Andrea Constantine | August 21, 2020

The “COVID-effect” has become a common term to describe things that are different now due to COVID. Some things are comical, like the “Quarantine-15”, but others are uplifting, like how we genuinely celebrate when anyone gets a new job.

Finding a job is difficult in the best of times and has been even more daunting during this pandemic and high unemployment. But companies are still hiring! Eightfold.ai launched the Hoosier Talent Network because we recognized that society needs a robust, easy, and scalable way for people in Indiana who are searching for work to match with jobs at companies that are still hiring, even if it’s in a different industry. A previous article explains how artificial intelligence platforms help people expand their expectation of what’s possible by showing them that their skills are transferable.

The pandemic has also taught us all that we need to be nimble, adaptable, and proactive. These are three traits that describe Joshua, an individual who was furloughed and joined the Hoosier Talent Network after hearing about it from his former employer. He shared his story with us and explained what he did to leverage the platform’s suggestion capabilities, and ultimately find a new job!

Joshua’s approach can be broken down into five steps:

Create a rich profile with experiences, skills, and education

If you have a resume, then you can upload it to streamline your profile creation. If you don’t have one, then you can still easily create your profile. Either approach should take less than five minutes. The important thing to keep in mind is that the platform needs to learn from you first so it can understand what types of suggestions to make for you. In Joshua’s case, he did use a resume and then reviewed the information to confirm that his job titles, skills, and descriptions were filled in as he expected.

Understand how you’re representing yourself to recruiters

When Joshua reviewed his matches on the job search part of the Hoosier Talent Network, he noticed that they were more junior than what he was looking for. Rather than feeling flustered, Joshua sought to understand why that was the case. He looked at the matching insights and job insights across many different positions, including those that he was interested in but not a match for, and realized that his profile didn’t adequately emphasize his most recent skills, accomplishments, and titles. That means the profile he originally created needed to be updated so he could more accurately represent himself to recruiters.

Leverage the matching and job insights to make real-time changes to your profile

The Hoosier Talent Network’s job insights gave Joshua the ability to understand why he was not seeing matches for positions he wanted, and equipped him with the tools to know what to change in real-time. This takes the guessing game out of the process for candidates and recruiters because it is easier for both sides to have transparency into expectations and alignment. That is why Joshua returned to his profile on the Hoosier Talent Network and made changes to it so that the skills and experiences he represented more closely aligned with the manager-level expertise he has.

Receive more insightful and relevant job recommendations

After updating his profile, Joshua returned to the job search page on the Hoosier Talent Network. The matches he now saw were more aligned with the seniority he was hoping for and represented a range of positions that he was happy to select from. An important point to remember when viewing matches is that, if your profile fully represents your skills and experiences, don’t be surprised if you see matches that you never would have searched for because that is the power of the AI.

Apply to open roles, receive responses, and accept offers

Since Joshua was more pleased with the seniority of his matches, he viewed them more closely and applied to four positions. Within a few days he heard back from a large retailer about the manager-level position he applied to. After navigating the interview process, we received an offer and accepted it! Two weeks later, he began his training program and is successfully continuing his career.

In Joshua’s own words, “once I made some adjustments to my profile, the matches were much more relevant, and it was a very good experience. If faced with having to find a role again, I would use the Hoosier Talent Network.”

Congratulations to Joshua, and to everyone who has found a job through the Hoosier Talent Network, other platforms, organizations, or their network! We are all cheering each other on, thanks to the “COVID effect”.

Andrea Constantine | August 12, 2020

The Hoosier Talent Network is dedicated to matching Indiana residents who are seeking employment with companies that are actively hiring. In our last article, 3 Things to Check to Make Sure You’re Set Up For Job Seeking Success, we outlined why you want to maintain a profile that represents your full self, the benefit of receiving job matches, and how to review your job recommendation emails. In this article we will help you understand what it means to have job matches and how the Hoosier Talent Network gives you the power to put your best foot forward.

Understand How You Are Representing Yourself to Recruiters

After you complete your profile, Hoosiers can view open roles and receive emails with suggestions for jobs that align with your skills and experiences. These matches will be a result of the information you self-reported in your profile and the inferences that the platform has made using its expansive analysis of different career paths.

The ability to view your matches means you can finally understand how recruiters are interpreting your background. If the matches align with titles, industries, or seniority that you are interested in, then that means your profile represents you the way you would like it to. If the matches do not align, then that is a sign that you need to revisit your profile, and the Hoosier Talent Network gives you the power to understand how to change it.

First, look to add more skills or descriptions to the work experience section of your profile. You may also want to add projects or relevant courses to the education section. The more well-rounded your profile is, the more relevant the matches should become. Second, you can view the relevant skills associated with jobs that you are interested in but not matched to. If those skills should have been included in your profile, then you can add them in. If you do not have those skills then you can purposefully work on developing them and then revisit those roles in the near future.

Takeaway: The Hoosier Talent Network is providing you with the tools necessary to understand how you are representing yourself and enables you to make changes in real time.

Apply to Jobs With Greater Confidence

Jobs that align with your profile will appear with a flag that identifies positions as a “good match” or “strong match.” When you click into the position you will see why you are a match, as well as information about the skills, years of experience, and prior companies of people who have held this role in the past. This replaces the need to read through long job descriptions with confusing language, and a guessing game to determine if it’s a job you should apply to.

In general, the uncertainty around whether you are a good match for the position may have motivated you to apply to dozens of different roles. On the Hoosier Talent Network, you can have greater confidence applying to fewer jobs because you know which ones align with your background, meaning recruiters will be more likely to respond. Additionally, all the jobs on the platform are being actively hired for.

Takeaway: You no longer need to read through long and confusing job descriptions, and guess whether you are a good fit. The Hoosier Talent Network gives you transparent insight into why you are a match so you can apply to quality roles, at companies that are actively hiring, with confidence.

Respond to Outreach from Hiring Companies

Many of the hiring companies on the Hoosier Talent Network receive frequent updates with candidates who are a match for their open roles. That means if a candidate sees that they are a match to a role, then the company will also see the candidate as a match.

It is best for candidates to be proactive and apply to jobs directly, but you should also keep an eye out for emails from Indiana hiring companies inviting you to apply to the roles. This means that companies can find candidates that match to their open roles even if you didn’t apply to the job yet.

Takeaway: Hiring companies in Indiana receive ongoing updates with candidates who match to their open roles, even if the candidate has not already applied. That means to keep an eye out for messages from companies that you have applied to, as well as companies that are reaching out to invite you to apply.

Andrea Constantine | July 28, 2020

You registered for the Hoosier Talent Network. What’s next?

Eightfold.ai’s mission is to enable the right career for everyone in the world. We are even more dedicated to that mission during the global pandemic. That is why we launched the Hoosier Talent Network in April 2020 on top of our existing Talent Intelligence Platform, which is enabled by Artificial Intelligence and has analyzed over one billion profiles. If you are curious how AI can improve your job-search process, then you can read our last article. If you want to simply understand how to get the best use out of this platform, read on.

AI can personalize recommendations because it uses massive data sets. But in order for those recommendations to be relevant, the platform needs to learn from you first.

If you have used Netflix, then you know that the recommendations are pretty generic in the beginning. But as you start rating shows and movies, the suggestions become more appropriate for you, which in turn leads you to watch and rate more content and have an increasingly better experience. Over time, Netflix will serve you shows and movies that you enjoy, including ones that you would never have otherwise thought to look for. That is the power of AI suggestion engines rather than traditional search engines.

To make this example relevant to your job search process, think of the Hoosier Talent Network instead of Netflix, and open roles instead of movies. Here are the three things to check to make sure that you are set up to get the most out of the platform.

Create and Maintain a Profile That Represents Your Full Self

Your profile is the heart of your experience. The matches that you receive will only be as relevant as the information that you provide. That’s because the AI looks to identify patterns between your experiences and the experiences of billions of other people. One of the core differences between the Hoosier Talent Network and traditional job sites is that the Hoosier Talent Network encourages you to represent your full self, not just the self that you think you need to show in order to hear back for a particular job. AI enables you to ask, “what jobs are right for my experiences and skills?” rather than pigeonholing yourself into a question like “what marketing jobs can I get?”

You can always adjust your profile as you remember experiences, skills, projects, or courses that you want to add. That will enhance the AI’s ability to identify your potential. Examples of the types of skills people might consider adding to their profile are Research, Marketing, Sales, Financial Modeling, Hospitality, Event Planning, Social Media, Training, Time Management, Leadership, Communication, Empathy, Listening, Organization, Wellness.

Takeaway: Your profile is a living representation of your holistic experiences, skills, projects, and courses. As more information is added, the Hoosier Talent Network AI will be able to make more inferences and deliver more relevant and insightful job recommendations.

Check Your Job Matches and Apply to Open Roles

Unlike traditional job sites, the Hoosier Talent Network provides you with transparency into the experiences and skills needed for different roles, without you having to wade through long and complex job descriptions. Even though you will be able to browse all open roles on the platform, positions that are a good or strong match for you will be specially marked. You can have confidence that when you click on the apply button, you are applying for jobs that are active because the Hoosier Talent Network goes through a vetting and ongoing evaluation process with every hiring Indiana company.

If you find that the positions marked as a good or strong match do not align with your experiences and skills, the first step would be to check your profile and ensure that your background is adequately reflected in your profile. The AI needs to learn from you first so it can extrapolate patterns and make adequate recommendations. If your background is fully represented, it’s likely that it’s a good thing the position matches are different than you expected because that means the AI is working! It may have identified patterns in your skills or experiences and has identified that you have potential in fields outside of what you generally would search for.

Takeaway: Have confidence applying to open roles through the Hoosier Talent Network because you will have a summarized understanding of why you are a fit for different roles, and you know that every job is still being actively hired for.

Review Your Job Recommendation Emails

New jobs are being added to the Hoosier Talent Network on a daily basis, which means that as a member of the Hoosier Talent Network you will have access to these positions as they become available. You can expect to receive weekly emails with up to 10 job recommendations when new matches are available, and they will be based on relevance to your profile or your identified preferences.

If you are not open to relocating, then the positions will be in your geographical area; otherwise, the positions could be present in a range of different Indiana cities.

Takeaway: Revisit the Hoosier Talent Network on at least a bi-weekly basis to see what new relevant positions have been added to the platform, and apply directly.

Andrea Constantine | July 23, 2020

“What do you want to do for work?”

It’s a question that’s liable to send shivers down the spines of most experienced adults, let alone students who have yet to enter the workforce.

Unfortunately, when a recession hits, like the one in 2008 and the one caused by COVID-19 in 2020, the question shifts from “what do you want to do?” to “what can you do?” This change makes a difficult question even harder to answer.

The good news is that job-search related technologies have improved substantially over the last few years. You no longer need to rely so heavily on your experience and network to find a job. For several years, eightfold.ai has been dedicated to enabling the right career for everyone in the world and uses artificial intelligence to power its Talent Intelligence Platform. In April 2020, Eightfold.ai launched the Hoosier Talent Network because it was clear that only AI could match job seekers to currently open roles at scale.

Today, the Hoosier Talent Network has more than 750,000 open roles across North America, and is publicly available to anyone who is looking for employment. But since many people are unfamiliar with the way AI works, there are likely questions about how it improves the job search process. Here are three ways AI can benefit job seekers like you.

Expand Your Expectations of What’s Possible

The traditional approach to finding work is broken because it depends on candidates searching through job sites or their network connections using set criteria. But how do you know the most optimal criteria to use? It’s a game of trial and error that no one likes playing.

The issue with search is summed up very well in the book AIQ: “search is narrow and circumscribed; you have to know what to search for, and you’re limited by your own knowledge and experience.” The alternative to a search engine is a suggestion engine that is powered by Artificial Intelligence because it can analyze massive data sets and identify relationships. The authors of AIQ explain that “suggestions are rich and open ended; they draw on the accumulated knowledge and experience of billions of other people.”

The shift from narrow search to open-ended suggestions means that you may receive recommendations for jobs that you never would have considered or thought possible. The reason AI solutions, like eightfold.ai’s Hoosier Talent Network, are able to make such connections is because the AI has learned from the profiles of billions of other people and calculated the “conditional probability” that different skills or titles relate to each other.

Takeaway: Don’t be surprised if the Hoosier Talent Network makes recommendations for jobs that you would never have considered. That’s the power of AI!

Gain Transparency Into Why You Are a Good Fit, and Apply With Purpose

Job descriptions are long and confusing. We have all spent way too much time searching for open roles by title or location or seniority and trying to decide which jobs are relevant enough to apply to. Some jobs have 10+ requirements. You might think to yourself, “well, I meet only eight of these requirements … Am I still a good fit? And did prior Hoosiers in this role actually have all of these skills?”

AI can answer both questions in a transparent way.

The Hoosier Talent Network provides you with visibility into why you are a strong or good match so that you can understand the alignment without having to go through extensive guesswork. That way you can apply for open roles with improved confidence and understanding.

When reviewing the popular skills of previous hires, you might realize that you forgot to add to your profile some of your skills which are relevant to the position. Since the platform allows you to make changes to your profile on an ongoing basis, you could easily make the update.

Takeaway: If you create a profile that is representative of your skills and experiences, the AI will be able to understand your potential and provide transparent representation of why you are a match for different roles.

Improve Response Times From Hiring Companies

Traditional job boards can feel like a black hole. It’s common to hear people say that they applied to dozens of jobs, even ones that seemed like a stretch, because they didn’t know which companies they would hear from. Unfortunately, the act of applying to more positions perpetuates the cycle because it means recruiters will have to review more applications and have a tougher time getting to relevant candidates.

Fortunately, hiring companies are increasingly turning to AI for their talent-acquisition needs. In the same way that AI provides transparency to the candidate, it can provide recruiters with valuable insight in at least two ways. First, recruiters can identify the candidates with aligned skills and experiences without having to wade through dense resumes. Second, Indiana companies may elect to anonymize the names of candidates so as to minimize the potential of name-related bias.

Takeaway: Hiring companies in Indiana that leverage AI have been shown to have faster response times, and they are able to consistently evaluate candidates based on their skills, potential, and relevancy for the role.

Todd Raphael | April 16, 2020

I’m looking forward to getting back to my barber, Tina. Partly it’s that my hair is a Zoom embarrassment. And partly I go to Tina because, at $20 plus $5 tip, she’s reasonable, and close, two miles. Mostly, though, it’s because I know her at this point and am looking forward to asking about her and her kids and her business, and her asking about me.

And therein lies the reason so many of us are looking forward to a haircut, oil change, or mani-pedi. Yes, our cars have reached beyond 5,000 miles and our toenails self-painted via YouTube video are a little rough around the edges.

But it’s also about a personal connection to the merchant. The hard skills get you the state license to open the business. The employability skills keep you in business: customer service, listening, time management, getting along with people, collaboration, communication, persuasion, empathy, and the emotional intelligence of the owner or waiter or customer-service person being able to learn what you want, and what you don’t want. (One of my relatives recently left her hairdresser because he talked too much!)

It is these employability skills that are so valuable. They’re actually becoming “more and more valuable over time,” according to Josh Bersin.

And they’re transferrable. They’re what can make a flight attendant successful at a retail store. They’re what make a bartender successful at a bank (something one of our financial-services customers learned).

Too often, the talent management world has thought inside a narrow box. We need a bank teller, let’s search for a bank teller. We need a restaurant manager, let’s find a restaurant manager.

Employees, job seekers — we’ve done the same to ourselves.

I’ve worked in a restaurant forever. I know foodservice like the back of my hand. But it’s all I know. I just don’t see what else I can do.

We’ve all thought that way at times, about our own work. But we can think beyond that.

What do those restaurant employees really do? Scheduling. Inventory. Sales. Budgeting. Payroll. Safety. People management. Hiring. More.

Collectively, we as a society need to think about skills transference. Now. We are dealing with Hoosiers out of work, by the thousands, furloughed by airlines, hotels, restaurants, and retailers. And with Indiana companies hiring in massive quantity too: the Amazons, the groceries, the drug stores, the healthcare organizations, some tech companies, delivery companies, and more.

Eightfold has launched the Hoosier Talent Network to match large companies’ laid-off or furloughed employees with large companies hiring in bulk. It allows those companies doing the furloughs to connect with the ex-employees later, possibly hiring them back. It’s meant to bypass a tremendous amount of friction and middlemen and agencies and boards and get people job offers, quickly.

Take a look at the Hoosier Talent Network. Those employability skills Tina has, and your favorite mechanic, waiter, barista, and bank teller has, are of great value to employers worldwide. And those skills can be found in abundance among laid-off and furloughed employees right now. We can help put those skills back to great use.

Jason Rennie | April 6, 2020

My name is Jason Rennie. I’m a proud employee of Eightfold.ai.

I want to share a story with you about how the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted someone very close to me.

My brother was laid off last week. I’d like to use this space to discuss some of the challenges that he’s experiencing, and how the work we are doing at Eightfold.ai can help him and so many others in similar situations.

Eric is a 20+ year veteran of the food services industry. His most recent employer was a large hotel franchise located within a mile of a major international airport.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Three variables that represent the most hard-hit verticals: Travel, Lodging, and Restaurants! Three weeks ago, he was running a kitchen staff of 50 people. Today he’s wondering how he is going to make his car payment.

His resume spans 20+ years and includes a variety of employers, titles, and responsibilities. Under normal circumstances, he’d be able to find a new job in short order (pun intended). However, his prospects today are rather bleak; the restaurants in his area are either closed or only offering takeout. Suffice to say, none are looking to hire any new staff.

His most recent titles have been Executive Chef, Sous-Chef, and Catering Chef. In Eric’s mind, his only option is to file for unemployment. Foodservice, his area of expertise, is almost completely shut down and with that so are his options … or are they?

Like so many others, my brother is having difficulty understanding how his skills are transferable to other roles. He’s struggling to understand how his experiences can help position him for a new role or industry. He’s wrestling with his own self-doubt, trying desperately to predict the future and what’s next for him.

I did a quick scan of his resume and I see things like:

• Launched new menu and trained employees
• Responsible for all staff scheduling
• Responsible for daily ordering and inventory
• Manage high volume, multi-outlet concept producing $12 million in annual sales
• Routinely deliver food and labor costs under budget
• Responsible for implementing and maintaining systems such as payroll tracking, food safety training, and employee development.

Probably not much different than what you’d expect to see from a person in this sort of role.

Rather than spinning his wheels looking for another job like the one he just lost, that he knows isn’t available anywhere at the moment, perhaps it’s time to rethink this situation. I’d like to help Eric, and everyone else who finds themselves in this situation, better understand the skills that they possess and how those skills can position them for their next role.

Eightfold is in a unique position to help not only my brother, but many Hoosier workers whose livelihoods have been impacted by the pandemic.

I won’t go into the details, but Eightfold has created a Talent Intelligence Platform built with more than 1 billion profiles and career trajectories. We deploy deep learning neural networks to continually develop and learn about the relationships and adjacencies of one skill to another, one competency to another.

In short, we understand whether someone has the potential to succeed at a job. We can instantly match them to the right job. We can show them why it’s the right job, and we can do this at scale for anyone.

With the understanding that my brother has documented experience with training, scheduling, inventory, budgets, and payroll, I can infer that he might also have experience with, or be able to learn, operations, invoicing, logistics, vendor management, and purchasing to list a few other careers.

Combining this knowledge with the career trajectories of others with similar skills, I can begin to make predictions about other roles that my brother will likely be successful at, even roles he’s completely unaware of.

Until now, our solutions have been geared toward helping companies solve some of their most pressing challenges related to talent acquisition, internal mobility, and diversity, and we will still do that, but in light of the current environment, we’ve decided that it’s time to lend our expertise to help solve unemployment.

These are unprecedented times, as we are all well aware. Many of our friends, family members, co-workers, and clients have been impacted by the crisis caused by COVID-19. We know many employers had to make tough, unavoidable, employment decisions.

To help millions of people like my brother and Hoosiers, we are introducing the Hoosier Talent Network, a service for employers as well as job seekers. It’s an easy-to-use solution that is rooted in AI and Deep Learning that goes far beyond keyword matching. Job seekers can upload their resume or quickly create a profile of work history, skills, and hobbies. The Eightfold technology will suggest skills that may be missing from the profile. Then Eightfold will match the job seeker to available positions that match their current skills, as well as positions where new skills could easily be learned.

This initiative is central to our driving mission: “To find the right career for everyone in the world”.

Whether you’re a recruiter, a hiring manager, a business leader, a software developer, a bank teller or a chef, like my brother, Eightfold can help you. Launching this platform is both absolutely necessary and absolutely the right thing to do.