Episode 076: Hussain Kazmi, Eightfold AI

Speaker A: Welcome to the Economics and Strategy podcast where business plans and market behavior intersect. I'm your host, Rich Mullen. This podcast is brought to you by the Business Strategy and Decision making program at DePaul University's Department of Economics. Hussein Cosmi is a 2025 MBA graduate and is as humble as he is determined. He currently serves as principal solutions consultant at Eightfold AI, where he has a front row seat at seeing the impact AI is having in today's business environment. He joins us this month to discuss how he got there and deliver some fascinating stories about how his firm is helping usher in a paradigm shift in employment services. He describes how Eightfold's bleeding edge technology transforms the hiring process by tossing aside things like job titles and keyword matching in favor of innate abilities, hidden skills and true potential. Eightfold's unique AI based software gives employers a divining rod in their quest for the best candidates. Listen in to hear how.

Speaker B: Hussein Cosmi, welcome to the Economics and Strategy podcast.

Speaker C: Happy to be here, Rich. Thank you for having me.

Speaker B: This should be fun. You're in an interesting area for our audience, I will say. Hussein is a 2025 MBA graduate and he currently works as a principal solutions consultant at a company called Eightfold AI who is in the, um, how would you phrase the industry that they're in? They say software development, but it's not that.

Speaker C: Yeah, they are in, uh, first and foremost, they are an AI company that happens to sell HR software.

Speaker B: Yeah, a full scope of stuff. So before we will talk about all that, of course, but, uh, before we get any further, as we always do, let's start out with you giving us a little background on you.

Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. Um, so, yeah, I was born and raised Chicago. Uh, right. Rogers Park. Uh, my family, uh, we lived out there for a while, then before moving out the Chicago suburbs. Right. Moving more towards like Naperville than Westmont, just kind of staying in the western suburbs. Um, my family has been in the real estate and mortgage industry my entire life. So this was something that, uh, majority of my siblings went into. Uh, you know, just extended family went into it. So it was definitely something that, you know, I grew up in the real estate industry. Uh, but as I was going through, you know, like high school, I wanted, wanted nothing to do with it. Early college and wanted nothing to do with real estate. And uh, I kind of wanted to form my own pathway, if you would. And uh, I had interests actually early on, uh, in high school to get more into graphic design. Right. And like 3D animation, computer animation and animated? Yeah, sorts. I started taking a lot of, like, art classes and really enjoyed more of, like, you know, just conceptually what you could do with computers. And, you know, really, I thought that was fun to do some storytelling through that. Quickly realized, like, well, this is fun. I didn't see that as like, more of a career pathway for me. I, towards the end of my high school career, really wanted to get into law. Right. In particular, immigration law was where I, uh, had a passion and a calling for. And so that was what I was working towards through my undergrad.

Speaker B: Uh, can you tell me a story about how your interest grew in that area of making an impact? Tell that story.

Speaker C: You know, my parents, um, so I was first born generation here in the US My parents were immigrant parents, and they, uh, very heavily, uh, you know, like, push the children to say, hey, like, you have a couple of career choices that, you know to be successful, right? Yes, you can get into real estate. That's great and all, but you should definitely go into, like, medicine or like, engineering. Uh, but they. So, uh, they very, like, pushed heavily on that. Um, however, we. My parents had a, uh, one of the business partners, something they worked very closely with that was an immigration lawyer. And they helped a lot of people, uh, that were seeking, you know, either asylum or they were escaping something where you're coming to this country needing help to get appropriate corporate visas of help, finding not just like, getting access to the United States, but also finding employment, finding places to live, finding networks of people to connect with. And so this person kind of became a like, point person where people would go to like, oh, I know a guy. I can help you with whatever you might be looking for. Right. If you were immigrating here and their, uh, parents worked very closely with them, um, right on the real estate side of things. And I, I always looked up to that person. Right. I always liked the fact that they were there helping people. Um, you know, it definitely was not about the money because this person didn't have a whole lot of it. You know, it was definitely more just about the gratification and rewards, uh, for helping people. And just hearing some of the stories, um, you know, it definitely inspired me to want to go into immigration law to kind of follow a very similar pathway. Uh, you know, uh, when I was working through my undergrad, you know, it's

Speaker B: good to remember there's more to life than money. He's changing lives. You know, there's a lot to be said for that. So you ended up at Northeastern Illinois University, and you did go into political science and law, that kind of track. That's very common. What did you take away from college? I mean, I know it was a rocky experience for you. Perhaps you can tell us just a little bit about that, your time at NEIU and how you got through that. Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, so I, uh, went, uh, to NEIU to get my degree in political science while I was going through my undergrad. My father passed, and he was our primary breadwinner in our family. He was kind of the glue that connected our extended families. He was a very, obviously, a big part of our lives. Never easy to lose a parent at a young age, but that definitely took. It had an impact on me. It impacted my family. It took me a little bit longer get my bachelor's degree than I'd like to, but that's okay. I had to do what I had to do to get that through. Uh, some of the things that I learned during that time, especially, like, at a school like Northeastern Illinois University, is very diverse populace of individuals, right? Everybody from all walks of life, right? These are. These are people a little bit later in their career, going back for an education. Right? This. Whatever it might be. There's a wide range of people. And I was taking a lot of night classes because I was working during the day. And, you know, I just, I. Every time I felt like I was taking too long, I saw somebody in a different situation. I saw somebody, you know, saw, uh, their story, heard their story, right? Saw life through their eyes. And it put things in perspective for me, right, that, uh, this isn't like, you have to be done in four years, right? You can get done at your own time. Everybody's situation and circumstances different, you know, and it taught me just the importance of being okay. Right? Like, just needing to know that this is okay, that it's taking me this long to get there. And that doesn't mean I'm less. I'm going to be less successful or what I'm doing is less important.

Speaker B: Do you mind if I ask you a little bit about your dad? Is that okay?

Speaker C: Yeah, of course.

Speaker B: Do you think your willingness to put off stuff for yourself, to work to take it slower on your undergraduate. Is that your dad coming out in you?

Speaker C: Definitely, yeah. That was definitely a lot of my dad, uh, coming out. He, um. My dad was an only child. Spent a lot of his younger adult life taking care of his mom, taking care of others, too, Right? And just recognizing the. I don't say selflessness, but, like, recognizing that, like, you don't have to be Selfish to do well or to help others. Right. Was important. And so just uh, he put in me at a very young age that you got to take care of your family, got to take care of your friends, take care of people around you. Right?

Speaker B: People need help.

Speaker C: You got it. You got to take care of it. Yeah. And so that was something that, you know, it stuck with me, right. So when I was going through undergrad, I was working two jobs, right. Going through undergrad. And I had to do that to provide for my family. And that's what. Okay. And uh, so that was definitely something. You know, those like lessons and behaviors really were just off for my father.

Speaker B: To me, a, ah, phrase occurred to me right in the questions. Work before rewards or say another way work begets rewards. In other words, uh, you're nodding. I have to think that that is the way that he operated. You know, you do the work, rewards will come. Sometimes later than you want, but they will come.

Speaker A: And so.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's what I, that's. I figured it had to be like that just in the way you operate. So in, in part of that kind of change in uh, your plan, you ended up working, I know, in uh, the automotive parts for a little while, but you also did end up in real estate. And I guess I really want to ask, uh, you're smiling and why, How.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So I uh, was working to get my undergrad. I was working at an automotive parts retailer. And I quickly moved up in the organization from just like part time parts driver to then a B2B sales manager. I uh, was making good money, enough money to help my family out. There's actually enough money for me to go purchase my first house. Um, you know, at the age of 22, you know, uh, during the recession. Right. Like this was just kind of weird thing to do. And um, but I was looking to rent something and I was looking at, you know, law schools. I was looking to be closer to Chicago, but I wanted still proximity to work. Right. So I, I reached out to one of the family friends that used to work with my dad. You know, he was, he was still in real estate. And I was like, hey, can you help me find a place? And so we, we were. He was working with me to help me find a, a place to live. And uh, you. He's asking me, he's like, yeah, you could do this. Why, why, why aren't you doing this yourself? Right? Like you, you know this stuff. Why aren't you doing this? And I, uh, I kept like, ah, no, no, you're fine, you're fine, you're fine. But I eventually was like, you know what? Yeah, I could do this. Even if I'm doing this part time, I can definitely do this. And so I went ahead and got my real estate license, and I got, um, started practicing real estate, and then, uh, quickly, quickly realized one, how good I was at it, and two, I loved it. And so I actually quit my job at the automotive retailer and focused on real estate full time because it just. It was second nature. But I think above all, it could actually felt like a connection to my father. Right. Like, at this point in time, when I got into real estate, my siblings got out of the industry. You know, we shuttered the family's business. And so I. It just. It felt right. Right. It felt like. Like I was honoring my father's memory. Like, I felt connected. Uh, and it was. I enjoyed it. I loved doing it. And, uh, so I did that for a number of years. Full time.

Speaker B: Yeah. And you said the important words, I enjoyed it. I mean, you could have fought that. You know, you could have. Some people would have. Uh, but, you know, if you enjoyed it, what's the harm? Now, after a bit of time, you pivoted into employment services, which is in some ways the area that you're in now with Eightfold. Um, tell us how that happened and the long, like, internal battle that you fought. Because I remember you telling me about this, that it was. Yeah, tell us a little bit about that.

Speaker C: Yep. So, uh, my best friend was, uh, working for a company called Broadbean. Um, it was acquired by Career Builder. He worked as a, uh, project manager. He, I'd say for like a year, was trying to convince me to explore other options, because in real estate, you know, a lot of times it's like feast or famine. I think for him was probably a little selfish because he wanted his best friend back, Right. To be, like, more available. Because I was very, very commonly working weekends, evenings. Right. Like, so he really. He was like, you look miserable. Why don't you try something? He was trying to encourage me to come work with him. And I kept saying, no, no, no. Uh, but I was actually, um, I was out in the city doing some work, and we had planned, like, I knew was gonna be there. So we had plans to go grab lunch near his office, because I was gonna be working near his office. And he brought to his boss, and I was like, oh, that's weird. Uh, the guy was a very nice guy. We were talking, hitting it off our lunch, took it to turn into A couple hours. And by the end of the lunch, the gentleman said, I want you to come work with me. And I was like, uh, I'm really happy. Thank you. And then we picked up a phone conversation later on that week, and he was, he was talking to me a little bit more about what the job would be. The thing that stuck out with me was that, like, he told me that I, you know, he didn't want me to quit doing real estate. That's not an issue. He's like, you know, try this out. If you don't like it, you quit. Give us a couple months. You know, I think you have the right skills for this. Let's go ahead and try this out. And looking back at that moment and that interaction, I think is very unique because that's a very risky move for any employer, right? To say, hey, I just met this person. I think they have the right skill sets. I think they, they can do what I'm looking for them to do successfully. So let's go ahead. And I, um, want them, I want to hire them. Right. But I took the job and I quickly liked being in that space. I really liked the employment services more, the HR tech side of things. I really enjoyed the idea of helping people find jobs, shops find people. Right. This kind. This, to me felt very meaningful. We're helping organizations and people connect. And, uh, I quickly moved up at that organization from a project manager implementing career sites and applicant tracking systems, which, by the way, I'd never done. I knew very little, uh, about CSS and coding, uh, languages and so, uh, to learn on the job and to quickly move up from that, to managing the team of project managers and implementation managers, to events, eventually moving into my current role as a solutions engineer. Um.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

Speaker C: Which is pretty wild.

Speaker B: You played that role at Career Builder too, didn't you?

Speaker C: Correct. Yeah. Yeah, that was. So I, uh, I moved into that role, um, because my sales reps and account executives would tap me on the shoulder for more complex deals. So if there was a deal that would require a little bit more scoping, right. Custom work perhaps, or just something that was a little bit more high touch, uh, they would bring me in. And we had this function at Career Builder for this role, but even those people would still tap me on the shoulder for more of those, like, overly complex scopes of work. So they wanted me on that team because they realized that not only did I have the technical depth to talk about the outcomes and outputs of what's going to occur, but I sold them on it. And so I moved into that, that ah, role as a solutions engineer which I had no idea existed. And uh, yeah, that's, that's been many years now and absolutely love.

Speaker B: That was a five year scope at career Builder you just kind of outlined, right?

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: What do you think, what do you think that uh, your friend's boss saw in you? Like now when you look back on it, what was the thing? Because I. You had no experience, correct?

Speaker C: None. I had no experience at all. I think it was two things. I think when he, he valued the opinion of my best friend, he trusted that if he said, hey, Hussein is, is the right person for this role, he can do the job. I think the other piece to it, he just saw that. And we talked about this recently because after you and I connected, I ended up having dinner uh, with him, uh, and we talked about this very specific instance and he's like, I remember you just uh, being very personal and everybody, every interaction is like when I was engaging with the waiter or uh, engaging with you know, my best friend or him. Like I felt, he felt that I was very personable, very easy to talk to, very easy to get along with. And he's like, this is something that we desperately need on this team. We have people that are just so focused in, they're technically very depth in their work, but put them in a room where they have to try to communicate effectively to a couple different stakeholders and they rubble, they fall apart. And it was very much this mix of skill sets to kind of bring you in, to try to help fill in some gaps there. And so that's where that came in. Um, he brought me on because I could talk to people.

Speaker B: I noticed right away you have the ability to carry a room. So that's maybe a broader way to say kind of what he saw in you and some of that's willingness, the willingness to, you know, get out there. Another question you mentioned, as your roles were progressing and as you got into a sales role, people would tap you on the shoulder and ask you about certain complicated projects. Tell us, give me, give me one example of that.

Speaker C: Yeah, so there was a, uh, customer that was exploring new career site options, new CRM options. Uh, they had uh, existing technology that they needed to keep. They had their applicant tracking system that they needed to keep. They needed data flow to come into this new career site that we would be building. But they also had a, basically a homegrown chatbot that they constructed. This is like early days chatbot, but they had their own AI chatbot that they needed to have embedded into the career page. The application could be taken through the chatbot or through the career website. But it all had to go back into the applicant tracking system and uh, that it also had to all progress with like the onboarding, an offer management system that they were also looking at purchasing through. So it was just a complex systems of different companies that we needed to connect. I needed to be able to speak to it, draw diagrams, functionally talk about the data transfers. Right. Security, compliance and ensure that we're speaking the right language. And so they really saw that I could sell was that the customer was coming to us for a portion like a small product. And then I ended up talking to them about the onboarding, about the offer management, about all these other components that they didn't think about about yet. Solutions Cell. Right. Like let's think about this from a consulting lens of what is the problem, what are we trying to solve for and how do we best solve for it? And uh, they, um, yeah, kind of the rest is history there.

Speaker B: Is it the HR part? Is it the tech? Is it project management? What is it that gets you up in the morning?

Speaker C: I, I would say what gets me up in the morning is, is the problem solving. Right. It's. No two days are the same. Um, you know, I'm talking to customers today, you know, at Eightfold or even, you know, it's sold like doing real estate on the side. I try to uncover the root cause for the problems and start putting together a path, uh, that's going to be, you know, the best path for that. And that's what it really, I really enjoy. Right. Those are the conversations that, you know, fill my cup up with energy. Right. Like just makes me m. Happy, uh, uh, to problem solve for people.

Speaker B: So you keep yourself very, very busy. Uh, I know that we've already outlined that. You just go, go, go, go, go. Why did you pursue an mba? Yeah, because you just, you're, you're, you're just adding more to the plate. Why did you do that?

Speaker C: Yeah, I, uh. So even before pursuing my mba, I was always in the pursuit of like continuing education and continuing to learn. But you know, I was working at CareerBuilder. I was interested in moving up into more like roles and really it was one of the senior leaders that convinced me to go get my mba. He made a comment that it's really difficult. It's a prerequisite really to have your MBA to move into any senior leadership role at that company. And he spoke very highly of DePaul of Loyola and Kubel their offered at the time a, uh, tuition reimbursement, which, uh, is very generous package. And so that was it. I decided I was like, you know what? Great. Let's go ahead and pursue that. And then a little bit later, I left Career Builder. During that time when I started my mba, got married. My wife and I, we had our son, you know, so just. It was just busy. Right. It took me a little bit longer to complete, but I, uh, stuck with it because I learned so much. And while I feel like I knew a lot that was being taught, but what was new was the data and nomenclature behind it. Right. Understanding, like, why this is the way things occur this way, or like, why we should think this way. Right. Just actually having the education, ah, as the foundation for it helped. And I loved connecting with people. So in every class, just hearing other students backstories, even faculty's backstories of what led them there or what they're working on and what they're doing in the personal, professional lives, and I absolutely loved it. That was probably one of the biggest takeaways from the program, was just the opportunity to meet and connect with people. And if I were to say probably my biggest regret about my MBA program at DePaul, right. This is on me. This isn't anything, uh, on DePaul was that I took all my classes except for one, either asynchronously or virtual. And I genuinely regret that, uh, being in the classroom, being able to sit down next to people, talk to people, talk to people, uh, buy the vending machines at the coffee shops, wherever, uh, was so valuable. And, uh, that, to me, was, by

Speaker B: the way, particularly for a guy like you.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah. And I. I couldn't agree more. You know, the, um. Like you said, much of what I learned, uh, I knew, uh, conceptually, but there's something different about supercharging it with a bunch of other people who are working and having those conversations. It takes on a new meaning and gives a stronger reinforcement to that. And I have to think for you, for the role you're in and for what you do in talking to clients. That information had to really solidify your ability to confidently and competently carry that. Those rooms that you sit in.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. It was one of the advice of one of my mentors when I was starting off with the MBA program, and I. I candidly was struggling. I remember my first, you know, quarter, I was like, oh, this is really tough. But then in school, formally, in a few years, the workload was Tough. Uh, especially learning asynchronously. My first class, an asynchronous class. And that. That is a special kind of, you know, motivation, self motivation to get it done right. But, uh, he made a comment. He's like, we always tie it back to the work that you're doing. That's what's going to make it stick.

Speaker B: You know, I couldn't agree more. Just in the classroom, and I know, uh, we both got a lot out of it, so I'm going to move us forward. And I'd like you to tell us the story of how you got to Eightfold. Yeah, I, um, know this was. It took some time and so forth. So tell us how. How you got there.

Speaker C: So this was. I was still working at Career Builder. I was very close with one of our customers, and he made a comment that they're going to be leaving Career Builder for a company called Eightfold. And I was like, is this. And why. Could you tell me this earlier? Uh, and so I went down the path of looking into it, and I was like, okay, they've been some. On the surface level, okay, it seems like some pretty cool tech, but, you know, this could be smoke and Mirror, uh, very small company. He's like, you got to trust me. You got to see this product. So he showed me a little bit of behind the scenes of the product, uh, and showed me really, uh, just this concept of candidate matching, where they would match candidates to roles based off of their. Not their resumes per se, like an exact match, but like, the skills and capabilities that they're likely to have and they would be successful in. And it resonated really well with me because, I mean, that's that same reason why that person took a chance on me, because he thought that I had the skills.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker C: From that brief interaction, it resonated really well with me. With Eightfold was something that I saw there. And I was like, wait, so this is that, right? This is the software, this is the technology doing. Instead of taking a chance and using your gut, you can actually use this large AI model to help predict what roles people would be a good fit for and the reasons why. And that blew me away. And so immediately afterward, uh, we had a couple other interactions where I saw more about the product. I had some questions. I was. I was, you know, sitting, stewing on this for very. For a couple weeks of just wanting to learn more about this company called Eightfold. I applied for a job, uh, at. At that point, I applied for a job at Eightfold. Um, you know, we were talking, I met a lot of great people at the time and we were talking about, you know, a couple different career options. And I saw in real time them basically drinking their champagne, right. And seeing that like, okay, hey, you applied for this role, right. However, based off your skill sets, what we're seeing and what you're talking to us about, we actually think you're good for these two other roles. So we're going to have you talk to them as well, simultaneously. Basically, be interviewing for multiple roles is like, we want you here, uh, at Eightfold, but it just wasn't the right time for me. Uh, ultimately when it came down to it, Right. We had some personal reasons, but you

Speaker B: know, ultimately, what year was your first introduction to the product and the technology?

Speaker C: Uh, it was, uh, 2021. Yeah. And so I didn't join them for, for a couple years later. Right. To 2024.

Speaker B: And, uh, what was the linchpin that got you two years later? The right role, the right time.

Speaker C: Yes to all it was, it was one of the, it was the recruiter that I was working with, very closely with in, uh, 2021. She posted a role for solutions consultant and that was it. I reached out to her right away. I was like, hey, do you remember me? And she's like, of course. And you know, I, that you know, officially applied, but, you know, yeah, the rest was history there.

Speaker B: So I usually ask it this way because of the variety of people that will listen to this podcast here. But explain Eightfold's business to a five year old boy not unlike the one that you have.

Speaker C: Yeah. So what a fool does is it helps people uncover their potential. Right? It helps people, if they're looking for a job, see other jobs and career pathways that they might not have ever thought about. Because we look past job titles and focus on the skills that you have, the likelihood for you to learn the required skills for that new role and the success of you doing that. So think about this from the concept of, you know, one of our customers is a very large, you know, fast cat, fast restaurant type of situation. They found a correlation of some of the best coffee makers and workers were lifeguards. Right. On, um, paper, those types of job titles don't match up at all. But they found that there's translatable skills, high likelihood of these people being successful in this role and not just being successful quickly getting promoted and, you know, sticking it out the organization. And there's many different stories of this where organizations are seeing this. And this is what April does, right? It Helps organizations look past the biases of people. Right. Humans are, whether they're purposely being biased or unintentionally being biased, they're making decisions when they're reviewing and scanning resumes and applications to proceed with that person or not and with that, uh, Eightfold helps to mitigate this by removing bias from the equation by helping mask PII or helping organizations refocus on the skills, capabilities, learnability of people to uh, understand, to role and uh, helps basically bridge that gap. And where I think things become particularly useful if I'm going to simplify it for people, um, outside of all that is think about a world where it doesn't matter what your job title was, that you could find work based off of the things that you can do and the things that you could learn. And this is where Eightfold really puts, uh, their AI, uh, not just the test, but to shock. Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, I really like that concept because I guess for me, trying to infer someone's ability from a series of job titles that may or may not be meaningful to what they do. Job titles don't mean much.

Speaker C: No.

Speaker B: I think reaching beyond that is interesting. And I did a little bit of digging. We talked about this before. The uh, founder's PhD was in what they call high dimensional spaces. Modeling in high dimensional spaces. Did I say it pretty well? I think that's.

Speaker C: Yep, exactly. Right. Yeah. And so like the type of modeling was used early on for basically consumer experiences. Right. Like helping people predict the next thing they were going to buy. Right. So you were doing XYZ activities on the Internet, so you're more likely to buy this product. Product. Right. So this is. Yeah. Our founders are, you know, plenty of patents and you know, experience in the space, but taking that behavioral, basically study of like, okay, if we can predict these types of behaviors, why can't we predict people's careers? Right. Based off of the work they're doing, their behaviors and what they're doing day to day, how do we take that and you know, find a career pathway for them.

Speaker B: Yeah. And uh, he couldn't be in a better role per se as the founder because he's 100% an expert. Give me, give me the scope of Eightfold's business.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: On a day to day basis. What, what do you do?

Speaker C: Sure. Uh, so, you know, what do I do, you know, specifically on more day to day basis here at Eightfold, um, my job is really just to help organizations problem solve. So they are coming to us with a situation of, of we are losing good talent. At our organization, you know, our attrition rates are high and we don't know what to do. Right. This is, this is a statement coming from a CEO.

Speaker B: That's an expensive problem, by the way.

Speaker C: Yes, yes, very, very expensive problem. Right. And so, you know, what, what can we do? And we start unpacking it. Right. My job is to help like unpack it, understand what's going on and how do we best tie a fold solution to problem solve. And sometimes, you know, uh, that's thinking very creatively. Right. Stretching what the product and AI can do, but really like just thinking about how do we problem solve and then not just problem solve, to take the exact problem the customer has and fit it into our solutions, but also help customers see a different pathway. Right. You know, organizations these days recognize they can't be rigid, they have to be flexible, they have to be agile with their offerings, what they're doing day to day. And uh, so customers, I think now more than ever are definitely more willing to come to the table with an open mind of, okay, what are other customers doing? Right. What are other Fortune 50 companies doing to help mitigate attrition at the two year mark? Right. Like what are they doing? What can we be doing better? And so really helping facilitate the discussions and then help showcase the product and the AI. So being that more of that, that product services expert to show them, okay, if you chose Eightfold, here's what you could expect out of it and here's what it does and kind of show them a day in the life of it. And then outside of that, I'd say my day to day with Eightfold is very much really focused on that. But I'd say there's a lot of other avenues where I do a lot of speaking engagements, uh, and events. Right. About really just. Yeah. With the marketplace. What's changing in the world of human capital management? Just talking a little bit more broadly. Right. Not necessarily about our product specifically, but just being broad. Right. We're talking about now the, the rise of agents. Right. So how are agents impacting the flows of work? Right. From a talent acquisition or HR standpoint. Right. And talking a little bit more conceptually, but you know, that's still part of it, more that educational sharing component.

Speaker B: How would a potential employee interact with Eightfold? Like what does it look like to a potential employee?

Speaker C: Yeah, so an employee's uh, engage with Eightfold products a couple different ways. Rather if they are more in the hiring space or talent acquisition space, if they're a, you know, a hiring manager Or a person doing interviews. They'll probably be part of our Eightfold talent acquisition where they basically have a system to manage all of their applications. Job distribution, candidate ranking, interviews. Uh, if they're employee, they. They're not that they likely will have access to what we call our career hub, right Forward organization. It gives them a place where they could see career pathways at their organization that they're part of. And these career pathways, some of it can be very pretty straightforward. Right. I'm a junior in my position. I expect to move to a senior position. Right. That's great. A lot of it would also be domain changes. Right. Thinking about, okay, I'm in sales, what else can I do? Oh, marketing, customer success. Uh, go move into more, you know, project management. There's all these different avenues that I can move into at my organization to help keep me at the organization, but a different career pathway. And so they would engage with that. And then from there would also be able to see learnings, uh, people to connect with, projects to work on to help upskill. Right. Skill, uh, themselves to that next level.

Speaker B: So it will include pathways and the upskilling required for pathways. Am I hearing that correctly?

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: That's pretty intense. Yeah, that's cool. Paint me a picture of how the role you're in now. And by the way, it sounds like it's changing a little bit if you're presenting as a subject matter expert. How have your previous skills all gotten you to this spot?

Speaker C: Yeah. Uh, so I'm thinking, you know, thinking about what's. How my skills got me to where I'm at today. I think there's a couple of pieces to consider. One, I think, one, I'm naturally a very curious person. I like to break things, I like to take things apart. I like to see how things work. And that served me very well over the years in every career. And I think this is advice I give to everybody that'll listen is be curious. Um, this is not just how I learn, right. I learned very well by taking things apart, understanding it freely from the inside out. But, you know, this has served me very well because this helps me stay at the forefront, right. Of anything that's new. Understanding, you know, different ways to stretch the product. Right. Product at the end of the day in software, right. Isn't so rigid. Right. It can be, it can be bended, it could be modified. Right. If you can really dream it, you can modify. Especially in today's age. Right. With all the different vibe coding tools out there, you can build anything you want. Right? You just got to have an imagination or creativity for it. Or just be curious, right? Can we do this? And so I think be curious. Being curious really helped me out. When I'm looking at it from just translatable skills over the years, some things really stuck out. Um, I'm. Despite what you might think here, I'm not a extroverted person. I'm actually very introverted. Um, I'm very much a shy, introverted person. That's just me, naturally. And every day I try to be a little bit more outgoing, and every day I try to push my boundary a little bit more. That piece is very important because it's very easy to just be like, all right, here's my work. I'm going to pigeonhole myself in this work, and that's okay. Uh, but being able to go outreach and connect with people and to learn more about people's problems, learning what people are doing helped create more inspiration, more creativity in me and more curiosity. This helps me be broader in my role. Right. I quickly moved into the leadership role because I was hired on to implement one product. But I quickly ramped up and learned all the products, uh, at Eightfold. I was brought on and I was the fastest ranked person that they ever had right in my role. And I was that way because I was curious. I wanted to learn. I wanted to take things apart and find new ways of doing things. And I think just that in conjunction with me talking to people and learning more about, like, hey, so you work on XYZ product. Tell me more like, what, what, what, what don't you like? What's not working? Right? What are you trying to solve for? And this really helped me progress, um, my career. And then I'd say, lastly, you know, the one thing that I would say that, um, you know, it's important to anybody is to, to be okay with failure. Right? You're not going to be the best at everything. You're going to fail. You're gonna, you're not gonna win every deal that you try to pursue, right? If you're in sales or consulting, every, you're not, everything's go, that's okay. You got to be okay with it. You, uh, can't sit still on it. If I, if I sat and, you know, sulked about every rejection or type thing can go my way, I'd be miserable. And so just important to get up and keep trying, you know, your willingness

Speaker B: to do those things and in particular, your willingness to go towards the things that I don't see. You're scared of but what I'm saying, getting out of your comfort zone, those things probably make you a better father

Speaker A: and a better husband too.

Speaker C: Oh, without a doubt. Yeah, without a doubt. It makes me a better friend.

Speaker B: Yeah. So let's move into our final section. What are innovations in your industry that uh, you see are proving your work now, by the way, you're working in the exact field that I usually get this answer from others from. They all say generative AR AI products. So I'm very interested to hear what you have to say about things that are improving your work or in your industry and then also tell me some threats.

Speaker C: Sure. I'd say for what's approving is probably also going to be the threats. Uh, so improvements. Right. Looking at ah, the HR technology industry broadly in the last eight years, things that have changed. Eight years ago AI was there, machine learning. It's very fundamentally, it's the same. We're just calling it something different now. But machine learning, learning, uh, that was scary for some people, right. That was scary for people to, to give the reins to a machine and make, you know, potentially provide guidance or insights to hiring decisions. Um, but that started to change when organizations started getting a lot more pressures, uh, to work faster, more efficiently. Right. I think Covid will cause a lot of issues. One of the things that I think it did really well was uh, drive change and innovation in talent acquisition and talent management. It forced organizations to have to work faster. The days of I can take three months to fill this position are gone because. Or if I can take 90 days or 60 days to talk to a candidate and string them along while I'm fishing for other candidates because this candidate's good but not great, I want to see if I could find great gone. Right. You. The market became very competitive. Organizations had to move quickly. And so the innovations in the space, the leafs in AI are dramatic. And even just looking at the last two years, looking at the last two years now the rise of agents, right. So Eightfold leverages and many companies do, right. AI interviewers. So now people are interviewing with AI agents and these agents are providing honestly a better experience than interviewing with a human. Right. Because they have access to knowledge. If I'm telling you I'm a software engineer and I work on iOS apps, it can start asking me questions about SWIFT coding, a programming language and start diving into depths that a typical recruiter wouldn't have access to. Being able to depth into depth of knowledge that most people don't have access to. So rate of change there is wild and I think the innovation is improving the industry overall, all because forcing organizations to think differently. Break processes that are very legacy processes, break systems that are legacy systems. And then more recently thinking about outside of just more the agentic piece and forefront this concept of like, uh, you know, headless systems. And I think this, what's, what's coming next is very exciting is this idea of, okay, all these people and companies have all these different systems, but they're all siloed. Even with integrations, there's still data isolation, there's different languages. If you think of it this way, um, how do we bring this all together in a meaningful way? This is where enters in mcp and this is the concept of, okay, if I can connect four different systems that are completely different vendors, different systems, completely isolated systems, if I can bring them into my cloud or bring them into Gemini or to copilot and call actions and bring data in together and make sense of it. Right. Contextually make sense of this data. This is the future, right? This is what's the innovation that's occurring. We're going to see companies and systems move away from traditional SaaS of like, here's a UX that you're used to to more of a combined system within, you know, pick whatever LLM you want.

Speaker B: Wow, that's. That's mind blowing. I haven't really heard that in that way. I will say the agent interviewing, it seems a little cold, little callous, but it removes a significant amount of human bias.

Speaker C: It does. It definitely does. And not just okay, so removing bias is also very important. But I think one of the other pieces to it that a lot of people don't think about is the flexibility of it. Right. If you're working and you're interviewing for another job, that's very tough off being able to take an interview at 7pm on a Sunday or 9pm after put my kid to sleep.

Speaker B: I didn't think of that. You're right. Yeah, that's always on. Yeah.

Speaker C: And then, yeah, the biases piece is there, Right. It gives me an opportunity as a candidate to go beyond my resume. Because resumes, even though with a technology like Eightfold, right, where you look past the resume and uncover people's skills, capabilities, what it's missing is the experience layer, right? What in those roles, what experiences that I have that could help uncover additional skill sets or uncover additional capabilities. Right. It's very hard to put experiences in a resume. We do our best, right. I did XYZ at this company, right. I improved efficiency by X percent or Grew sales, whatever it might be. But we do our best. But there are still stories and experiences that are missed. And I think now with the rise of AI, right, generative AI, everybody has an opportunity to make the perfect resume, right? Where you could lie on your resume and create this perfect resume that's going to make you the best fit for a job. But then you get on the phone with a recruiter, uh, or a hiring manager and they're going to, they're going to, they're going to call you out right away, right? They're going to ask about experiences, skill sets, you know, technology, whatever they're going to ask and they'll be able to quickly decipher if this was legitimate or not. So technicality, you know, with this, the AI interviewers is just another form of screening, um, and really understanding people's functional skill sets, uh, to help mitigate some of that. But then you're right, the bias aspect too, because now we can go ahead and interview, uh, a thousand complications for an open role. I can interview all of them and mask their pii, but understand really who is the best fit based off the scenarios, experiences that I'm looking for, not just job titles or not just, you know, some core requirements.

Speaker B: Fascinating, really. Very fascinating.

Speaker C: And then that leads me probably to the threats, right? I think this is like talking about the innovations and changes. I think the threats to this is that, you know, if I'm thinking about this from two avenues, one, I think that there's the concept of these, you know, msp, right, Using more of this model context protocols. Uh, I think there's going to be a, it's going to change SaaS, it's going to change software, right? The base layer data needs to be there. We still need houses for all these things. But I think the, the days of like what ux, what the user experience looks like and feels like is just going to go away, right? Everybody's going to be just chatting or talking, you know, on the phone with their agents, right? To do voice with their, their specific LLM to, to write actions. I think the, I think this is going to change fundamentally SaaS, right? The days of what UX is going to look like is going to disappear. And I think that, uh, I think there's a threat for individuals that are failing to adopt, right? Rather be candidates that say, you know what, I don't want to engage with anything to do with AI, uh, or organizations that don't want to adopt. That's going to be a threat for them.

Speaker B: As I said, when you first brought it up. I'm not completely familiar with that concept. Uh, I'm going to look it up after this call. I understand what you're saying and uh, the idea of UX itself not being as structured like you're talking about is really kind of mind blowing to me. But I can't deny that that's likely the way it'll go.

Speaker C: Yeah. And I think the like, the like a very practical use case. Right. I can explain it to those people that don't know it. Right. Either is that okay. So if I'm a hiring manager and I'm trying to hire a uh, backfield for a position position. I could chat into my agents or my chatbot. How, how are things going with this position? And I can go ahead and see. Okay. Today you received 10 applicants. Here's a summary of all them. I can say I don't like any of them. Where is this job advertised? It's not currently advertised anywhere. Would you like to distribute this job to. Indeed to ZipRecruiter, to wherever. And I could just say yes in the same chat. Chat. What it's doing is going to call from Eightfold for the job data. Right. The applicants to see in the summary. Then it would trigger my job distribution tool, whether it be Broadbean or Equest or my direct account with indeed take the job data from Eightfold into my LLM and then route it to that job distribution tool to trigger an action. So at no point did I go into these different tools. I'm just chatting and I'm taking action. And this is that headless system. And this is not just for like talent acquisition. My wife did this for Real Estate day. Right. She set one up so that the moment she downloads photos for a new listing, it automatically generated a description for the listing generated, uh, using the templates she has in Canva content to be printed and just gave her a preview to say really? And print and preview and post to social media. Yeah, this is, this is. I'm talking about the headless systems now. Right. It's like at no point does she leave her LLM. It's just using the chat. And uh, this is where I think we're going to suffer from a UX standpoint because yeah, it's just, it's not going to matter as much.

Speaker B: Hussein, I have learned a lot in the last 10 minutes. Or really the whole thing, but particularly in the last 10 minutes. That's just fascinating.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Speaker C: Of course. I was happy to be here.

Speaker B: I really, really enjoyed it. It was good. And you're working at a cool firm, too, so.

Speaker C: So, yeah, definitely. Thank you for having me. I love to. Obviously, love to chat. Uh, if you ever want to chat about AI and what's going on in the space, I'm always happy to share my knowledge and just kind of what I'm seeing. Right. In the space.

Speaker B: Yeah. What you just talked about. I may take you up on that. So thanks, uh, again.

Speaker C: Perfect. Thank you.

Speaker B: Rich, you've been listening to the Economics

Speaker A: and Strategy podcast, presented by the Business Strategy and Decision making program at DePaul University's Department of Economics. This episode was produced, edited, and hosted by Rich Mullen. Our music was composed by Liz.

Speaker C: Folks.