Heidrick & Struggles and Eightfold AI Form Alliance
October 1, 2021 – The demand for AI specialists focused on data and machine learning is growing exponentially internationally and the search for top talent is increasing, according to executive recruiters. To that end, executive search, leadership consulting and culture shaping services provider Heidrick & Struggles and Eightfold AI, a provider of AI-driven talent development platforms, have formed a partnership to develop a new digital leadership platform that is intended to offer organizations a new way to understand, assess and make decisions about leadership talent.
Anthony Colella, a global managing partner who joined Heidrick & Struggles earlier this year, is responsible for leading the development of the firm’s new digital capabilities and solutions, and he brings expertise in establishing and growing digital products businesses. “The partnership between Heidrick & Struggles and Eightfold AI is the first step in bringing to market a new digital offering that combines leadership advisory and talent development with leading technology and AI,” said the firm.
“We are excited about our partnership with Eightfold AI, a leader in AI-driven talent solutions,” said Krishnan Rajagopalan, president and CEO of Heidrick & Struggles. “Together, we believe we can offer organizations a new way to make faster, smarter leadership decisions across key areas – from hiring needs and mobility to succession planning – at scale. At Heidrick & Struggles we are focused on advising our clients on their most critical leadership needs, and this partnership with Eightfold AI marks another step in in our journey toward growing our impact with clients, expanding our suite of leadership solutions and capabilities, and investing in new innovative, tech-driven offerings to drive future growth and shareholder value.”
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“Today’s organizations often do not have the visibility and leadership intelligence systems they need to drive business impact,” said Mr. Colella. “The digital transformation of leadership – or how we help organizations position leaders for optimal business success using insights and AI – is a new digital-first approach to enabling agile, future-focused leadership planning and better business outcomes. Heidrick & Struggles and Eightfold AI are uniquely positioned to deliver these types of new solutions and, by working together, we can fundamentally change how organizations understand and approach leadership and talent development.”
Odgers Berndtson Launches Proprietary Intelligence Platform OBDynamics
Odgers Berndtson launched a proprietary intelligence platform, OBDynamics, which uses big-data and machine learning to deliver data-informed talent intelligence and recruitment services rapidly and accurately. Built on a continually updated data lake of 1.1 billion personal and corporate records, all of which are gathered in accordance with the most stringent international privacy regulations, OBDynamics’ AI-powered platform augments Odgers Berndtson’s traditional offerings, allowing consultants to provide highly detailed talent mapping and analytic services alongside top-end executive and middle market search.
“As the most extensive talent intelligence tool in the search industry, OBDynamics allows us to separate meaning from the vast web of digital noise, and enables our partners to find talent and analyze trends with heretofore unimaginable precision,” said Steve Potter, CEO of Odgers Berndtson U.S. “For our clients, OBDynamics breaks down into three primary utilities,” Mr. Potter said. “The first is our Talent Intelligence offering, in which we use OBDynamics to build custom analytical maps of things like skills and talent distributions, compensation variation, career progressions and pipeline analyses. The second is a product we call Talent Streams, which is often used in tandem with our Talent Intelligence service. Essentially, it is a highly customized name-generation product in which we provide tailored shortlists of ready-to-hire mid-level candidates to our clients.”
“Our partnership with Heidrick & Struggles represents our shared vision for using advanced technology and leadership intelligence to develop and retain the best talent in organizations,” said Ashutosh Garg, founder and CEO of Eightfold AI. “We believe that working together with the Heidrick & Struggles team will allow us to share advancements in leadership and AI-driven talent processes with future-facing organizations everywhere, and help to deliver on our mission to provide the right career for everyone in the world.”
Related: For Executive Search Firms, Analytics Can be a Game Changer
The alliance is expected to bring a new digital leadership platform that offers real-time leadership insights, data analytics and AI to fragmented leadership development and planning processes. The platform is designed to give companies the ability to optimize talent forecast planning and alignment to business needs through rapid, data-driven technology insights, powered by the combination of Heidrick & Struggles’ experience across executive search, leadership and organization assessment and development, and on-demand talent capabilities, and Eightfold AI’s deep learning artificial intelligence platform.
Related: Odgers Berndtson Appoints Head of People Analytics and Talent Insights
Eightfold AI delivers the Talent Intelligence Platform, a way for organizations to retain top performers, upskill and reskill the workforce, recruit talent efficiently, and reach diversity goals. Eightfold AI’s learning artificial intelligence platform has been issued numerous patents based on its ability to empower enterprises to transform their talent into a competitive advantage.
Related:: Jensen Partners Launches New Platform to Address Diversity Hiring
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; and Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
