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What if there was a software that could take the guesswork out of finding a career or an employee? And what if that software could not only analyze your technical skills, but also those that could lead you to leadership positions down the road? That would be great news for the hiring managers and everyday Americans who struggle with and feel anxious about the complexities of completing a job search. Lucky for them then, that Eightfold.ai is working to make those worries a thing of the past through artificial intelligence.

“What we are doing is using the latest advances in deep learning and machine learning to really understand, not what people have done, but what they are capable of being next. What is their learning ability for a certain skill? If you know statistics and signal processing, you can learn machine learning very quickly. If you are good in programming, you can learn Python quickly. So really trying to understand the learning ability of each individual and using that to assess and understand who can be a great fit in what enterprise, in which function.” 

With more than 100 customers, including AT&T, Cisco and Liberty Mutual, Eightfold.ai is using the power of data to solve the complexities that come with hiring thousands of employees. On this episode, Ashutosh Garg, discusses how A.I. can be used to identify which candidates are an ideal fit for an organization, and he gives an inside look at their process and the variables they look at to identify that perfect candidate.

Main Takeaways

• It’s a Problem Rooted in Data: When you’re building any application that’s rooted in A.I., the number one priority needs to be data collection. The more data you have, the more inferences you are able to make. When Eightfold.ai launched its platform, it only worked with companies that hired more than 10,000 employees over a few years. The idea is that for every 10,000 employees hired, more than 1 million people were called, screened, etc., thus making the data sets they are able to pull from very large.

• It’s About Fit: Finding the right employee should never be based solely on a candidate’s skills. Instead, when you are going through the hiring process, think about how this particular person fits within a role and within your organization as a whole. Just because someone works at Google, does not mean they will fit at Facebook. Instead, evaluate an individual on all the variables a job requires, cultural fit included.
• The Art of Possibility: Artificial intelligence is unlocking the possibility of not only creating a more diverse workplace, but providing opportunities to people who might not have the traditional background, but who have still found success. The technology unlocks for them the ability to find and pursue many more opportunities.

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For a more in-depth look at this episode, check out the article below.

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What if there was a software that could take the guesswork out of finding a career or an employee? And what if that software could not only analyze your technical skills, but also those that could lead you to leadership positions down the road? That would be great news for the hiring managers and everyday Americans who struggle with and feel anxious about the complexities of completing a job search. Lucky for them then, that Eightfold.ai is working to make those worries a thing of the past through artificial intelligence.

“What we are doing is using the latest advances in deep learning and machine learning to really understand, not what people have done, but what they are capable of being next. What is their learning ability for a certain skill? If you know statistics and signal processing, you can learn machine learning very quickly. If you are good in programming, you can learn Python quickly. So really trying to understand the learning ability of each individual and using that to assess and understand who can be a great fit in what enterprise, in which function.” 

With more than 100 customers, including AT&T, Cisco and Liberty Mutual, Eightfold.ai is using the power of data to solve the complexities that come with hiring thousands of employees. On this episode, Ashutosh Garg, who you just heard from, discusses how A.I. can be used to identify which candidates are an ideal fit for an organization, and he gives an inside look at their process and the variables they look at to identify that perfect candidate.

Garg, who holds a Ph.D. in machine learning and A.I. from the University of Illinois, realized how effective and helpful algorithms could be in the hiring process. So in 2016, he helped launch Eightfold.ai, an intelligence platform built around the idea of helping leading enterprises hire and retain a diverse workforce.

From his days at IBM to Google, Garg experienced what made technology companies successful, and he realized that they all had one commonality: the talent they were able to bring in was crucial to their success. So he began thinking about how he could make an impact and help other companies experience that same level of success.

“I started thinking about how we can help every enterprise in the world with having the right talent so that they are successful,” he said. “What we realized is ultimately it is a data problem today. When we think about our own career, when we are giving career guidance to other folks, we are relying on a sample set of few data points that we have encountered in other careers. But with globalization, with changing workforce dynamics, this problem is getting harder than ever before.”

Eightfold.ai uses a series of deep learning and machine learning techniques to not only understand a candidate’s past experiences, but also the skills they possess that could lead them to future opportunities. 

“If you really think about [hiring], the biggest challenge is around softer skills,” Garg said. “That is where data can help you even more. So today our platform is used across every function, every role, every skill. So we are doing it for softer skills, harder skills, and everything in between.” 

As a company, Eightfold.ai traditionally only works with larger-scale organizations. This is by design because the more employees a company has, the larger the sets of data it will collect on candidates throughout the hiring process.

“The very first thing we are doing today is analyzing the data of more than one billion people across the globe,” he said. “We are a data-hungry company, so we are trying to collect as much data as we can. If you’re a company of 10,000 employees over the last few years, you have probably interviewed or screened more than a million people.” 

This approach makes it easier to to identify which candidates are ideal fits for a particular organization. And that fit is based on many different factors. .

“Very quickly, what we realized is that it is not about who’s better or worse, it is about who’s the most relevant person, who’s the right fit for the role,” Garg said. “I think that was a key insight that we have had is that it’s about the fit. It’s about the elements of a job” 

So what variables do they evaluate when they are analyzing potential fits? According to Garg, there are a host of attributes analyzed, including what makes a particular person successful in a role, what skills that person has, and what their background and strengths might be.

“We don’t live in a static world, especially in the world of A.I. and Google,” Garg said. “One example I always give is that I am a terrible cook, but if you give me the books, you give me this package of stuff from Blue Apron, I can become a great cook. The key thing is that you have to take not only what someone has done, but also what other resources are available and then, and then match them to the people who are already in that function and performing well.”

To hear more about how Garg and his team at Eightfold.ai are working together to help create a more diverse workplace through artificial intelligence, check out the full episode of IT Visionaries.

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To hear the entire discussion, tune into IT Visionaries here.