From managing the highs and lows of the hiring market to advising senior leadership on how skills can support organizational goals, talent leaders need better ways to effectively and efficiently manage their workforces to meet today’s demands. But many traditional processes are ill-equipped to support HR’s need for speed, agility, and unique insights. There’s never been a greater need for a talent intelligence platform designed with AI to support modern talent needs — with a user-friendly experience to match.
That’s why we’re launching a talent intelligence platform experience that is more powerful than ever without compromising ease of use. We believe in harnessing AI to make the lives of talent leaders and their teams easier. That’s why we designed the Eightfold Intelligent Experience — or (IX) — to be insightful, easy, dynamic, and fun while still delivering the most advanced AI in the market.
When Tony Hahn, Head of Design at Eightfold AI, shared his vision for the next evolution of the Eightfold platform experience in the early stages of building IX, he said the priority was letting go of complexity. Although deep-learning talent intelligence platforms are made up of billions of data points, and their algorithms make approximately 1 million recommendations per second, Hahn said the end user doesn’t need to experience that complexity to see rewards. While some AI platforms boast advanced, configurable functionality, their complexity can sometimes hinder people from focusing on essential actions.
“Five years ago, we were a startup with incredible machine-learning technology,” Hahn said. “While our explainable AI was front and center of the platform, the data-heavy workspace distracted our customers from the power of the deep talent intelligence platform. With IX, we’re now leading the talent intelligence category with both our AI and user experience.”
How we’re collaborating with customers to make work easy
With IX, talent professionals can rest assured that the AI is working in the background without being overwhelmed with options. This is especially critical for strategic talent professionals and their teams who use our talent intelligence platform daily to make life-changing career decisions.
We’re removing obstacles for people at work so they can focus on the task, whether that’s calibrating hard-to-fill roles or quickly identifying qualified contingent workers.
“We’d like to think we know our platform better than everyone,” said Kamal Ahluwalia, President of Eightfold AI. “But the reality is that our customers and their people are the true experts. They are in the platform every day capturing insights and making real-time decisions based on our AI recommendations.”
Integrating feedback from conversations with our champion customers, we have incorporated the following essential design elements into IX to enhance the user experience:
- Effortless discovery of explainable insights surfacing exactly when you need them through seamless navigation
- A peaceful and easy experience by eliminating distractions
- A tailored experience to fit your unique needs through dynamic personalization
- Playful and visually captivating design incorporating fun and engagement
Here’s a closer look at how we made each improvement happen:
IX: Insightful
Leaders can make more informed talent decisions using transparent, easy-to-understand AI that delivers clear, measurable results. Since we specialize in providing explainable AI and recognize its importance, we are focused on giving clear explanations to our customers throughout the platform.
We’ve designed IX to make it easy to find and understand the most critical information in Eightfold.
This means instantly surfacing relevant skills and career insights for employees and talent professionals. With IX, employees can explore their own career opportunities and common career paths within their organization — and the AI will build on these insights by uncovering an individual’s potential.
By deeply understanding how skills and capabilities relate, the Eightfold Talent Intelligence Platform infers which adjacent skills an individual has and then uses AI to show them how qualified they are for a job. Explainable AI has a profound impact on candidate and employee confidence when applying for new roles. For example, if a user experience designer sees they have seven out of 10 of the skills required for a senior UX designer position, they can feel more empowered to take the next step.
The benefits of adjacent skills and explainable AI also extend to business leaders and succession planning. With insights about team member readiness for new opportunities, talent leaders and managers can make more informed strategic decisions on role assignments.
IX: Easy
Knowing how fast the talent world moves, we designed our platform so that employees, hiring managers, and recruiters never miss a beat. However, customer feedback showed us that parts of our platform overwhelmed them with too many options and calls to action.
We’ve addressed these by shifting how we highlight only the most important elements on each page. By de-emphasizing the dense sidebar with filters, for example, our customers can now focus on understanding each candidate, their match score, interview status, and more.
We can then enhance that experience with AI-generated tags to help recruiters be even more productive. These AI-driven insights and design changes simplify the experience — making it intuitive and easy. For example, IX presents recruiters with only the most essential information and recommended actions, which could be a reminder to schedule an interview or request feedback on a candidate.
IX: Dynamic
Everyone’s journey at work is unique. With IX, we’re incorporating AI into our UX design to embrace these differences and personalize their experiences. The AI will determine which elements of the talent intelligence platform to display to each person based on their activity, role, and goals.
For instance, when suggesting career paths, the options presented will change based on the employee’s career goals, interactions, and chosen projects. Their actions give the platform more information to surface new and unique career paths, uncovering potential opportunities they may not have otherwise discovered.
IX helps reveal the hidden potential for professional growth — and gives talent leaders the tools to connect that growth to organizational goals.
IX: Fun
Talent wins deserve to be celebrated. The big wins, like taking a giant career leap or getting a promotion, are obvious moments for celebration. But the smaller moments, like signing up for a course or moving a candidate to the offer stage, deserve a celebration, too.
With these moments in mind, creating joy and engagement is a core element of IX. Our customers spend a significant amount of time in our talent intelligence platform, so we wanted to create an engaging, visually rich experience for everyone.
We infused more fun into the experience with warmer colors and engaging animations to celebrate every milestone — big or small. Connected to interactions with candidates, including moments like sending an offer, we’re introducing a badging system for recruiters and talent professionals to recognize that every step of the journey is important.
By celebrating our customers and their achievements in Eightfold, IX can bring higher levels of engagement and more learning opportunities, so the platform can improve how it personalizes the experience. With a more playful interface, we restored the people-first element in HR, making every interaction more natural, personal, and dynamic.
Evolving to meet — and exceed — expectations
“We are continuously finding the balance between showcasing the power of our AI and data while ensuring usability and personalization for our customers,” Hahn said. “Evaluating and debating the best approach will always be a high priority.”
With these principles in mind, every element of the Eightfold Talent Intelligence Platform will be refreshed and infused with this simplified, AI-powered experience. From building candidate pipelines and exploring opportunities in Career Hub to succession planning, IX is an important part of our commitment to making the world’s most intelligent and intuitive AI-powered talent intelligence platform.
“This innovation is a direct result of our customers’ feedback and ideas,” Ahluwalia said. “We have incorporated their themes, suggestions, and thoughtful ideas to create a refreshed and reimagined IX that will help them achieve greatness. We’re thrilled to usher them into the next phase of AI-powered talent excellence.”
Learn more about Eightfold IX’s features and capabilities here.
