Predictive Analytics for Human Resources

Embracing AI for Technical Recruiting

“Dive in and embrace it. If you use it well you’ll find a great timesaver, and you’ll build quite quickly and make hires from it. So embrace it.”

Sarah Hallahan, Manager – Technical Talent Acquisition, AdRoll

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Embracing AI for Technical Recruiting

Male Voice: Hello and welcome to Eightfold Radio. Sarah Hallahan leads technical recruiting for Adroll. Since adopting Eightfold about eight months ago, Adroll’s technical recruiting team has come to rely on it on a nearly daily basis. And Eightfold’s nurture campaign functionality has already lead to some serious recruiting wins. Let’s listen now as Joanne McDougald speaks with Sarah about how Eightfold has changed life for her team.

Sarah: So I lead technical recruiting for Adroll Group, and I’ve been with Adroll for about four and a half years now. And I came to know Eightfold through our director of global recruiting, Daniel, and he was really the visionary behind it. He got to know some of the founders and introduced us to, “Hey, we’re going to pilot this. Go use it.” And so we’ve been using it for about six to eight months now, and so I’ve become a real big fan of the platform to the point where my technical recruiting team is using it nearly daily. But yeah, that’s how I got to know Eightfold.

We just hired a data science engineer who rejected an offer three years ago and became reengaged in our process, so that’s a big win for us. And we’ve used their nurture campaigns to engage different DNI communities and just past candidates in general. And so far the feedback and the enthusiasm from the team has been through the roof, and even our hiring managers are like, “Can I get a seat so I can create nurture campaigns?” Hang on, we have an employer brand to protect. We can’t just have you just sent whatever you want to previous candidates or new candidates.” So yeah, I love recruiting tools. I geek out on it, and to see how impactful Eightfold has been it just makes me excited to see what they can do. Yeah, it’s been a great tool, great platform, and I can just see great things for Eightfold moving forward.

Eightfold: In my experience – I work in marketing, and a marketing tool can suck up a half of an FTE, quarter of an FTE just to manage it. What’s been your experience with Eightfold in terms of the commitment to the tool?

Sarah: So I’m a recruiting manager. I don’t normally recruit, but I’m now on a search, and my first tool was Eightfold. And with that I reached out to 20 people, 50-50 female-male, and I’ve had about seven phone calls from that outreach. So I think that speaks a lot to effectiveness in time savings, and that was with maybe an hour of time, and now I have seven phone calls. And so my hope is that these phone calls will progress, and we’ll see where it goes. So in terms of time savings and investment it’s just a matter of getting to know the platform and use it, and it’ll become your best friend.

Eightfold: Simplicity, ease of use and then results.

Sarah: Results, yeah.

Eightfold: So what I’ve heard a lot is that the open rates are off the charts because you’re engaging with people that did engage with you, know your company and have shown an interest in the past. And other platforms have just left those people abandoned.

Sarah: Yeah, so this is what happened with our data science engineer. He declined our offer because we couldn’t offer him more opportunities at the time. And then we could, and we completely forgot about him, and that’s completely on us. But with Eightfold we were able to reengage him and say, “Hey, let’s interview again. We now offer remote, and this is going to be a wonderful experience together.” So yeah, it definitely reminds us to go back to the people who are interested in us. Just because they weren’t a fit yesterday doesn’t mean they’re not a fit today. So it saves a lot of time. It improves candidate experience, and it helps hiring.

Eightfold: Amazing. So I heard you say you reached out to 50-50.

Sarah: Yeah, so for example, three kind of key diversity goals that we have, and we don’t try target for diversity, but we do try to expand the pools and increase the chances of hiring more people from different walks of life and different experience. So for tech in particular we are aiming to increase our hiring by 25 percent for women in tech. And other than that we have a pretty diverse mix of people. So for example, I targeted 50-50 female-male just to see what would come of it. And it’s leading to some interesting insights. It’s leading to some bigger questions that I’m looking forward to taking to the Eightfold team to see if they can help me with that. So yes, we do have those goals, and Eightfold and the features in there have made it easier to identify people and target broad from the beginning so that you’re not trying to solve a problem later on, and it’s too late to solve that problem.

Eightfold: Yeah, I think some of the other folks that we’ve talked to tonight are with giant corporations that have maybe legacy and institutional biases that were unintentional, and really it’s a way to overcome that. And I think that’s so powerful.

Sarah: Yeah, it’s fantastic because even just getting involved in sourcing and being more intentional in how we find and engage candidates, whether it’s previous candidates or new candidates, it’s opening up a conversation. “Okay, well, we’re engaging with all these people, but they’re not getting through the funnel. Why is that?” I’m like, “Well, have you checked your biases at the door?” So it leads to unconscious bias training, and it leads to standardization of interviews, which is something we’ve been involved in in tech recruiting for Adroll right now. So it becomes a dialogue opener, and it just ends up resulting in a lot of brainstorming.

Okay, how can we make this a better experience for candidates? But then how can we also have a good conversation around, “Is this going to be a fit for what we need as well?” So it’s amazing how one thing can lead to a larger conversation. And then from that you end up engaging in other activities and other programs, and it all ends up being a holistic part of that plan. So Eightfold has definitely launched those conversations in some places and has led to additional conversations for things we need to think about moving forward.

Eightfold: Recruiting has had maybe a metronome, sort of, of how you’ve done this. It’s just been this beat. I’m going to get these numbers in. I’m going to do that. It sounds to me like it’s really changing your workflow and the way that you’re dealing with what’s possible in the company.

Sarah: Yeah, so there’s definitely a beat. What I preach in my team is, “Look at your pass-through rates. How many candidates do you need at the top of the funnel to get to a hire? Where’s the drop off going to be? Okay, well, you have people dropping off from face-to-face to offer. Why is that happening? Are we miscalibrated? Is there biases creeping in there?” So it definitely changes recruiters’ mentality to be more talent partners and advisors in terms of, “Okay, how can we make these pass-through rates healthier?” But then also if I know I have to do 20 recruiter screens to get to a hire, how can I diversify that? How can I make sure there’s an equal amount of people from different communities that are being represented so that we can be more aligned with what we see in the world around us and give people fair chances?

Eightfold: I love it – fair chances. That’s a great takeaway. If you were to share Eightfold with a colleague and tell them a little bit about what your experience has been, can you just give me a quick sound bite about what your experience has been and what you would share with them?

Sarah: Dive in and embrace it. If you use it well you’ll find a great timesaver, and you’ll build quite quickly and make hires from it. So embrace it.

Eightfold: Embrace it. Thank you so much for joining us for Eightfold Radio, and with that we’re going to let you go back to dinner. Enjoy the party. Thank you so much for coming to the Eightfold kickoff party.

Sarah: Great, thanks for having me.

Eightfold: Thank you.

Male Voice: Thanks for listening to Eightfold Radio. To find out more about Eightfold, please visit us at Eightfold.ai and be sure to listen to our other episodes chronicling the experiences of Eightfold’s customers and partners.

Leveraging AI to Take a Second Look at Employees & Discover New Opportunities

“As the whole market changes, what we need from our employees and what they want from their jobs has changed. So it’s really important that we have the tools internally to empower them to help them find their path.”

– Meg Blight, VP of Innovation at BT

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Meg Blight-BT

Announcer: Hello and welcome to Eightfold Radio. Meg Blight is VP of innovation scouting with BT. At BT, striking the right mix of employees is a priority, particularly in the face of the current restructure. Let’s listen now as JoAnne McDougald speaks with Meg about how Eightfold offers the ability to recruit for tough to fill roles and strike the right balance of employees.

Eightfold: Hi, everyone and welcome to Eightfold Radio. I’m with Meg Blight from BT. And your position at BT is?

Meg: I’m VP of innovation scouting.

Eightfold: Oh, okay innovation scouting, so you’re responsible for talent acquisition?

Meg: Not talent acquisition, actually technology acquisition, so I work for a British company but a few of us are based out here in Silicon Valley. I like to say I have the best job at BT to seek out exciting new technology that can benefit the U.K. business.

Eightfold: Oh, great. So you’re in the office of the CIO?

Meg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eightfold: And so what was it that came across the desk there that made you guys even want to evaluate Eightfold?

Meg: Well, so one of our big challenges as a business is having the right set—mix of employees. So it’s public knowledge that we’re actually going through a process where we’re going to be actually downsizing a lot of our middle management and restructuring. With simultaneously also hiring quite a few more frontline staff. And actually there’s also lots of key roles that are quite hard to recruit for, so we’re conscious that we’re going to need a lot more data scientists for example in the future, and it’s quite hard to find the really talented great people in that area. So I guess our challenge is both finding the right people but also within our current workforce, finding the right people that can do new roles and new opportunities. So it’s as much for us looking internally within our existing employees as it is looking externally.

Eightfold: Yeah and that’s one of the nice things that I like about Eightfold and sort of one of their—like the Eightfold path is behind their naming structure, that’s sort of what that is. And that path is very important, identifying ways for employees to find internal paths that keep them engaged and it’s a way for folks that are in talent management than companies to communicate with them at the right moment. And ensure that they stay engaged or find other roles and you can set some time—they have to be in their current role for 18 months or something before you offer these other opportunities, job retraining, other things you should take. You can take your ultimate career path, if you want to become…

Meg: Completely, and we do a lot of internal training. We have an academy program internally and we’re a huge employer in the U.K. and across the world. But we employ, I’ve forgotten the exact numbers, around a 100,000 people, so we’re a huge organization and so much talent within the business. But as the whole market changes what we need from our employees changes and what they want from their job’s changes. So it’s really important that we have the tools internally to empower them and help them find their path.

Eightfold: Yeah that’s terrific. In terms of new talent acquisition, and engaging with millennials, what’s your strategy?

Meg: Ooh, do you know I’m not 100 percent—we do have a clear strategy, maybe we should, I probably—I don’t work in HR, someone in HR will be listening to this going, Meg you’re crazy we have a complete strategy, I’ve been working on it for years. Certainly historically in the U.K. we’ve done a lot of recruitment of both graduates, so we have a graduate scheme and also we do apprenticeships for engineering community and quite a lot of outreach particularly in STEM. And also we frequently host in our innovation area young women and people from various different backgrounds that maybe would be less familiar with going into engineering and technology careers, so that’s a really important part of a business.

Whether we’ve changed that style specifically to change what millenials are looking for, I don’t know if we have yet. I mean I am the very oldest you can be to be a millennial, so I was recruited. But certainly we use a lot of social media. I actually got my role five or six years ago through LinkedIn, so yeah.

Eightfold: Oh, nice, nice. Hopefully we’ll find new grads this year that will find it through Eightfold.

Meg: Yes.

Eightfold: Thank you so much for joining us for Eightfold Radio, it was a pleasure to talk with Meg Blight from BT. Thanks again.

Meg: Thank you.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to Eightfold Radio. To find out more about Eightfold please visit us at Eightfold.ai, and be sure to listen to our other episodes chronicling the experiences of Eightfold’s customers and partners.

Providing Happiness & Creating Impact with a Diverse Workforce

“For me not everyone is called to be a caregiver. So if Eightfold can help us provide those caregivers who might be able to provide the right support for our clients we’re all for that.”

– Vanessa co-founder, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Care Indeed

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Vanessa Valerio & Amrita Sanyal – Care Indeed

Announcer: Hello and welcome to Eightfold Radio. Vanessa Valerio and Amrita Sanyal work with Care Indeed. For Care Indeed, promoting happiness amongst its caregivers and clients is critical. Let’s listen now as JoAnne McDougald discusses how these values of promoting career and life happiness are shared and promoted by Eightfold and its technology.

Eightfold: Welcome to Eightfold Radio. We’re here in beautiful Menlo Park, California. This is Jo McDougald, and I’m joined by Amrita Sanyal and Vanessa Valerio. They’re both from Care Indeed, and I’ll have you introduce yourselves, and tell me a little bit about what you do day-to-day.

Vanessa: Of course. So my name is Vanessa Valerio. I’m actually the vice president and chief operating officer of Care Indeed. I co-founded it with Dee Bustos in 2010 so it’s an eight year old company. So what we do is we are a non-medical home care provider. We provide caregivers to private homes, facility, retirement facilities, and my daily activities is just really making sure that my clients and caregivers are happy, really.

Eightfold: We love happiness.

Amrita: Yes, absolutely. Actually, thank you Vanessa. My name is Amrita, and I’m from Care Indeed. I work at the branch administrator off the Menlo Park office. My role also is to incorporate new clients into the system, and to make sure that they are happy. And our caregivers, and making sure that there is a lot of client retention as well as caregiver retention.

Eightfold: So both of you mentioned happiness, and I think that that is really one of the underlying commitments that Eightfold has made. Because what they do is they look at finding the person that’s got the right set of skills that would be right at that company. They know a lot about the company culture, and then they also know within that team. Isn’t that great to know that your personality would fit in in some way with not only the company, with your set of skills, but also down to the team level. That’s, to me, is super-compelling.

Vanessa: I think you’re absolutely correct, because for me it is finding that right match. For me not everyone is called to be a caregiver. So if Eightfold can help us provide those caregivers who might be able to provide the right support for our clients we’re all for that.

Eightfold: You’re all in. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Amrita: Yeah, because on a day-to-day basis we get about 10 applications, and out of that we will probably select one or two. So we really are looking for the best of the best so that we are dealing with a generation that is before us, way before us.

Eightfold: So, if you are in the job it’s not only do the right job that’s right for you. A lot of people might apply, and it’s really not the right career for them. They think, “Oh, I’ll get in, because I need a job. Being a caregiver I’ve been good to my dog or my grandmother. Maybe this is right for me.” But this helps weed that sort of thing out.

Vanessa: And we see that all the time. Their caregivers will come here or come to the office and just wait for their paycheck on a weekly basis, and that’s not what we’re looking for. Because, at the end of the day, this is a serious business. We’re dealing with our seniors, we’re dealing with the clients who are desperate for finding that right support. And if there is an organization who might be able to help us find the right people who has a heart, who has the compassion, and caring, please.

Amrita: Yeah. You just said what I was feeling.

Eightfold: So we’re here at this event. It’s beautiful, Menlo Park, and one of the things that I’m going to tell you a little bit about, what you’re going to hear about in just a minute. But they’re giving away tonight Da Vinci’s resume, Leonardo Da Vinci’s resume. I read Leonardo Da Vinci’s resume, and the first 16, 18 items are “I was great with war, and trebuchets, and building implements, and how to create a great moat, and by the way, I paint okay, and sometimes I sculpt.” And so the reason that he wrote this resume was because he was trying to get a job obviously with a king, a local person who would pay him. But his true talent and his true passions obviously lay in creating beautiful works of art.

And I think what this high-end technology can do is see through what we write on a piece of paper, this 500 year technology, of writing a resume is so outdated. We have to just look at what we’ve done. If someone has been a caregiver in their life, it might be the right job for them in the future rather than “I’ve never done that even remotely.” But this could identify those opportunities that they sought out where they could have been. Even helping your little sister with her ‘campfire girls’ thing, or anything could show that you had these tendencies. So what would be the ideal thing that you would find using this sort of technology, using this very leading edge technology to help with your organization?

Vanessa: To be honest with you, what we need at the moment, because there’s so much shortage in really amazing caregivers. What we are looking for is someone who can maybe identify what’s really the core values of each person.

Eightfold: Yeah.

Vanessa: By identifying whether this person really cares to serve humanity. I think we can really be able to find that connection.

Amrita: Yeah. Yeah. I think that what we look for is mainly the compassion, and also the compassion for their work, any kind of work.

Eightfold: Yeah.

Amrita: Not just caregiving. Even if you’re working as a companion person you need to have that passion in you, in any kind of work. Only then will you put in your 100 percent.

Vanessa: And I think one of the things that I recently read it’s the impact, really, that’s very, very important in finding a caregiver. Are they going to make an impact in the quality of life of our clients. And it’s definitely a very emotional place. It’s not about quantity. You’re not going to see numbers, or you’re not going to see tangible things.

Eightfold: Right.

Vanessa: And you’ll see it right away. We’ve seen our company grow. It’s an eight year old company, and we’re seeing just the involvement of caregivers, and I think one of the things that it’s important for Care Indeed at the moment is retention and making sure that we recognize who’s doing the hard work for us.

Eightfold: And Eightfold does find a way to help employers reach out at those critical stages and and say, “Oh, for this group of people they’re ready for either more training, or a mentorship program, or whatever else you might offer just to help them reach their career goals.” Because being a caregiver is one thing, but you probably have career goals too within your organization. And helping nurture all those sides of your employees and really help retain them.

Vanessa: Are we allowed to ask questions?

Eightfold: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vanessa: So my question is from what time in the initial phase, and when do you guys set this goal? Is it a continuous effort of you’re going to hold our hand from the time of finding the right person, and up to when?

Eightfold: Oh, it’s throughout. So Eightfold has three big aspects to it. It’s first with the talent acquisition side. They help you there. They help you with talent management, which means they help you manage your employees throughout their life span from candidate to alumni. Until they leave it’s the entire lifecycle of the candidate, as well as this overarching push to getting diverse candidates.

We know that a diverse workforce is imperative to mirroring the population. It has to be that way. And so it eliminates unintended biases within the outreach by masking their names, masking gender, masking age so that you can make decisions fully based on the person that’s right for the company, the job, and the team. And so that’s what Eightfold does.

Vanessa: So we look forward to just meeting one of your team members and…

Eightfold: Learning more about it.

Vanessa: Possibilities.

Eightfold: Awesome. Thank you guys so much for joining us.

Amrita: Thank you so much.

Eightfold: Again, that’s Vanessa Valerio and Amrita Sanyal from Care Indeed. Thank you so much for joining us.

Respondent 1: Thank you.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to Eightfold Radio. To find out more about Eightfold, please visit us at eightfold.ai, and be sure to listen to our episodes chronicling the experiences of Eightfold’s clients and partners.

The Best Recruiting Tool Ever

“… what [Eightfold] does is it frees up the recruiters to focus on the part where the human element’s important and allow them to go in and eliminate having to spend all day looking through that database for pockets of gold.”

Joe Belluomini, Talent Acquisition Leader, Coit Group

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The Best Recruiting Tool Ever

Male Voice: Hello and welcome to Eightfold Radio. Joe Belluomini is principal recruiter at Coit Group and has been deeply involved in recruiting technology for many years. Coit relies extensively on LinkedIn and has demoed dozens of recruitment tools over the past ten years. Let’s listen now as Joanne McDougald speaks with Joe about why Eightfold was the first recruiting tool and really stood out from the pack.

Joe: My name’s Joe Belluomini. I’m from the Coit Group. We provide strategic staffing solutions to high growth companies here in the Bay area and across the world. We have been in business for 17 years, and we’ve been working with the top VCs in the valley, working on companies that are really looking to hit the gas and grow their teams, which makes me kind of a subject matter expert on recruiting technologies.

So as a matter of fact, very early on I got the privilege to work with the founding team at LinkedIn. We did a lot of their early recruiting, and they actually brought me down one day to figure out how we could make LinkedIn, which was just like a business platform at the time – a business social network – how they could actually take it and monetize it and leverage it for the recruiting industry. So we came up with what is now called the InMail. At the time you had to reach out through your network of friends to try to reach people. So if I wanted to get ahold of someone you know I had to reach out to you, and then you would have to connect me with your friend. And that could take three, four or five weeks.

Eightfold: I remember, yeah.

Joe: And so I said, “Look, guys. If you could just allow me to reach out directly I would pay you for that.” And they said, “Well, how much would you pay for that?” And I said, “Well, I’d pay $5 per message.” Then InMail was born, and now the company’s worth billions and billions of dollars. As a matter of fact, I sent the first InMail on LinkedIn. That was one of the cool things they allowed me to do. Since then companies all around the world have relied on LinkedIn to provide them with a database of candidates.

Eightfold: And candidates have relied on LinkedIn to provide them with a list of companies that they should pursue.

Joe: No longer are the job boards – if you went on a job board you were actively looking for a job. And if your employer found you he might think otherwise, but here you’re in this network of people that allows you to have access to candidates. And now with the InMail we can communicate directly with them. So my company, which is an RPO shop, which means we go into fast-growing high-growth companies, and we outsource projects. So some of our clients are looking to quickly scale a sales organization or an engineering team to meet product deadlines.

And they just don’t have the recruiting capacity to be able to find these engineers or sales reps. So we come in there and augment their current staffing solutions and provide those candidates. So we’ve been a full stack LinkedIn company. Our company’s relied on LinkedIn. Our budget – almost 80 percent of it – goes to LinkedIn every year as our tool. And throughout the last 10 years I’ve probably demoed no less than 50 recruiting technologies, and I’ve never bought one.

I’ve done proof of concepts. I’ve done trials, but I’ve never purchased a tool other than LinkedIn. And then Kamal, who’s the new president of Eightfold AI came to me, and he was actually the chief revenue officer of Apttus where they had outsourced all of their recruitment to us. So we grew Apttus from 20 people to over 1,200. And Kamal was the chief revenue officer, and he said, “Joe, I stepped down to go work for this AI company.” And I was like, “Okay, Kamal, another recruiting tool? I’m not too sure that was the best move.”

Eightfold: Number 51 on the chopping block – if you’re keeping track.

Joe: I’m like, “Are you sure you’re gonna go to another recruiting tool because I’ve said no to all of them. LinkedIn owns the market, and I’m not too sure that was the best move. But I will come over and take a look.” We literally met in the alley the day after he left. Obviously Kamal’s a smart guy. He was an incredible man to work with, and I was thinking, “Oh my God, I better go meet with him,” because I was curious. What are these guys doing? And the next day they brought me down to their office, and they sat me down, and they demoed the software to me, and all of a sudden I realized, “Oh my God, this is the tool I have been looking for over the last 10 years.”

And I said, “This is a tool that can immediately impact my business and allow my recruiters to have –” It’s basically a sourcing automation tool, and it’ll allow them to go into my clients’ databases or applicant tracking systems and nurture those databases and go in there and start talking to all the folks in those – all the different candidates that have applied in what is typically called a black hole. I don’t know if you’ve ever applied for a job, but everybody said, “You applied for a job, and you didn’t go through a recruiter? You just sent your résumé into a black hole.”

And that is what most applicant tracking systems are. They’re a black hole. And with Eightfold their product goes in there and it nurtures that database. It looks for folks that might have the same skills as the open recs you’re looking for, and it messages them, and it sees what they’re up to. And it eliminates that human element that needs to go in there and write a message, spend the time looking at their résumé.

You’ll never remove the human element from recruiting. It’s just like sales and real estate and insurance. Making these decisions to join a new company, to invest your money into a fund or to buy a house – those are big decisions in life, and you usually need someone holding your hand during that process. But what it does is it frees up the recruiters to focus on the part where the human element’s important and allow them to go in and eliminate having to spend all day looking through that database for pockets of gold.

Eightfold: I think that’s the most interesting thing that’s part of this story. You’re using high technology, using AI in order to become more humane and have real human interactions. Because as it is, it’s just a numbers game. The statistics that I’ve read are that somewhere around only 10 percent of applications ever get really a review at all, and it’s 10 seconds or less by an individual recruiter.

Joe: There’s just not the human capacity to go and look at everybody’s application. At best they get glanced at. It’s usually when a recruiter calls a hiring manager and has a conviction or a story or some passion around a candidate that that candidate gets in the hiring process. But the sheer volume of résumés that are flowing, with only about 1 or 2 percent of them actually being relevant to the position, causes the recruiter to take his eye off the ball and focus on working with someone else who has a very well-vetted candidate.

So I’m really excited about the power and the opportunity for Eightfold in the marketplace and with my clients. Kamal and I have really laid out a great plan for my existing clients, and we’re going to market together because we are experts at implementing the technology and being able to power it. So we’re looking forward to a great partnership, and I think the success of Eightfold is going to be –

Eightfold: Eightfold?

Joe: Tenfold.

Eightfold: Tenfold – I love it. That’s your quote, all right.

Joe: They should have called it Tenfold because it’s going to be a very – I’m excited about these guys, and I’ve never been excited about any recruiting tools or platforms, except for LinkedIn, over the last 17 years. So this is exciting stuff.

Eightfold: So once again, thanks for joining us. That was Joe – say your last name.

Joe: Joe Belluomini.

Eightfold: Belluomini?

Joe: Joe Belluomini from the Coit Group located in San Francisco. We’re a strategic solutions provider for fast growing companies here in the technology arena.

Eightfold: Thank you so much for joining us, Joe.

Joe: Thank you, Jo. Have a great day.

Eightfold: You too.

Male Voice: Thanks for listening to Eightfold Radio. To find out more about Eightfold, please visit us at Eightfold.ai and be sure to listen to our other episodes chronicling the experiences of Eightfold’s customers and partners.

Removing Bias by Applying Machine Learning and AI in Recruitment

“I think it’s really interesting what Eightfold is doing applying this to HR, because I think there’s a really big problem out there and a big opportunity out there.”

– Kevin McClelland Financial Investment Banker, JMP Securities

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Kevin McClelland-JMP Securities

Announcer: Hello and welcome to Eightfold Radio. Kevin McClelland works with JMP Securities and views recruiting as similar in many ways to scouting players for sports teams. As in sports scouting, in recruiting there are innumerable biases that can creep in and lead to qualified candidates being overlooked. Let’s listen now as Joanne McDougald talks with Kevin about how Eightfold and artificial intelligence are helping to overcome these biases.

Eightfold: Hi and welcome to Eightfold Radio. This is Jo McDougald dialing in from the Rosewood in beautiful Palo Alto, California, or I guess Menlo Park, California, and I’m sitting here with Kevin McClelland from JMP Securities and he’s a financial…

Kevin: Investment banker.

Eightfold: An investment banker, yes, here we go. So I understand that you are not only a friend of Kamal, who’s the president of Eightfold, but also a friend of the industry. And so we just want to dive into your thoughts about what’s going on with AI and machine learning and particularly bringing those technologies to this vital human space. Here we are able to turn what is an arguably and inhumane thing that of machine learning and artificial intelligence, and helping a very human space—the HR and talent acquisition and talent management sides of businesses. What are your thoughts on what’s going on there?

Kevin: Well I think in general AI is being applied to many problems in the industry and we’ve seen it across, whether it’s a supply chain or whether it’s marketing or other areas. I think it’s really interesting what Eightfold is doing applying this to HR, because I think there’s a really big problem out there and a big opportunity out there. Namely, I think, every organization recruits people and I think most organizations do a pretty average job, I think, of being able to find the right talent. So I think approaching this particular problem, it’s a very big problem, it’s one that every organization on the planet that recruits people has. So I think it’s very germane that Eightfold is focusing on this.

Eightfold: I hundred percent agree, I mean this week it’s June 11th and I’ve heard, and read and watched many, many graduation podcasts this week and just hearing all of these graduates. And yesterday in fact on NPR there was a story about new graduates and although the job market is hot, these graduates are preparing themselves for the pain of turning in application after application and not hearing back. That is just tragic, they are hungry to work, anxious to join the job market, skilled, but don’t know how to write the right resume, don’t know how to be—really highlight what they’ve done. And if they were to give Eightfold an opportunity to dive into their CV, and their classes, and the projects that they work on, and Eightfold could build for them a really powerful resume that could be seen and picked up by the jobs that they’re hoping to get.

Kevin: No, I think it’s true, in fact my son just graduated high school yesterday, so it’s relevant to me, but it’s interesting, I was having this conversation the other day and somebody mentioned the book Moneyball, which is—I think as everyone probably knows, it’s about Billy being in the Oakland A’s—

Eightfold: Our famous Oakland A’s.

Kevin: And I think that the approach of scouts and what they look for in individuals was all about the look of a person. And they said, well that’s a baseball person. And of course Billy and his staff set out to basically look for the right kind of statistics and look for the right kind of ball players.

Eightfold: What was that guy in the middle of the country though, Jeff? He’s—Jackson or somebody who actually created the—he was still doing it, yeah, yeah, yeah—

Kevin: No he was—I forgot his name, but I think the same thing applies to recruiting, because effectively scouting is recruiting. And so we all do the same thing and we all have biases about who we think will succeed and going through that process. So I think being able to apply machine learning and AI to understand which individuals really will work out, starts with a clean slate and to some extent removes some of those biases. So I think because of that, it’s—I think it’s a pretty interesting process.

Eightfold: A hundred percent, it hurt my feelings when I read the book and it was like oh he’s got a good face and a pretty girlfriend and that’s what made sure that he was going to get picked up by an organization, tragic. So parting word, last word on your thoughts for AI, are you bullish?

Kevin: I’m very bullish, I think the key is—and I mentioned earlier, my son’s graduating high school, so I think AI is a key area of investment in the M&A world, merger and acquisition world where I live, there’s a big race for talent. And I think companies that have a group of engineers, AI engineers, and machine learning engineers, that’s very valuable. So I think you look at every organization from IBM to Salesforce and others. There’s a race to think about how to leverage AI for different applications. And I think Eightfold is on the leading edge of doing that for recruiting so it’s really exciting.

Eightfold: Very exciting, thank you so much for joining us today for Eightfold Radio, that was Kevin McClelland from JMP Securities. Thank you.

Kevin: Thank you.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to Eightfold Radio. To find out more about Eightfold please visit us at Eightfold.ai, and be sure to listen to our other episodes chronicling the experiences of Eightfold’s customers and partners.

Re-tapping into the Candidate Pool Using Artificial Intelligence

“We have to kill the status quo and we have to be questing after new ways, new approaches, more systematic, more efficient, more automated ways of doing things. And I think Eightfold is a company that’s got that vision and so we look for companies like that to partner with to make us better.”

– Jared Lucas, Chief People Officer, MobileIron

Listen to 6 minute Podcast
Read Transcript

Jared Lucas-MobileIron

Announcer: Hello and welcome to Eightfold Radio. Jared Lucas is chief people officer with MobileIron. Jared acknowledges that attracting technical talent is a big challenge in his industry. And he spent years building out a pool of qualified candidates. Let’s listen now as JoAnne McDougald speaks with Jared about how Eightfold is helping MobileIron tap its candidate pool most effectively to fill positions.

Eightfold: Hi everyone and welcome to Eightfold Radio. We’re joining you here from lovely Menlo Park, California and I’m joined by Jared Lucas from MobileIron, who’s the chief people officer. So chief people officer isn’t a role that’s been around forever, it’s kind of new. So tell me about a day in the life of a CPO.

Jared: Yeah, I think it’s kind of the modern way of looking at the human resources function. So everything that has anything to do with attracting, retaining or developing talent, that’s part of my charter at MobileIron.

Eightfold: And what keeps you up at night? And what are the things that make you look for new technologies?

Jared: Well we have huge supply/demand challenges on technical talent. And so that’s been something that for many, many years I lose sleep over. How do we get the right talent to build the products that we need? So when I think about new technologies, I’m always looking for ways to optimize, ways to make things more efficient, ways to make things smarter. And I’m also looking at the team behind who’s building these companies, because I want to really be attracted to the best talent, who’s building out these technologies for my team.

Eightfold: And so when you were—you are an Eightfold customer.

Jared: Yes MobileIron is an Eightfold customer.

Eightfold: Lovely. And when you were evaluating Eightfold, what were your top three things you were looking for? I know Eightfold is a brand new company and so they must’ve overcome some challenges in that regard.

Jared: Yeah, absolutely. I think the concept of automated ATS search, so the ability to search your own applicant tracking system with automation, is a really exciting concept and very, very compelling. Because we’ve spent many years building out the pool through all of our various marketing techniques to get candidates to apply and we don’t have a really efficient way to mine that data, so I think that was very attractive. And I think the overall concept of nurturing that pool over time, going back to it and building that pool up was something that was really attractive.

Eightfold: I love that. So I even think about the concept of getting an email from a company that I, at one point, had bothered to research, put in an application, write a torturous please hire me letter and then there you go and then they sent, bing, me an email. So that’s why you’re getting the 70 percent open rates and really being able to convert those people who were, at one time, a fan of your company, found you. And then now you’re actually doing what companies have said over years, “We’re just going to hold on to that application, we’ll be back in touch with you.” But nobody was ever in touch.

Jared: Yeah and think of a company like MobileIron, we’ve only been around for 10 years, but over that decade, we’ve touched thousands of candidates in the market. So even though we’re not a Fortune 500 company per se, with thousands and thousands of employees, we still have a huge footprint of candidates we’ve touched. And we have ongoing needs and building/finding solutions in technologies that make that process better are really important to me.

Eightfold: Yeah, no that’s terrific. And even the jobs have changed, so maybe somebody that wasn’t right for any of the jobs that you had open at the time, now all of a sudden, everybody needs a data scientist.

Jared: Absolutely. And candidates certainly change over time, and somebody three years ago may have gone off and picked up some new technologies or skills and now they’re much more interesting to us and more interesting to us to hire.

Eightfold: Yeah, no that’s terrific. And so in terms of talent management, being able to keep your existing employees engaged and on a path… I think this is such a nuanced idea that I think people like a CMO, CPO would want to be able to identify that. But this gives you a regimented repeatable process for, at month 14, I’m going to reach out to everybody in that month 14 and give them an opportunity. “Oh would you like a mentor? Would you like to join this training program? Would you—are you ready for some more school?” I think to me, that is fantastic. I’m a serial job hopper, I have to say and—but I think if I had worked for a company that was ready to nurture me and keep me, I would stay longer and I think it’s important.

Jared: Well, and the reality is if you don’t nurture the employees they’re going to leave. And the data on tenure at employer has just gone down dramatically since the ‘70’s, the ‘80’s, the ‘90’s. So we live in a new world where people are free agents and if you’re not continually offering them upside internally, they certainly have a lot of options externally.

Eightfold: Yeah. So what’s your parting word today? What would you tell people about Eightfold, your experience and what’s the one thing that you’re really enjoying with your implementation?

Jared: Yeah, I think the—my parting words would be we have to kill the status quo and we have to be questing after new ways, new approaches, more systematic, more efficient, more automated ways of doing things. And I think Eightfold is a company that’s got that vision and so we look for companies like that to partner with to make us better.

Eightfold: I love it. Thank you so much Jared Lucas from MobileIron. Thanks for joining us for Eightfold Radio.

Jared: Okay, no problem, thank you.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to Eightfold Radio. To find out more about Eightfold please visit us at Eightfold.ai, and be sure to listen to our other episodes chronicling the experiences of Eightfold’s customers and partners.

Finding People Who Fit then Meeting their Aspirations with AI

“Eightfold is doing something amazing that at least it’s worth taking a look at it.”

– Sham Namashivayam, NetApp

Listen to 13 minute Podcast
Read Transcript

Sham Namashivayam-NetApp

Announcer: Hello and welcome to Eightfold Radio. Sham Namashivayam works with NetApp and sees recruiting as a critical investment of time and energy to get the right candidates into the right positions, an investment that really pays off when done right. However the traditional recruiting process takes more time and effort than any recruiter can invest to do the job right. And with human beings, unconscious bias always enters the picture. Let’s listen now as Joanne McDougald speaks with Sham about how Eightfold technology is making building the investment in people easier.

Eightfold: Welcome everyone and thank you for joining us for Eightfold Radio we’re joining you here—we’re bringing you live from the Rosewood Hotel in beautiful Menlo Park, California. It’s a wonderful night, Eightfold is having a lovely event and I’m joined today by Sham Namashivayam from NetApp and I’m super excited to have him tell his story. One of the things that we’re so excited about talking technology tonight with two of, I guess four of the world’s best technologists have come together between York Poon and Kamal Ahluwalia and of course Ashutosh Garg and Varun, have all come together to form Eightfold and really I think change the way that we’re dealing with HR, and recruitment, and talent management and diversity for the enterprise and beyond. And I just want to get your take on what the technology is providing and how it’s changing the way that we’ll deal with HR in the future. So tell me first of all about yourself and where you work?

Sham: So my name is Sham Namashivayam, I work for NetApp, I’ve been there with them for six months now. My role is two things, one is introduce the concept of digital workforce into NetApp. That way we move the entire workforce up in the value chain and all the repetitive work is hired back to the digital workforce, if you will. And the other aspect of my job is to use the concept of augmented decision making, in the sense that… the phrase that I use often is that instead of driving the business through rearview mirror/looking in the rearview mirror, we have this big and beautiful windshield and through which you can look at the business and where it is headed and drive the business towards that market. So that’s the goal that I have for NetApp and that’s what I’m trying to do with that.

Eightfold: And I think finding the right people to operate in those roles is critical to your success.

Sham: Absolutely. I always felt that as with my prior experience, as well as my current area of work, it’s not about what you do, it’s who you have on your team. It’s very, very important that we have the right people as Jim Collins used to say, from the book of Good to Great it’s very important to have people on the bus, and also make sure that they’re sitting in the right seat, that’s so important. So that is a very fascinating thing because after that I get into the cruise control mode. They get to drive the bus really where they want to go and I get to set the directions as you know what I want to complete as part of the teams. Yeah… recruiting is a key thing and I spent a lot of time in recruiting people and I will get really strict about the recruiting in a sense that making sure that we have the right candidate for the right job.

Eightfold: Yeah and so in finding those right candidates the strategies that you’ve employed in the past, are they coming up short and that’s why you’re looking for new solutions?

Sham: Absolutely. In the past what I’ve done is I always… it’s rough with just accepting the resume and the way it is, I would always bring in the right set of people that I think would be a good fit. And give them a problem statement for them to go solve and then they come back and talk about what problem statement they solved and how they went about doing it. You know I’m not looking for exactly a perfect solution in the way they saw it, but I wanted to know their approach, their thought process, how they went about doing it. But this has been a very painful process, I would have to agree with you, because going through each one of the candidates write-up, and bring them into interview and spending companies’ time and energy to go through it, has been very painful.

I’m looking for better ways of solving that same problem in a sense that I would get—if I post a position, I would get something like 200 to 250 resumes, which I have to comb through to figure out which candidate should I even call or send an email to saying that you may be a good fit for it. I’m looking for an alternate solution where that sort of intelligence is built into the system wherein I get to talk to not hundreds of people, but I get to talk to five to 10 people who are high caliber, who can do the job, but who are not even applying yet, right? Because I don’t want to get into the weeds. I want to talk to people who might be potentially interested to this position that I’m looking for. Right? So that is what excites me about this particular company, I’m really fascinated about it.

Eightfold: No, I’m really fascinated as well. And what seems to be this best fit, it’s not just the best fit for the company, it’s also the best fit for the person.

Sham: Correct.

Eightfold: Because it’s coming back to an understanding of the right person for the company, the right person for the tasks that you’re describing and then it’s the right person for that group. I mean that’s the kind of—

Sham: So I absolutely agree with you, because culture is so damn important in the corporation, right. Because cultural fit is something that I always look for, because I might find a great talent but culturally they’ll not be able to fit. So balancing that out whether the person can do a job and culturally whether they can fit into the company is so important. Because there aren’t freedoms of culture—companies’ culture, you know they’re out within the next nine months, or 10 months or 12 months. That to me is money down the drain, so I put a lot of emphasis in making sure the cultural fit is also gauged.

Eightfold: The cultural fit sometimes gets confused and conflated with looking the same or having the same gender. And I think one of the things that Eightfold brings to the table is this diversity masking and it allows you to find talented people that would fit within that team, that would be bright for your culture, that aren’t necessarily the person that somebody would’ve thought. Maybe it’s a woman, as a woman.

Sham: Yeah I’m a big fan of women and promoting them through the ladder, if you will. I’ve been always fascinated by the impact that you can create for them and the value they can—you can uncover through that process, if you will, right. So the whole concept of what you just touched upon, is hiring through unconscious bias, if you will, in a sense that we all have bias. If somebody says that they don’t have bias, I don’t agree with that. We all have bias. Just that you’ve got to be really conscious about your unconscious bias, if you will, right. From that perspective it’s like your mind typically thinks that these individuals will be able to do the job, you know by the size, by the racial ethnicity, or where they graduated from, how well they write versus whatnot, right. It’s as phenomenal to see today a poster of da Vinci’s resume.

If somebody saw that resume and thought that this gentlemen could be a great fit for being an amazing artist, I would love to know who that person is, because that wouldn’t have crossed the mind at all, right. It’s just so profound when it comes to it, right? So that kind of tells you that, kind of unconscious bias so much of it comes into play. I always tell my HR business partner and the recruiter, when they send me the resumes, “Put a system in place that either it takes out the gender and name of the person and what they did.” That kind of opens up the whole conversation about whether this person is the right fit for this position or not, because so much gets, what do you say it, diluted or discarded just by looking at you know, by the name and the gender of a candidate, right, I feel that is unwarranted.

I always think about—while I say that, I also think about when I talk about diversity, to me diversity is not about men versus women; it’s about diversity of thoughts. Who can bring a different point of view in such a way that when you build a product together? Gone are those days where we used to build products only in India, whether we’re building products in China or whether we’re building products in America. Now we build products worldwide, right, the products we build, whether it’s iPhone or Facebook or Google, it’s used worldwide, so you’ve got to have that sort of a diverse thinking, that is the value that I’m trying to tap into, if you will.

Eightfold: Oh 100 percent, I love everything you said. So just FYI, audience listeners, da Vinci… there’s a famous resume of his in which 18, 19, number 20 on his list of things that he’s good at besides building traversees and moats, he says, by the way I’m a good painter and I can kind of sculpt. So check out da Vinci’s resume on the Eightfold website and just sort of enjoy this 500-year-old technology which isn’t the best way for us to go about searching for jobs. And I love what you had to say about diversity. And one of the other things I think that we should touch on before we depart today is about the talent management side. Maintaining those great candidates once they’ve come through and they’ve worked with you for years, and helping them find their “what’s next” along the path and really keeping them happy.

Sham: You know, it’s… what I would say is that we are trying to look for balance outside, but instead of looking inside. In my previous life as well as my current position that I’m in, you know there’s so much of talent within their own company that we have. And we are not able to unleash those individuals’ talent because they’re just doing their mundane job all over, they’re just getting bored. And then one fine day, you find them going to your competitor, right, what a disaster that is, right. How do we find out what their next career aspiration is? Tapping into that aspiration and leveraging their skill set and what they’ve learned about the company is so unique and is so valuable for a company. Because as soon as you open a requisition, it takes at least between six to nine months to recruit and to onboard an individual before they’re becoming productive, think about that, think about that for a minute. Because six to nine months of less productivity of that employee is so valuable, so I’m a huge fan of finding out nine boxes in the company. They may not be the right fit for the particular job, but they could be used somewhere else and we don’t have the data point where they could’ve used differently or different places, if you will. Having that insight would be amazing.

Eightfold: Yeah and I think that’s the promise of Eightfold and if you were to talk to a friend, this is your parting shot, if you were to talk to a friend and tell them a little bit about Eightfold, give me one sentence that you would offer them?

Sham: Eightfold is doing something amazing that at least it’s worth taking a look at it. If not pursuing a proof of value for their respective company.

Eightfold: Thank you so much for joining me Sham, this has been a pleasure. And welcome to Eightfold Radio everyone, thank you for our listeners. Join us on the podcast at Eightfold.ai. Thank you so much.

Sham: Thank you, thanks for having me, thank you.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to Eightfold Radio. To find out more about Eightfold please visit us at Eightfold.ai and be sure to listen to our other episodes chronicling the experiences of Eightfold’s customers and partners.

Using AI to Break Down the Built-in Biases in Recruitment – Pandora

“Pandora is known for diversity. They [Eightfold] have a lot of diversity goals. Something like an AI-based recruitment tool can definitely help with that diversity goals right there.”

– Harish Goli, Product Owner for Audio Ads, Pandora

Listen to 8 minute Podcast
Read Transcript

Kunal-Mahajan-Human-Learning & Harish-Goli-Pandora

Announcer: Hello, and welcome to Eightfold Radio. Kunal Mahajan works with UK startup Human Learning and Harish Goli works with Pandora. Together they see how even advanced hiring tools are still affected by the built in systems of bias that make building a diverse workforce a challenge. Let’s listen now as JoAnne McDougald speaks with Kunal and Harish about how Eightfold technology is helping to undo some of this built in bias.

Harish: My name is Harish. I am the product owner for audio ads on Pandora, the company where the music never stops. It’s awesome. Pandora customizes and personalizes music, listening to you. We use data science and machine learning to figure out the right songs for the right mood, and the right moment. That’s why we have over 100 million people listening to us all the time. Thank you. Thank you for being a listener.

Eightfold: I am a listener. Kunal, let’s hear from you.

Kunal: Sure. Well, thank you for this opportunity and Harish great listening to you about Pandora. So I work with Human Learning. I’m responsible for the US business. We are a UK-based startup, and we are really a smart region note platform, which helps enterprises ask the right questions, at the right people, at the right time. And what that does is we allow employees and customers to respond to questions from their smartphones, and allow their responses to very conveniently be uploaded to the enterprise systems be it Salesforce or some other CRM, or service now, or ERP, or other service platforms. And what that allows us to do is that of course we also at Machine Learning and analytics added and figure out what’s being said, what’s being seen, and do a whole bunch more stuff over there, and that’s the element. We capture the human context and learn from that.

Eightfold: That is a perfect segway. And so what we’re doing here with Eightfold is it’s imploring machine learning and AI, and turning those arguably non-human activities and technologies on a very human level, and in some way allowing HR people to become more humane where they’re able to give in more time, reach out, and really nurture people through the process. Because they’re not so bogged down on the talent acquisition side with hunting who they are, because machine learning and the AI algorithm find those people out in the world and identify where they might be ready to move based on past experience and marry them to your outstanding job. What have you learned so far about Eightfold? What brought you here?

Kunal: Well, I happen to know the company fairly well. So I guess that’s why I’m here, but I totally can relate to the vision and mission of Eightfold. Truth be told, Human Learning itself is a small startup. We have less than 20 people strong, and the way we’ve hired people is really through our networks, but I can easily see the value when you’re scaling up. That’s not going to be scalable, and it’s definitely not unbiased either. They have a tendency to go through your own network where you end up looking for people similar to yourself.

And that has it’s pros and cons, but as we go through the process of really scaling up and ensuring that we give everybody an equal opportunity, the value of machine learning to identifying resources and identifying capability with people just becomes more and more important. Totally relate to the Eightfold mission.

Harish: I think Kunal hit the nail on the head right there. As the company grows personal networks and professional networks become to limited to hire, and after a point it becomes a limiting factor in terms of diversity. Pandora is known for diversity. They have a lot of diversity goals. Something like an AI-based recruitment tool can definitely help with that diversity goals right there.

Eightfold: So with AI they offer masking not only of the person’s face, but it leaves out their name, and anything that would remotely indicate whether or not they’re male, female, gender, race, anything. So I think it’s the next step, I think, where technology needs to lend a hand and get us over this last hurdle battling controversy with AI. As far as talent management, I don’t if you know, but Eightfold offers a way for employers to engage with their employees and to keep them interested and on a career path within the organization.

And it’s just at the right time to help the talent management team to reach out to employees and send them an offer, or a new training program, or what’s the next step for them. How would that work for your organization, to really nurture people throughout their career? They can set an ultimate career trajectory, and the system will identify the classes you need to take, the path that you should take, and the way for you to ultimately reach your goals.

Respondent 2: As we all know in the Bay Area, the job market is extremely hard right now. Recruiting is a challenge. Retaining is just as much of a challenge. A retained employee, in my opinion, is far more valuable than recruiting a new employee. So plans for retaining an employee is going to be extremely valuable, and if we can improve their impact, that’s going to be a gold mine right there.

Kunal: Great points Harish, absolutely. I can’t relate to it personally in context of Human Learning, but like I said, we’re a small company, and I wear so many different hats, as does everybody in the organization. That at this stage in our company’s growth retaining people isn’t really the challenge that we focus on, but I could totally relate to it at the appropriate time in a larger company that retaining people is critical and way more valuable than hiring new talent.

Eightfold: Well, as a veteran of many small startups, I can say the cost of a bad hire for you in this stage is very high. Every hire matters so much, and Eightfold can give you insights into your team. It’ll also tell you who’s best in that team. So it’s not only their skills and their career objectives. And it also does personality analysis and identifies who would work best on that team. So rounding out our minute together here, parting last words from each of you about your thoughts on technology being applied to this difficult task of HR recruitment.

Respondent 1: I think it’s a noble idea, and what Ashu and team are doing is definitely a lot of potential and applicability. I’d love to be able to see the product and see it in action. Unfortunately, we haven’t yet done that, but yes we’re always willing to go come in for a free pilot. So I would love to be able to see Eightfold go places.

Eightfold: I love that. He’s always listening to this. Let’s go.

Respondent 2: Best wishes to Eightfold. Technology has always been the driver of innovation and change, and I hope Eightfold does the same for the recruitment and retention industry.

Eightfold: Thank you both for joining us for Eightfold radio.

Respondent 1: Thank you.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to Eightfold Radio. To find out more about Eightfold, please visit us at eightfold.ai, and be sure to listen to our other episodes chronicling the experiences of Eightfold’s customers and partners.

Perfecting Talent Acquisition with AI

“… having a tool that’s going to really make it easy to find qualified candidates and ones that are actually interested in Twilio and know about Twilio and are excited about Twilio, makes our jobs a lot easier and helps us kind of scale the company.”

Meredith Alvin, Technical Recruiter,
& Sierra Molina, formerly Recruiting Operations Supervisor, Twilio

Listen to 8 minute Podcast
Read Transcript

Perfecting Talent Acquisition with AI

Male Voice: Hello and welcome to Eightfold Radio. Sierra Molina and Meredith Alvin work in recruiting at Twillio. They were initially drawn to Eightfold for its capacity to nurture the warm leads and past applicants on their radar and are just wrapping up a pilot program with the technology. Let’s listen now as Joanne McDougald speaks with Sierra and Meredith about their experiences with Eightfold so far.

Sierra: Hi, my name is Sierra. I do our recruiting operations at Twillio.

Meredith: My name’s Meredith. I do technical recruiting at Twillio.

Eightfold: Terrific. And so as recruiters we can understand why Eightfold might be of interest to you. So if you can tell me first, Sierra, what is the number one thing that brought you to today’s party – other than the lovely atmosphere, the drinks and a good time? Tell us a little bit about what you imagine your Eightfold experience will be. Or are you existing customers?

Sierra: So we actually launch next week, so we’re still just demoing and piloting. But the results so far have been really impressive, so we’re really excited to have the rest of the team on the platform. And some of the reasons that we went through the pilot and joining Eightfold was utilizing our candidates that have already applied with us – those warm leads. They already have an invested interest in Twillio, so it’s just going back out and reengaging them. So that benefit is why we were really interested in trying this out.

Eightfold: It’s unbelievable to me that nobody else has ever thought of that, and it’s just one of those duh moments. And it’s so powerful. You’ve got people that are already interested, bothered to have found you, engaged with your site and then applied. And then we don’t go back and really get to them. So Meredith, what was your number one reason?

Meredith: I think, as a recruiter, one of my biggest challenges is I knew we had a database of really amazing candidates, but the functionality in terms of searching and finding those silver medalists who might have passed two years ago is really challenging for me. And so being able to have a tool that easily kind of aggregates people, matches them very accurately, brings them to the surface, and I’m able to really have everything in one place, is really an amazing feature for me and makes my day-to-day a lot easier. And I’m able to really utilize the 180,000 candidates that we have in our system.

Eightfold: One of the things that is sort of a hot button for me, and I’m really excited about that Eightfold provides, is this diversity commitment. And I just want both of your thoughts on that. So Meredith, we’ll start with you this time. And just tell me what you think about that capability.

Meredith: I think especially on the technical side – we were kind of just chatting about this earlier. Often times when we have hiring managers kind of go through their network and bring to the surface diverse people within their kind of close group, it ends up still being a pretty homogeneous network. And so finding a very unbiased way of bringing qualified people to the surface and being able to take away those biases that tend to come up in résumé review – and even just looking through LinkedIn profiles – and just really focusing on the skill sets can really make sure that we have a flawless process from start to finish and that we’re creating a good top of funnel of diverse candidates.

Often times, even people who apply to our jobs they tend to get filtered out – unconsciously I think for the most part – but it happens. And I think this provides a very neutral starting point and allows us to really achieve those diversity goals that we do have.

Sierra: A lot of times with our hiring teams it’s not necessarily that they’re looking for only diverse candidates. But you’re looking for the right fit on the team, and being able to just really match those skill sets and then be able to say, “By the way, also this is an under represented population that we would love to tackle.” I think that’s really helpful is just you can prove with data points that this is going to be an accurate match. I think that’s going to be really helpful in our workflow and to help our teams bring those candidates to the top.

Eightfold: I’m going to pick on one more thing that I’ve learned about Eightfold since I’ve been on board with them and that is around this “what’s next”. So helping candidates identify a career path inside of the company that gives them a clear way for them to go forward without having to worry about going elsewhere. I think what happens a lot of times with the promise of Eightfold is that it’ll help with churn and help with attrition. So do you want to give me your thoughts on that?

Meredith: For me at least, from my perspective, we often also have a lot of candidates in our database who were at Twillio maybe five years ago, started as maybe IC1, IC2, went to go elsewhere, and we just kind of forgot that they were ‘A’ players. And bringing those people to the surface again I think is really awesome.

But yeah, I think also just kind of creating a very streamlined interview process makes sure that we find – it’s a perfect match on both sides, from the candidate side and from the hiring side – so that we are making the right hire and so that people are there for long-term. And they kind of understand what their career trajectory is, understand what the career path is. And I think starting that from the beginning with Eightfold kind of sets a good precedent moving forward and obviously grows a company as well.

Eightfold: Thank you, and that was Meredith, once again. So you have two people to juggle. If you were to tell somebody at Eightfold – each of you could just give one last parting thought about at least your idea of what life will be like once you turn it on next week – very exciting.

Sierra: So I think it’s actually going to make our lives a lot easier whenever we’re sourcing or looking at prospects that are passive. It’s kind of just a gamble. You don’t know if they’re even interested in the company. You don’t know if they’re going to be interested in your values. But these were candidates that have already shown interest. And I think that the percentage of response rates is going to be exponentially higher because of that fact. So we’re really looking forward to tapping into a lot of that talent that we just maybe two years ago was a little too junior. But two years later they now have the experience that we’re looking for. So that’s what we’re looking forward to.

Eightfold: Thanks, and that was Sierra. And last parting shot from Meredith.

Meredith: I think always for recruiting the top of mind is time to fill. And I think Eightfold will really help close that gap and really increase the time that we’re spending filling roles. I know we are going through a huge growth spurt, so having a tool that’s going to really make it easy to find qualified candidates and ones that are actually interested in Twillio and know about Twillio and are excited about Twillio, makes our jobs a lot easier and helps us kind of scale the company.

Eightfold: That’s terrific. My perception about Eightfold at this point is that it’s going to be a tool that helps recruiters actually become more human and more humane – and they’re both nodding – because you’re going to be able to spend more time with those candidates and not spend so much time sourcing and will change the lives for both you and your potential employees. So thank you both so much for joining us for Eightfold Radio.

Male Voice: Thanks for listening to Eightfold Radio. To find out more about Eightfold, please visit us at Eightfold.ai and be sure to listen to our other episodes chronicling the experiences of Eightfold’s customers and partners.

Using AI to Break Down the Built-in Biases in Recruitment – Vyn

“As we go through the process of scaling up and ensuring that we give everybody an equal opportunity, the value of machine learning to identify resources and capabilities has become more important.”

-Kunal Mahajan, Head of Business, US, Vyn