AI can be used to make a workforce more diverse by removing unconscious bias from hiring, says Ashutosh Garg, CEO & Co-Founder at Eightfold.ai, in an interaction with CIO Axis.
CIO Axis: Artificial Intelligence is playing a vital role in the development of overall business operations. What is the role of AI in improving HR processes?
Ashutosh Garg: I see artificial intelligence technology as the key to moving human resources beyond a past of mediocre technology, including a reliance on resumes and job descriptions, which often lead to poor hiring decisions and ineffective career planning. There is a famous resume that Leonardo da Vinci made in 1482, and if you read it, it is striking that a modern resume is not all that different. How is it that a 500-year-old technology is still the basis of our talent practices? We can do better.
AI enables new capabilities that can’t happen with a resume and a job description. AI can help companies find people who they hadn’t even considered, by showing companies skilled people who are off their radar. It can find people to fill jobs who are in companies’ own databases, but who the company hadn’t even realized would be strong fits. Some of the people in those databases applied for one job a year ago and didn’t get it but would be good for a different job now. Others applied years ago and have added new skills since then — a fact that AI can automatically determine.
AI can do more than recruiting. This technology can show the right jobs to each candidate and why that individual is a strong match for the job, making job descriptions unnecessary and improving the quality of applications. And AI can show each employee the career options available to them and the way to pursue any career path. AI can help the employer understand the potential and options of each employee as well.
Finally, AI can be used to make a workforce more diverse by removing unconscious bias from hiring.
CIO Axis: AI–HR is changing the scope in hiring smarter workforce. How is Eightfold.ai betting on AI-HR technology?
Ashutosh Garg: We’re not just betting on it, we’re building it. We’re building a technology that can help companies make much smarter hiring decisions. And we’re teaching that technology literally every minute to become smarter. With machine learning, we’re constantly making our AI more and more effective.
CIO Axis: What are your recent developments done in India market?
Ashutosh Garg: We recently announced the opening of our office in Noida, “Eightfold Nalanda”. As you can see from the name of our office, we are building more than a service center for our global customers. We are making Eightfold Nalanda into a center of excellence for talent, where we are producing cutting-edge AI technology and bringing it to organizations throughout the country.
CIO Axis: Shed some light about Eightfold’s Talent Intelligence Platform. What is the USP of this software platform?
Ashutosh Garg: We created more than a piece of technology. This is really a whole new category, the Talent Intelligence Platform, which helps enterprises attract, engage, hire, and retain a diverse workforce with a single solution. Built with deep learning AI at its core, the Talent Intelligence Platform is something that the HR profession has not seen before.
This is the first platform to be built with AI matching technology at its core, and with this technology we can understand the skills, potential, and trajectory of each individual. We can deliver these insights at speed and at scale, which creates fundamentally new capabilities, such as automated screening, automated bias prevention, instant talent pipelines for all positions, personalized career planning, personalized career site job pages, and much more.
Ultimately, we want to enable every person to find the right career for them. Each individual has a path and a purpose, and AI can help them discover it.
CIO Axis: What is your roadmap for coming years?
Ashutosh Garg: We will continue to develop the most sophisticated and valuable AI platform for talent, delivering it to more companies and impacting more lives around the world. Also, we will continue our investments to India.