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How AI Platforms Are Improving Talent Management In 2020

This article is more than 3 years old.

Bottom Line: Dexcom and Micron adopting a single AI platform for talent management that adapts to their specific HR strategies and provides new insights is delivering significant results.   

AI-based platforms provide new insights, intelligence and guidance to CHROs and HR leaders, helping them close the growing talent gaps their organizations face. By integrating hiring, internal mobility, diversity & inclusion, contingent workforces, training & development and performance management all on a single AI platform, HR leaders gain greater insights into closing talent gaps. And it's encouraging to see how AI platforms evaluate candidates on their capabilities while anonymizing factors that might lead to hiring bias. 

Interested in learning more about why AI platforms are gaining adoption, I recently attended a webinar co-hosted by Talent Tech Lab (TTL) and Eightfold.ai that included AI-first recruiting results from Dexcom and Micron. The webinar is titled An AI-First Approach to Recruiting with Eightfold and TTL. TTL provided a white paper they recently wrote, An Introduction to AI-First Recruiting.  Dexcom and Micron have standardized on the Eightfold Talent Intelligence Platform that covers hiring, internal mobility, diversity and soon, contingent workforces. The company has raised $85M with Foundation, IVP, Lightspeed and Capital One as key investors. Today Eightfold has customers in four continents, 25 countries and supports 50 languages with users in 110 countries. Eightfold recently competed against 50 other vendors in a challenge run by the Department of Labor to help veterans transition into the civilian workforce and won. Eightfold's' selection by the Department of Labor for this vitally important project is discussed in more detail in the recent TechTarget article, To improve veteran hiring, U.S. turns to AI platform.

Why Recruiting Is Driving AI Platform Growth

Dexcom and Micron are getting measurable results from their AI platforms by closing the gap in recruiting first. There are five key areas where an integrated AI platform for talent management pay off the fastest when it comes to streamlining recruiting. These five areas include time-to-hire, time-to-interview, cost-per-hire and candidate quality. Dexcom and Micron are also seeing improvements in recruiter efficiency and automation, sourcing efficiency and automation, including finding candidates with the most potential for a given position. A single, integrated AI platform also saves valuable time making career site improvements and improving diversity and inclusion hiring results.

Why Dexcom's Single AI Platform Strategy Is Delivering Results   

Dexcom is a leader of diabetes care technology, empowering people to take control of diabetes through innovative continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) systems. Matt Hill, Director of Talent Acquisition, explained why Dexcom chose a single AI platform strategy. Dexcom's HR and talent management leaders anticipated that by consolidating all talent management applications and workflows on a single AI platform, they would streamline recruiting by finding candidates with the highest potential to excel in each open position. Matt shared the story of how an applicant remarked on how the career site's matching technology helped them identify many positions they were qualified for in seconds and didn't force them to fill out work experience entries for each. Matt said on the webinar that "things like that are why we've seen a 40% conversion of all website visitors into unique applicants. It's a no-brainer." Today Dexcom is expanding its platform to include an AI-based personalized career site, talent acquisition and talent experience tools for internal mobility as well. The following graphic was shown during the webinar:

Micron's Advanced Approach to Using an AI Platform

Britt Thomas, Global Director, Talent Brand and Technology Innovation at Micron, explained how every area of talent management benefits from or is automated by their unified AI platform. The primary problem Micron is applying AI to is dealing with the challenge of too many applicants that don't have the skills for a specific position. Micron's use of a single AI platform is among the most advanced in high tech. Recruiting, including an automated bot to better guide applicants to positions they are qualified for, integration to their legacy Applicant Tracking System, talent management analytics and more, are all contained in a single AI platform. Britt said on the webinar that using an AI-based platform provides "a better perspective on not only the applicants that have come in, so it's fully integrated with our applicant tracking system, but also to reevaluate some of the prospects, people that haven't applied, but we can still calibrate them and we can still look at the skills and the qualifications mapping and put those then in front of hiring managers." Micron has also integrated a career site into its AI-based platform, which has drastically reduced the time it takes for candidates to find jobs they are qualified for and apply to. The following graphic is from the webinar: 

Training Algorithms To Reduce Bias Is Key

One of the primary factors of why companies get results from their single platform strategies starts with continued improvement in training algorithms and models with new data. According to Eightfold's President Kamal Ahluwalia, algorithms take a couple of weeks to calibrate based on a company's legacy data. Eightfold pulls customers' data and integrates with ATS and other legacy data sources, having their experts fine-tune the algorithms over time. Kamal says Eightfold experts will often report back to customers, telling them, "Hey, this is what we're seeing. Are we getting it right?" Within a few weeks, the model is ready to go. 

Eightfold's President Kamal Ahluwalia says Eightfold relies extensively on global training data sets representing the broadest base of careers possible to minimize bias of relying on a single company's data set alone. He also says that Eightfold provides algorithm transparency or justification, providing anyone relying on their platform visibility into why any particular candidate or an employee is a good fit for a particular position. The goal is to make sure that every candidate or employee is hired based on what they can do and their potential for learning as they pursue an aspirational role. Eightfold’s designing in greater explainability and visibility rather than relying on the algorithms as a black box are driving unprecedented conversion rates of visitors to applicants on their customer's career sites, especially with diversity candidates.

Conclusion

It's encouraging to see how bias is being addressed at the data modeling level and how companies, including Dexcom and Micron, are factoring that into how they design and use their AI platforms. Both companies are also taking a reasonable, rational view of using AI-first recruiting, AI-based tools and the new insights gained from relying on a single, unified AI platform for talent management.

What I found fascinating is how companies are using social accountability to achieve greater diversity and inclusion, all starting with accurate data on their diversity dashboards. Companies have learned how to hold managers socially responsible for achieving diversity and inclusion initiates, a sure sign lasting change in this area is happening today. AI platforms help to break the biases that hold companies back from attracting talented employees while enabling prospects to find the position they are best suited for.

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