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.