How AI Interviewers Cut Time To Hire And Improve Candidate Experience

Evan Kirstel (0:03)

Hey, everybody. Really interesting discussion today on how AI agents are changing HR, and what all of this means for hiring and the future of work with Nav from Eightfold. Nav, how are you?

Navneet Singh (0:16)

I'm great. It's great to be here, Evan.

Evan Kirstel (0:18)

Great to see you. Really intrigued by the work you guys are doing. How do you describe the goal, the mission at Eightfold.AI?

Navneet Singh (0:27)

The mission is really the right career for everyone.

When we started the company, the CEO, founder and co-founder started the company 10 years ago. They said that instead of getting a job based on who you know, you should be able to get a job based on what you are capable of. And that was the entire mission, which is looking at any person's potential and really being able to match that with the skills that are required for a job.

Evan Kirstel (1:00)

Well, you make it all sound so simple. Of course, there's a lot of complexity behind the scenes. And you know, talk about AI in this context, what it means to have AI-powered HR.

And why now? Why is the time for AR in an industry that's been around for decades?

Navneet Singh (1:19)

When our founder and co-founder started the company at that time, before that, they had done a lot of research in AI and machine learning. So they had been working on algorithms in YouTube that allow you to predict what the user is going to search next. Founded a company which was on e-commerce, which predicted what users are going to search for next, to buy next, right? So the epiphany that they had was that, why don't we apply the same algorithms to what skills are you going to acquire next, in order to achieve your goal, your career goal? If you have skills A, B, and C, what other adjacent skill would be easy for you to acquire in order to achieve your goal? So that was the genesis of Eightfold, and that's how we started the company. And for the first two years, the company was just looking at skills.

So looking at different jobs that are advertised in the world, what skills people used, and how those skills were used in terms of going from a point A to point B in the career of a person. So based on all of that data, we now have a catalog of 1.6 million skills, and how those skills are used in 1.6 billion career trajectories. That gives us a unique vantage point where we can know what skills are required, what skills are adjacent to each other, what skills are easy to acquire for somebody, and you ask the question, why now? This is where AI is changing jobs and job requirements so much. Companies don't know what skills will be needed in the future.

But what they do know is that if they focus on things like curiosity, learnability, adaptability, collaboration, then the employees will be able to reskill and upskill based on whatever comes next. That's really important today when the shelf life of any particular skill is just decreasing exponentially.

Evan Kirstel (3:35)

Amazing. It sounds like you've built your own specialized AI for HR versus the generic general purpose AI models that are out there and getting so powerful.

Tell us more.

Navneet Singh (3:50)

The generalized AI models are important. So they are available. You know, we say that intelligence is commoditized. Really, it's the horizontal intelligence that's now commoditized. Everyone has access to that, and that's brilliant for the world. We are going to see more businesses. We are going to see unique problems being solved in unique ways. And the hope is that this AI is used for solving hunger, for solving diseases, for solving complex problems, creating new innovative solutions. And all of that is great.

I think there is space for this generalized AI, but also vertical specific AI.

The generalized models are not investing time and effort in every single vertical. And that's why it's important for us to have verticalized AI as well. Like we have spent years, now 10 years of data that we have on skills and how those skills get used and what skills help you fulfill the job requirements. And so our customers are reaping benefits of this vertical AI. Customers who see potential candidates who are acquired with Eightfold technology, they stay longer in the job. Their promotability is higher. So when you see all of these examples, it just resonates with the mission of the company and that's what we are excited to bring to the world.

Evan Kirstel (5:26)

Yeah, the results are key, of course. You mentioned a couple of those there. Tell us more about the results your customers are seeing today from this kind of skills first approach to hiring and workforce management.