candidate in the right position. …right? Recruiting, at

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Community Paradigm: It's All About YOU!

The Fact of the Matter Every community develops their own definition of what matters. For some communities,  it’s motivated by a shared interest or a commitment to a specific change. For others, it’s professional best practices that can create a unified purpose. Some communities are even defined solely by the outcome of their environment stemming from completely circumstantial situations such as geography or an unforeseen event. When it comes to TalentCulture, relevance is not merely the static entity of a group of people who associate themselves with the World of Work.  TalentCulture is a space to recognize and redesign; an evolving

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Let's Get Engaged: #TChat Recap

It seems apt that our subhead for last night’s #TChat was “sticky” employees. …most of the attendees started out talking about the unseasonably warm weather and truthfully, the chat just heated up from there. After all, like so many noticed, getting it wrong is the easy part: A1: Employee recognition and engagement have remained the same in that most companies still do horribly with them both 🙂 #tchat (via Stephen Van Vreede) It’s true, many companies are lacking when it comes to engaging and retaining the employees they worked so hard to source and recruit. But we’re all in the world of

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Want Sticky Employees? Engage! #TChat Preview

When you think of employee engagement as practiced by many hiring leaders and organizations, does your mind flash to zombie movies? Yes? Well, you’re not alone. It turns out many managers can turn their employees into the walking dead — not through malice aforethought, but simply by forgetting that employees need to feel engaged and recognized, part of a team of contributors whose talents truly make a difference. By inspiring and engaging, smart leaders create sticky employees. Some leaders try to slap a Band-Aid on the problem by having lots of staff meetings. Yawn. Invariably, nothing is settled or resolved at

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Crowdsource the Love of Lists with Listly

I’m excited about a new social application that my friend, Nick Kellet, is championing. Nick, who recently joined List.ly as co-founder, is fired up and taking names. An entrepreneur who reminds me always to create value through the organically formed TalentCulture community to date and far beyond, Nick is tuned in to the value of brand awareness. He is all about dreaming BIG. And he’s on a mission: to humanize brands. I’m on the same mission. Despite brands’ desperate forays into social media and creating social community, human context and values are withering everywhere. That’s because most of these attempts have been

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Welcome to the Freelance Nation: #TChat Preview

It’s been a long time coming, but it appears we now live in Freelance Nation, at least according to TIME Magazine, which in February announced we’d seen the end of the full-time job. Fast Company predicted this in 1997, and the New York Times chimed in on the topic in 2000, just in time for the dotcom bust. So it’s an old meme. Or is it? I’m a big fan of Freelance Nation for many reasons. This time, it’s now again, and I may just give the notion a Woot, Woot. Here, in the United States, freelancers now number some 22 million

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It's All In the Relationships: #TChat Recap

I know you. Yes, I do. We’ve never met in person, but we’ve known each other for years. We’ve commiserated, collaborated, agreed to disagree, shared moments of divine glory and debilitating sadness, done business together, referred business to each other, rejected business ideas, self-promoted, self-deprecated — We’ve never met in person, but I know you. Yes, I do. It’s easy to talk about how going to conferences gives us an opportunity to do business, to network, to learn–to relax and have fun and get out of the office. It also gives us the opportunity to meet in person those of whom

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The Social Talent Show: Step Right Up!

Talent shows — as a former choreographer and dancer, I have fond memories of them. No matter what the venue or purpose, putting on a talent show is at once challenging and rewarding. Pulling off a performance that wows the crowd and leaves you on top of the world is an incredible feeling. Everyone’s happy and excited for more. It’s a palpable sense of having served others, of having contributed to their joy. That’s why we can’t wait to launch the Social Talent Show. Teaming with UpMo, TalentCulture (#TChat) is putting on a series of interactive online events, and today, March 6, marks the

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IRL Networking Is Face-to-Face, not F2F: #TChat Preview

I go to conferences because I love people, the buzz of face-to-face and meeting people who inspire me. I’m not one these people that always wants to be the star of the show necessarily. If my role at a conference is to present and deliver you new and exciting information well then I’m in of course. I play this role on a regular basis and enjoy sharing with you very much. People who meet me IRL (in real life) often say I’m more interesting in person than I am “online” – This makes me laugh and it’s likely true. Many of

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Caught on Video — The Employee Lifecycle: #TChat Preview

Breaking news: Video is being used in the workplace for recruiting and talent management. It’s a technology that supports social collaboration and interaction, but do company leaders see it that way, too, or mostly as an aid to surveillance? Put differently, have attitudes progressed to view video as a two-way tool? And which leaders are using video to train employees who work from remote locations? After all, we are a global workforce. The answer: Yes, all of the above, and a lot more. Video is bigger than Lolcats on YouTube; it’s a legitimate business tool. Companies that are using tele-presence technologies to

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Digital Leaders Connect the Workplace Dots: #TChat Preview

It’s not a shiny-new phenomenon, that would be so boring. Breaking news… employees increasingly bring personal digital devices to work. Where once a company provided pagers and digital assistants – most often Blackberrys (OLD SCHOOL) – to a select few executives, field service and sales talent, today the workplace trend is for most employees to bring their own devices; from garden-variety cell phones to a plethora of smartphones, iPods, iPads and laptops. It’s not unheard of for people to bring in audio and gaming systems, which are often Internet-enabled (Rhapsody, Pandora, anyone?) This presents a challenge for leaders. Do you agree?

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If It Ain't Broke…Well, Maybe it IS Broke: #TChat Recap:

“Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.” — Arnold Bennett Not really what we want to hear when we don’t think anything’s broken. Leadership is one key to driving innovation “buy in”. It’s critical for us to stay close to the rapid developments happening in the social marketplace. Take marketing for example. You’re in business selling magical whizzie-whigs and you need to generate visibility and leads in order to sell them. And that’s what you do — brand marketing, content marketing, direct marketing, media buying, public relations, social media marketing — a complete

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Change is a Dirty Job, But Somebody's Got to Do It: #TChat Recap

They pushed the cleaning carts into the office hallway at the end of the day. They emptied trash cans, wiped down doorways and cleaned office windows, vacuumed the rugs and then moved on to the bathrooms, sharing something in Spanish and laughing. Right when I left for home and needed to use the bathroom. At first I was little angry, not at the ladies cleaning the bathrooms, but just at the timing of it all. Not too far away from home meant I could wait, but still. Then a little shame reddened my cheeks; these ladies did this everyday for who

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America's Dirty Jobs

Editor’s Note: Please read all the way to the bottom where we’ve got an exciting contest for you to enter! When was the last time you cleaned your house or did your own laundry, complete with folding and ironing? If you live in the burbs, do you mow your own lawn? Do you put out your trash for someone else to pick up? It’s likely someone else changes the oil in your car, unclogs your drains, and cleans your gutters. Turn the heat up – have you ever worked in an oil field? Call 911 – nope, probably served as a

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What Lies Beneath: The Why of HR Tech in 2012

Does technology emerge to fill a business need – say, serving customers better – or is technical innovation driven largely by cost pressures? Does a completely external, unknowable force influence the development of disruptive technologies? Was it foreseeable Jeff Bezos would disrupt big-box stores and consumer brands with a web site, when most brands had a web site? Was it predictable Steve Jobs would turn the music industry on its head with a digital music player, when everyone already had a Sony Walkman? I’ve been considering these questions because we are in a period of major disruption in HR technology. Of course,

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SmartRecruiters' Idealism Pays Off

Today, SmartRecruiters will announce a $5m Series A. Yesterday, TalentCulture  had a chance to sit down with Jerome Ternynck, founder and CEO of the Bay Area company, and talk about what this means for his team, the product and the industry moving forward. First up, the details about the round. Started in October, the “pretty competitive” round came to a head in December with by Mayfield, a top-tier Silicon Valley VC. “It’s a good environment for startups,” said Ternynck calmly. But, the entrepreneur explained, he thinks it’s a little more than that: “Free as a monetization model. This is something we are

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#TChat Communication Tools: You Can't Use Them ALL

What’s your morning communications, social media routine like? Mine’s getting more complicated every day. Personally, just email requires checking at least three accounts on three devices. At least one is Gmail, so I green-light Gmail chat and also Google+. Then it’s on to open a Skype window – many clients, friends reach me through Skype instant message. And to make sure I’m truly open, AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo Messenger are active, too. They’re a bit old-school, but a few of my clients still use them, so it’s not really negotiable in my world.  Then it’s on to Yammer to check

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Developing Leaders with Innovative Mindset: #TChat Preview

Leadership received a lot of lip service in 2011, but if employee attitudes and job satisfaction are any measure, there’s been precious little leadership in action. We have more work to do. Perhaps, because so many businesses were in survival mode, people who were running organizations believed that simply keeping their office door open was leadership enough and sufficient to retain their best talent. In reality, though, this attitude is more about strong management and employee engagement and retention, and less about just leading and inspiring. There is no one style of leadership that is most effective; people vary tremendously in their

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Annual Performance Reviews And New Year's Resolutions: #TChat Preview

Happy 2012. It’s a new year and gyms are crowded with earnest people committed to losing 20 pounds; bakery and donut sales are off; employees are promising themselves they’ll work smarter, not harder; forced cheeriness and politeness are on the rise. These behavior changes – most (Research tells us this btw. I hope yours last all year-WINK) of which will last about ten days – are part of the annual expiation we lump under the heading ‘New Year’s resolutions’. In the spirit of resolve, commitment and change typical of the New Year we chose performance reviews for this week’s TalentCulture #TChat. Annual

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Community Beginning the Social Revolution: #TChat Recap

Yesterday Time magazine named the collective “Protestor” as Person of the Year for 2011. Social technologies played a fairly significant role in fueling the worldwide protests and the dramatic “call for change” we’ve seen politically and economically. According to Time, “Social networks did not cause these movements, but they kept them alive and connected. Technology allowed us to watch, and it spread the virus of protest, but this was not a wired revolution; it was a human one, of hearts and minds, the oldest technology of all.” Last night during our latest #TChat Radio Show with John Sumser, Principal Analyst of

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Getting Social with Social Technology: #TChat Radio

Join us for the #TChat Radio show tonight at 7 pm ET (4 pm PT) where our special guest is John Sumser, the principal analyst for HRxAnalysts and founder and managing editor of The HRExaminer Online Magazine. *** We’re not really as social as we think. According to a new social media research report from Ventana Research, most organizations (59%) still actively prohibit social media usage. Also, HRxAnalysts recently published the 2012 Index of Social Technology in HR and Recruiting and the research report documents the ongoing shift in how organizations acquire and manage technology. Surprisingly, social media is slow to take hold

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The Politically Correct Workplace. Forgotten or Gone Too Far? #TChat Preview & Recap

It’s been quite some time since we really got down to the nitty gritty of the politically correct workplace, but even though it’s been pushed to the side by the more pressing and (frankly) exciting topic du jour that is social media, we’ve still got some kinks to work out of that hose. In fact, with more and more people working from home, telecommuting across states and even countries, the rules of a PC workplace matter even more than ever. Ah yes, and it’s holiday time in the US, which means there are even more awkward social situations in which to

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