Awards season arrived with a bang for customers when we rolled out the red carpet and donned sparkly jackets at our U.S. and EU Cultivate talent summits. This year, we launched our inaugural Pathfinders Awards to celebrate those organizations and HR heroes charting new ways forward to deliver extraordinary outcomes that benefit everyone: HR, the workforce, and the business.
Every nominee for the Pathfinder Awards demonstrated how they are effectively redefining the talent experience for their business and employees through AI-native talent intelligence and other innovative practices. While each category could only have one winner, we were incredibly impressed by every nominee, making this year’s selections a challenging yet fun experience for judges.
Below, we share our illustrious winners, and what we were looking for as judges that put these organizations and leaders on top.
See highlights from the winners of the Pathfinder Awards in the U.S.
Talent Acquisition
For our Pathfinder Award in Talent Acquisition, we looked for evidence of innovation through advanced technology, delivered through working practices that go way above and beyond what you see with more traditional recruiting models. Importantly, we needed to see outcomes expressed as measures of success at the organizational level.
In North America, we chose Eaton Corp., a power management solutions company, for its impressive reduction in time to offer for candidates and considerable cost savings. In the EU, telecommunications company Vodafone picked up the gong, sweeping the board across several key metrics including increased candidate NPS, and dramatic decreases in cost per hire and time to hire.
Talent Management
For our Talent Management Pathfinder Award, it was all about being strategic, whether that’s via empowering employees or building an agile workforce ready to embrace change. Again, as judges, we had to see evidence of these initiatives being aligned to organizational goals.
In North America, biotech manufacturer Amgen won for what talent leaders have achieved in terms of adoption and scaling of a truly personalized experience for their workforce. In the EU, food manufacturer Mars took first place based on the speed of its transformation, especially the way talent leaders were able to unlock capacity via innovative ways of organizing work to better serve their entire business.
Workforce Exchange
Our Workforce Exchange Pathfinder Award highlights our customer organizations in the public sector that have demonstrated outstanding leadership, innovation, and impact in facilitating workforce mobility, talent sharing, and skill development.
This year, we chose the New York State Department of Labor for the pioneering work the agency’s leaders undertook to make talent readily available to businesses seeking candidates in the state. Currently, New York State has more than 800,000 jobseekers signed up, with 250,000 jobs and resources posted. Over 500,000 businesses can now access the platform to take a skills-based hiring approach.
The Bristol Myers Squibb team celebrates their win of the Talent Intelligence Award in the U.S. at our inaugural Pathfinder Awards, presented at Cultivate ’25.
Talent Intelligence Pathfinder Award
The Talent Intelligence Pathfinder Award celebrates our global customers achieving excellence with an integrated approach to talent acquisition and management that uses our entire platform. Global pharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb won for its innovative deployment of talent intelligence. Through building a dynamic, skills-based workforce, BMS’s talent leaders are preparing workforces for what’s next while advancing overall business objectives.
Individual Pathfinder of the Year
Finally, our Pathfinder of the Year Award is where we recognize at a global level the individuals who work tirelessly to drive transformation initiatives and innovative talent strategies, while prioritizing people and skills.
This year, we recognized Suzy Jearum, who leads Global Employee Digital Experience at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP), for being a standout change agent for her company. Jearum won because she demonstrated collaborative leadership and strategic use of technology and data for CCEP throughout Europe. Her work significantly enhanced employee growth and retention via the rollout of Eightfold Career Hub to 30,000 CCEP employees, culminating in an impressive 68% adoption rate and an increase from 2% to 80% in talent profile completions.
These compelling customer stories make us proud and inspire us to keep innovating and transforming our talent intelligence platform. Overall, we are seeing higher rates of advancement among all our customers, from those using agentic AI, to those discovering new and original ways to use the platform.
We expect this trajectory to grow as teams start to reorganize roles around the time freed up by AI to focus on higher-level work, and the convergence of talent acquisition and talent management activities. We also anticipate hearing about different ways of organizing the work itself as the focus on tasks and productivity increases.
See highlights from the winners of the Pathfinder Awards in the EU.
My tips from judging this year’s Pathfinder Awards
As a judge for this year’s awards, I learned a lot about how organizations set out to do things differently, including how these orgs judge themselves and how their stakeholders define success.
I know that writing these stories to the page is not an easy feat. However, as we reviewed and considered the entries, several themes and best practices emerged among the top contenders. These submissions gave justice and great testaments to the power of talent intelligence in each organization.
So, how can you best capture your experience, your impact, and your inventiveness when putting together your awards submission for next year?
First, our winning customers provided content that fulfilled the purpose of allowing us to review submissions against a set of criteria. As these submissions could also serve as case studies, my advice is to treat them as such. Start from the idea that an award submission is a record of activity, likely ongoing, that has other applications. For example, a well-written submission could also serve as a shareable piece of content with stakeholders or to update your CV on what you’ve accomplished.
It’s important before you write a single word to thoroughly read the award criteria and instructions. Each award and category has specific requirements — miss these, and your entry may be disqualified or marked down. Ensure you use the structure provided by the awarding body, and use subheadings that directly reference the judging criteria. This makes it easier for judges to see you’ve addressed every point.
Once you’re ready to start writing, begin with a concise summary of your top challenges, actions, and outcomes. Hook the judges early with a clear, engaging introduction. Describe the context, who was involved, and why the project mattered. Choose a narrative that brings your initiative to life — share the journey, the hurdles, and the human impact. You should also include the perspectives of those who contributed to your transformation project, including quotes about impact and recent data whenever possible.
Incidentally, consider who on your team will put the submission together. It is often more compelling to have someone closely involved as opposed to someone who merely signed off on a project. Similarly, those who speak passionately and energetically about these may bring greater immediacy than less active team members.
Remember that all content should be specific and evidence-based, with concrete examples, data, and testimonials to showcase results. We like to see relevant metrics — both business (ROI, cost savings, productivity improvements) and HR (employee engagement, retention rates). Make sure your evidence directly relates to the objectives and challenges you outlined so the story hangs together — you want to demonstrate a clear link between your initiative and measurable outcomes.
Judges are reviewing multiple entries so make yours easy to read with short paragraphs, bullet points, and plain language. Avoid jargon, acronyms, and “PR speak” — and quote directly from colleagues who also worked on the project for authenticity and relatability.
Additionally, explain how your initiative supported business objectives, not just HR goals. Highlight commercial benefits, innovation, and how the project fits into your organization’s wider strategy. Again, include perspectives from across the organization; quotes from leaders and employees alike will add color, credibility, and depth. Ensure you have approvals from the right people well in advance, especially if sensitive data is involved. Finally, always proofread and polish, with the input of others. Reading your submission out loud is a great way to ensure your points are appropriately sequenced together.
Get ready for next year…
We’re incredibly excited to watch where our customers will take their talent intelligence capabilities next. At Cultivate, we heard firsthand how valuable it was for customers and other valued community members to connect and learn from one another, creating a culture of sharing best practices and healthy camaraderie.
I’m excited to see next year’s submissions for the Pathfinder Awards, with hopefully a few new categories to highlight even more excellence in HR. We look forward to celebrating again with an even larger community of heroes driving innovation in the talent space.
The call for next year’s nominations will come in spring 2026 for all Eightfold customers in North American, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. Be sure to check our Pathfinders Awards page for all the highlights, and follow us on LinkedIn for our 2026 submission announcement.
Learn more about the Pathfinder Awards, and meet all the 2025 finalists.
Teresa Wykes is Senior Director of Talent-centered Transformation at Eightfold.