Doug Berg and Elaine Orler joined us to talk about the amazing world of talent acquisition and how they, as two pioneers, are taking it to the next level with Match2. Serial founders like Doug don't come along every day. With the insanely brilliant Elaine Orler by his side, the industry oughta sit up and pay attention.

In this episode, we shine a light on how to get more value out of your existing recruiting tech stack and how to solve some of the good & bad that AI is introducing to the recruiting industry.

Do you "design" your culture? Meaning: are you thoughtful and intentional about how people receive information, contact and connect with each other, find inspiration, express values? People who build and nurture COMMUNITIES think about this first and foremost, and they have a lot to teach people who build and nurture WORKFORCES.

Nikki Lewallen Gregory founded the PeopleForward Network to inspire workplaces where people thrive, and she joins the meetup today to share ideas around internal podcasting for clarity at work, what work-life integration really means, and how to do asynchronous meetings well.

March 14th is a very important day to us. Jess Von Bank and Jason Averbook launched the Now of Work community 5 years ago that day. The world was crazy. Humans were confused. People needed connection. Life needed some sort of meaning. We were thrust into a world where uncertainty was the word of the moment and it was driven by two pandemics. A social justice pandemic and a global health pandemic, COVID.
5 years later, we celebrated the anniversary of this amazing community that has 5 amazing traits that we want to celebrate.
* Over 5000 people in the community
* Has had over 250 events both live and digitally
* Have had over 1,500,000 downloads and views of our events
* Has changed the lives of Jess and myself
* Hopefully impacted the lives of some others
Here are come clips from our community and the people that make it special. Thank you for all of your continued support and we are just getting started. Most of all, thank you for all of the support of Leah Tanner Kristin Lynn Penney Jaycee Grider Josh Drean H. Richard Brummett Allison Wallace and many others for helping bring a dream to live.
Stay with us. We have a lot more to come and hope you can join us today for our LIVE meetup and each Friday going forward. Much love!

Madeline Laurano joins us for our 250th episode of the Now of Work Digital Meetup. 

What a celebratory milestone, just one week before the 5-year anniversary of our community meetup. And who better to spend it with! Madeline is the widely respected founder of Aptitude Research, producing A Practical Guide to Unlocking AI Potential in HR, Global Trends in HR Technology & HR Transformation, Reducing Bias in HR Using Artificial Intelligence, and other incredible reports the market relies on to understand the world of work today and tomorrow.

She just returned from Amsterdam, where she emceed the HR Technology Europe conference. (We hear our own Mercer team were shining stars in 6 standing-room-only AI sessions!) We couldn't wait to hear her road report, raise a glass to 250, and celebrate with all of you.

AI is all the buzz, but it's particularly interesting to think about its impact on software development and coding. As a coder, AI is about about 70% accurate. Not bad, will only get better—but can it do its own regression testing? And if humans aren't doing the actual coding, isn't it harder to do code review? No one better than HackerRank to help us understand how software development changes with AI, how coders and engineers become orchestrators of AI agents, and how we reconsider necessary skills like prompt engineering.

This decade will be about the evolution of enterprise HR Tech. Would have evolved quite organically on its own; AI will deliver it like a revolution and in Big Bang fashion. ☄️ 
Like,
🔹 Suite vs. Niche – Do you play it safe with an all-in-one suite, or do you go deep with specialized solutions? What’s the right strategy in a world where disruption is the new normal?
🔹 The AI Illusion – AI in HR isn’t just about GenAI, using data to call something "intelligent," or even unleashing an army of agents. What’s actually changing in the foundation of our systems, and how do we separate real transformation from marketing fluff?
🔹 What’s Next? – Core systems are shifting under our feet. What will “core” even mean in five years? And what’s the smartest move for enterprises today?
This isn’t just another AI conversation. This is forward-thinking discussion you need to shape your HR Tech strategy and roadmap before the future leaves you behind.
🔥 Don’t miss Thomas Otter. 🔥

Is AI capable of making ethical decisions? Can an algorithm be trained to recognize potential ethical issues in its own decision-making process, even adjust avoid harmful outcomes?
Or does it come down to humans carefully curating unbiased and reliable datasets in order for Artificial Intelligence to produce the right outcome, and who defines "right?" Certainly AI models can be transparent -- updating their own understanding of ethical standards based on feedback, articulating reasoning behind decisions, flagging biased or unreliable data points from its training sets.
Whether in healthcare or hiring decisions, the more DATA we have, the better DECISIONS we can make. It's not so much a question of whether AI is ready to make unsupervised decisions. A better question is how much better AI can be than humans.

Gerry Crispin returned to speak to his thoughts on the recent DEI executive order. Gerry wrote an article, Signals Amidst the Noise, that gives some important context for everyone. The weather vane seems to be swinging wildly these days, and offering some thoughtful perspective on where and how this fits into our historical timeline will be helpful for people. One step forward, two steps back, maybe three steps forward another day.

We also pulled in Jackye Clayton, Founder of PeoplePuzzles to share her perspective and to spill the beans on her year-long secret: She is on the next season of Amazing Race?!

You've been hearing a lot about talent intelligence, or AI-powered insights about your workforce to optimize where and how they're deployed against work for the best business impact. It's more than data analytics, it's about getting more holistic, predictive, and bias-free insights to make the best talent decisions for business. That will change the way we work for good, but how do talent practitioners need to think differently, re-wire systems and programs, and support culture change to get the optimization and transformation they need? In this episode, we chat with Rebecca Warren about Talent-Centered Transformation. 

We had a cameo, too. Brian Sommer shared his perspective on how AI changes consulting forever, and we had some questions. 

Jess Von Bank has long been a fan of ⁠Mercer⁠'s Global Talent Trends report, even before she worked at Mercer. The research is vast and deep, the insights cut to the chase. That's thanks to ⁠Kate Bravery⁠ and a big, brilliant research team. Kate joins the Digital Meetup to share ⁠Mercer⁠'s 2025 Global Talent Trends, the hottest priorities for HR this year, the real impact of AI on the future of work and how the global workforce feels about ALL of it. Could just call it TRUTH BOMBS. She was our #1 most listened to episode last year by a 300% margin. Easy to see why.🎙️