The Phenom Blog

General Electric Company — more commonly known as GE — is not just any electric company. From creating innovative kitchen gadgets to massive turbines that power entire cities, GE operates in industries like aerospace, renewable energy, manufacturing, finance, and more.

They’re also going through a well-publicized and planned segmentation of their 140 year old business, moving to create three individual organizations that will operate independently — focusing on the healthcare, energy, and aerospace market respectiv

As a result, their corporate office is shutting down, requiring thousands of employees to search for and apply to new jobs. Sean Murphy, Head of Global Talent Acquisition Operations at GE, shared more about this process, as well as the importance thefind new roles within the company through the use of Phenom’s Intelligent Talent Experience platform.

You can watch the full webinar on demand here, or read on for the highlights.

Creating a Great Employee Experience Amid a Company-Wide Separation

Murphy’s question to his Talent Acquisition (TA) team was direct yet complex: What do we do with all the talent who will be affected by this huge separation process?

Never in the company’s history has the TA team had to move such a large number of employees in such a short period of time — so they turned to the Phenom technology they’re already using, and iterated on it to create exactly what they needed.

What did they need?

• Internal sourcing capabilities for recruiters to connect with and source talent, and find the right fit for all of these new and open jobs

• Insight into what employees wanted: What they would like to do, what subsection they would like to work for, and how this would impact their families

• Collaboration between recruiters and managers. Specifically, a way to combat managers’ fears of recruiters “poaching” their employees

The underlying goal through it all was to ensure they were bringing the human touch to their employees, rather than saying “Here’s a bunch of brand new jobs… good luck,” explained Murphy.

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A Solution in the Form of an Internal Talent Community

GE is currently using products across Phenom’s full platform — including Candidate Experience, Recruiter Experience, Manager Experience, and Employee Experience tools.

After assessing their capabilities (especially those that Phenom Talent Marketplace affords), Murphy and the team built an internal talent community that their employees could sign up for and then add their skills, competencies, job preferences, experience, location, and more. By enrolling in this marketplace, employees gain tailor

Because recruiters could be more specific about why they were reaching out to employees about a particular role, the TA team saw an increase in interest and response rates from employees; employees were more apt to engage with a recruiter and apply f

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The Phenom CRM played a big role in how the team actualized this.

For starters, recruiters were already used to using it, so they didn’t have to learn a new tool to start engaging with employees. Murphy’s team simply leveraged the same technology they were using for external candidates, eliminating the common roadb

“An employee can go to the talent community, submit the preferences they wish on a future job, their profile is coupled with their skills they’ve compiled in Workday, and all of that is presented to our recruiters in a nice tidy profile package in th

With a unified skills profile from their ATS and CRM, employees are getting job recommendations and filling out their profiles all in one place, while recruiters are automatically getting best-fit matches based on those profiles.

Results So Far

“The results so far have exceeded our expectations in many ways,” Murphy said enthusiastically.

Here are just a few of their successes:

• Employee engagement has increased due to the easy communication channels they’ve established

• Several thousand employees have gone through the internal talent community, leading to thousands of employee interviews

• Updated employee profiles helped recruiters short-list potential candidates, and then skill-matching AI could be used to find best-fit employees for roles

“All of that, in my mind, is a huge win, because the more fluent our employees are with the tools we put in place to help them search and navigate their own career path, the more effective we all are at our jobs," said Murphy.

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GE’s Future

Looking to the future, Murphy and his team are excited to implement Phenom Intelligent Sourcing. Intelligent Sourcing gives TA teams access to millions of profiles, with the ability to filter for specific needs and pull them into the CRM.

This will allow GE to maximize access to the right candidates, regardless of whether they’re in the company, in the CRM, or in the wild. “We’re keeping a pulse on where our roadmap needs to take us next, and I think intelligent sourcing is right at the top of the list,” said Murphy.

It will help arm his TA teams with better, more efficient tools to cut down on time-to-fill, find great talent, administer more accurate assessments, and more. “This can supercharge our recruiter outreach ability.”

Takeaways

Murphy shared a few takeaways from the implementation of their internal talent community:

• Leverage employee preferences as a guide to internal engagement. You don't want to just throw people into a job. You want to be thoughtful and purposeful, especially during an anxiety-ridden time.

• Promote a culture of movement to simplify change management. This is imperative because you don’t know if or when a forcing function is going to happen, so you want to make sure employees are as comfortable as possible when it does.

• Supplement data collection with data generation through a dynamic skills architecture. Employees don’t always provide as much info as you would like, which is why relying on a dynamic skills architecture is paramount.

To build your own successful strategy that builds upon employee skills, download our Workforce Intelligence Guide.

If you’re not sure what technology is right for your organization, take our 5 minute Workforce Intelligence Maturity Assessment.

Recent research by EY on attracting talent to the banking sector is worth a deep dive to every CHRO in the industry.

The report asks all the right questions: Are we thinking creatively about how to source tech and data talent? Are we exploring a broad range of talent pools to identify candidates?

If there’s one financial institution that can definitively say “yes” to those questions, it’s Regions Bank, headquartered in Alabama and home to a workforce of 20,000 strong. Nearly 90% of associates say it’s a great place to work, compared to 57% of employees at a similar company.

What is it that makes Regions so admired by its people? Is it the brand or the culture? Ryan King, Executive Vice President and Head of Talent Acquisition, sat down with me on “Smarter” to share insights into his organization’s success. With a team of almost 60 recruiters across the company, King oversees strategic recruiting initiatives related

[Watch the full episode, listen to it on Apple and Spotify, or continue reading for the big takeaways]

From 5,000 to 7,500 Hiring Transactions a Year

Banks can’t compete for talent based on compensation alone. They must build teams, a top-notch culture, an effective learning environment, and help their employees grow technically and financially — according to separate research by Crowe, the global consulting firm.

The banking industry has long struggled to attract younger employees. Usually, retail banker wages and job requirements have been low, technical expectations are limited, and experienced individuals were prioritized over college graduates.

Crowe’s research showed a distinct shift in mindset, where companies now seek younger generations to increase technical proficiency and bring more diversity. In fact, two job areas in high demand at Regions are bankers (typically mortgage originators, corporate and commercial bankers, and wealth advisors) and professionals with technology and digital expertise.

Digital innovation is a distinct competitive advantage for Regions, which
comes in handy when there is more demand for talent than supply, as customers increasingly bank from anywhere.

Adopting an AI-powered intelligent talent experience platform in 2021 proved to be rocket fuel.

The company hired 15,000 people over two years (that’s both internal and external hires) after averaging about 5,000 annual hires previously. Time to fill has decreased by 10 days, completely transforming everything Regions does from a talent acquisi

This is a remarkably quick transformation for an organization that had, only a few years earlier, centralized the HR function. HR generalists were doing everything from benefits to compensation to talent acquisition. “As you start to prioritize those

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Elevating Recruiting

As Regions went through the discovery process for improving the candidate experience, King recalled questions he was asked about the existing environment, which consisted of a static career site with little to no dynamic functionality.

“What happens to all of the candidates who come to your career site? How do you keep in touch with them?”

King didn’t have an answer.

“Now we have a talent community,” he said. “We have ways to capture leads. We have talent marketing campaign capability so that we can continue to keep in touch with these candidates in hopes that they become applicants.”

Take a look at Regions’s career site and you’ll see what he means. Awesome graphics and plenty of photos. No mile-long list of open roles in sight. A chatbot pops up on the screen and says “Hi! Are you looking for a job?” There are 13 categories to choose from, including accounting and corporate banking, as well as the number of open jobs in each category. There’s something for everyone.

The five pillars of Regions’s corporate culture is spelled out right there on the career site as well.

Feedback is vital to an outstanding experience, so Regions actually asks visitors, “Please tell us about your experience exploring our career site.”

Why would a company go to such lengths?

Packaging an Employee Value Prop

“There are companies that spend millions upon millions of dollars trying to come up with employee value prop,” King explained. “We already had one. Now it's just a matter of taking that employee value prop and packaging it up into the right campaign

Within the career site are four micro sites. So if someone is a branch banker and wants to know what a day in the life of Regions is like, there are videos of actual Regions branch bankers doing their jobs.

The ROI?

Regions used to average about 6,000 applicants a month. After going live with the Phenom platform, that figure has now increased to about 14,000 per month. In fact, since the start of 2023, the company is averaging about 25,000 applicants. “That’s in

So is eclipsing 400,000 people in Regions’s talent CRM. I mean, that’s flat-out amazing when you consider that Regions is in a lower requisition environment. Then add career site visits going from 70,000 a month to more than 100,000 — more than 70% o

Sixty-six percent of visitors rate the site positively. Regions wants to raise that number to 85%.

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Certainly there’s always room for improvement, but I think that 66% indicates the moves that Regions has made.

Compared to other organizations, I’d say the company is doing pretty well, which is why I felt compelled to bring it up in the first place. It’s not for nothing that job seekers, whether they did or didn't have the outcome they wanted, still rated th

Connecting Talent to the Broader Strategy

One other important takeaway from my conversation with King is the quality of conversations he’s now having with other senior decision-makers in the company. He explained that TA professionals and HR partners at Regions are having more strategic and

Talent conversations around the boardroom table would usually get relegated to the back of the PowerPoint deck, King said. But now, “we're bringing that up to the first or second page because if you don't have a people acquisition strategy to achieve

Can you say the same in your organization? Are you “just” a TA partner, or are you a talent marketer too?

I’d like to hear how you made that transition, or if it’s still an aspiration. Maybe I’ll invite you to come on an episode of “Smarter” to talk about that journey. Let’s connect on LinkedIn.

Note to readers: Since this interview was recorded, Regions Bank reported sharply higher applicants and career site visits, which is why some of the figures in this blog are higher than the numbers disclosed in the video interview.

About Smarter

“Smarter” is a podcast where I engage with top experts and senior leaders to uncover the big people trends, unlock the insights, and listen for new ideas related to purpose, people, and the processes that work the best. Let’s get smarter together.

In today’s fluctuating job market, “skills gaps” have become an increasingly important topic in relation to employee retention and development. But what exactly is a skills gap, and why is it important? 

As industries continue to advance and respond to the economic climate, the disparity between the skills employers seek and those possessed by job seekers has widened, sparking the need to pay closer attention to the concept of skills gaps. Overall, t

Whether you're an individual navigating your professional path or an employer striving to build a skilled team, understanding the essence of the skills gap is a crucial step toward informed decision-making and future success. Keep reading to uncover

What is a Skills Gap? 

A skills gap refers to the mismatch between the skills and qualifications that job seekers possess and the skills and qualifications that employers require for a particular job or role. This disparity can manifest in various ways, such as a need for

The skills gap is often a result of rapid changes in technology, evolving job market demands, inadequate educational and training systems, and other factors that lead to a disconnect between the skills available in the labor market and the skills dem

Unlock critical insights by downloading our Workforce Intelligence Guide: A Skills-Based Deployment and Adoption Plan now.

The Impact of the Skills Gap

Although a skills gap may seem like a simple issue with potentially straightforward solutions, its negative impact can actually cause a ripple effect across your organization. Here are two unexpected results that can be caused by a large gap in skill

1. Stagnation of Career Growth and Employee Advancement

The skills gap can hinder individual career growth and advancement opportunities. Employees who lack the necessary skills to move up the career ladder may find themselves stuck in their current roles, and lack of visibility to which skills they lack

Additionally, with advancements in artificial intelligence technology and automation, workers will often need to hone or develop new skills to better work with technology — or even support new areas of the business. When it comes to employee developm

2. Struggles in Innovation and Competitiveness

Today, innovation is everything, regardless of the industry. Everyone is continually looking to the next big technological advancement to improve their lives. 

The skills gap poses a significant threat to innovation by limiting the availability of skilled workers who can contribute fresh ideas and perspectives. Organizations that lack the necessary expertise may struggle to adapt to new technologies and mar

Closing the Gaps With Workforce Intelligence 

Overall, addressing the skills gap is not just about meeting immediate workforce needs; it's about ensuring long-term economic vitality and sustainable growth for both businesses and society as a whole.

But historically, creating skills architectures that outline the capabilities of every individual within your workforce has been cumbersome and time-consuming. Plus, by the time your team finished, it was more than likely outdated. 

This is where workforce intelligence comes in. This emerging technology provides critical context that drives talent mobility and career development throughout the enterprise by offering deeper insights into supply and demand, skills gaps, and succes

Workforce intelligence is also used as the intellectual backbone of a talent marketplace — intelligently connecting talent with learning and development opportunities that help close skills gaps and create an agile workforce. 

By leveraging artificial intelligence and workforce intelligence, your teams can skip the manual work while unlocking a breadth of insights that evolve alongside your employees — ensuring you have up-to-date information that allows for more streamlin

Overall, artificial intelligence helps power workforce intelligence for HR leaders while a talent marketplace is the end solution that translates intelligent insights into actionable steps employees can take to progress in their careers. This unique pairing offers powerful solutions that positively impact numerous stakeholders within the business. 

Find out how your company can get started with skills insights and workforce intelligence by taking our Workforce Intelligence Maturity Assessment here.

Employer branding and recruitment marketing are both essential strategies for establishing stronger connections with job seekers. Although they are similar and overlap in some ways, it's important for organizations to understand the intricacies of ea

So how is employer branding and recruitment marketing different, what are the benefits, and what approaches should organizations take to get started? Let’s break it down.

Employer Branding vs. Recruitment Marketing

Main Goals For Employer Branding

Employer branding primarily concerns the reputation and perception of an organization. Having a successful employer brand is about creating a positive and attractive image of the company in the eyes of current and potential employees. It encompasses

A few ways to create a successful employer brand include:

• Define your Employer Value Proposition (EVP): What do you offer that makes you unique and attractive to potential employees?

• Understand your current brand perception: Conduct surveys, focus groups, and online research to understand how your organization is currently perceived as an employer.

• Re-evaluate and identify opportunities to continue growing the brand: This can be through social media channels you haven’t used before or marketing campaigns that are different from the norm.

• Highlight employee stories and/or testimonials: Share authentic stories from your employees about what their experience is like working at your organization.

• Collaborate with HR and marketing: Ensure close collaboration between your HR and marketing teams to align employer branding efforts with overall company branding and marketing strategies.

Main Goals For Recruitment Marketing

Recruitment marketing is a subset of employer branding that is more focused on the strategies and tactics used to attract and engage potential candidates during the hiring process. Recruitment marketing involves the use of various marketing technique

Successful recruitment marketing looks like:

• Engaging, hyper-personalized career site optimization: Ensure that your career site and application processes are easy-to-use, personalized, and mobile-friendly, since a responsive design is crucial for keeping candidates engaged.

• Clear content marketing: Create and share informative and engaging content (e.g., video, emails, SMS messages, social media) related to your company, industry, job roles, and career development.

• Effective recruitment events: Host in-person or virtual career fairs, webinars, or information sessions to engage with potential candidates.

• Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) implementation: Make sure you have a CRM tool to manage and nurture relationships with potential candidates and identify best-fit talent quickly (including passive job seekers), even before they apply for a job.

In general, employer branding is a long-term strategy that aims to shape the company's image as an employer over time. It considers how the organization is perceived by current employees, potential candidates, and even the general public. Recruitment

Related reading: 350,000 Candidates for 28,000 Open Roles? The Power of Life Time’s Employment Brand

Audience For Employer Branding

When creating a strong employer brand, organizations must market to current employees, potential future employees, customers or clients, and the general public. It's about creating a positive image of the organization as a whole in a way that the majority of people can relate to and envision themselves engaging with.

This is why creating a successful employer brand can take time and resources to execute effectively. It’s an ongoing effort that extends beyond the immediate hiring needs and requires continuous investment in building and maintaining the organization

Audience For Recruitment Marketing

Recruitment marketing is time-sensitive, and focused on the job seekers and candidates who are actively looking for employment opportunities at your organization — both externally and internally. And it’s important to keep in mind that your employer all recruitment marketing efforts.

Attracting and engaging candidates who are interested in specific job openings or who would like to make a change internally is what recruitment marketing is all about. That’s why having a personalized career site that can deliver tailored job and co

Related reading: 5 Features to Look for in the Best Recruitment Marketing Platforms

As you're considering updating or revitalizing your employer branding vs. recruitment marketing — or both —, it's important to evaluate and identify your end goal and desired audience. Both are important for talent acquisition and retention, but they

To dive deeper into employer branding vs. recruitment marketing, check out our Definitive Guide to Recruitment Marketing.

AI has been revolutionary in many ways, but without an understanding of the laws in place to regulate its use, organizations put themselves at risk.

Josh Goren, Senior Director of Contracts and Legal Compliance at Phenom, joined us on Talent Experience Live to share his knowledge on the rules and regulations that govern the use of AI. Learn about emerging legislation affecting the use of AI in HR and Goren’s advice for staying out of “trouble” in applying this technology.

Get the highlights below, or watch the full episode right here.

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AI is in our lives in many forms these days, from work-related applications, to art, entertainment, and online shopping. Generative AI (GenAI for short) specifically has been on the rise, but with this mass adoption comes the need for guardrails to e

How have you seen AI used irresponsibly?

In his own field, Goren has seen lawyers use GenAI to write their legal arguments. In at least one circumstance, the judge questioned the lawyer about some cases cited in a claim. “As it turned out, the Generative AI had just simply made up the cases

“That’s a pretty flagrant terrible use of GenAI,” he added, as well as a great example of why we always need humans in the loop to keep tabs on the AI they’re using. This type of fabricated information known as “hallucinations” in the world of AI is

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What type of legislation is emerging to regulate AI?

Currently, more than 100 jurisdictions are drafting and implementing rules and regulations, Goren said. “It’s a hot topic, and it’ll affect people all around the world in various industries.”

New York City Local Law 144 (NYC 144) is perhaps the most prominent piece of legislation regarding AI and HR practices. The law, which took effect in July 2023, requires that employers perform a bias audit if they are using automated employment decision tools (AEDTs) to guide their hiring decisions. An AEDT, as defined by nyc.gov, is a computer-based tool that uses machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, or artificial intelligence to substantially help with employment decisions.

“The law is attempting to eliminate bias in hiring practices that may stem from such tools,” said Goren, adding that there had been a certain amount of resistance on the part of tech vendors and some companies. However, “companies should be auditing their hiring processes regardless,” he pointed out.

Why the pushback? Cost may come into play if companies don’t want to invest in any new infrastructure necessary to implement the auditing process. “But I see that as being pretty shortsighted — the cost resulting from lawsuits and claims about biased

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Although NYC 144 applies only to companies within the city’s borders, it’s worth taking note of for any employer using an AEDT, Goren said. He used the EU’s GDPR laws regarding data privacy as an example. When GDPR went live, the requirements technically only applied to European companies, but he made sure Phenom brought practices into compliance with them.

Laws like these serve as writing on the wall for what’s to come, he noted. In fact, several other localities are considering implementing similar legislation. “It’s always best to be in compliance with the law, because this is going to be a growing t

What are some positive trends you’re seeing in AI?

Used correctly, generative AI makes a great assistant. In fact, Goren said he uses it to help him structure his thoughts and find information for presentations more quickly. The caveat? AI’s role should remain as assistant, not chief creator. Think of those lawyers mentioned earlier as a cautionary tale.

Then there are the fun ways to use it:

• AI image generators

• AI-generated entertainment like the comedy skit featuring “Tom Brady” (which in itself is a bit of a cautionary tale, considering Brady is suing the creators)

• AI-generated songs

In the realm of HR, a positive use case for AI is its ability to alleviate talent acquisition and talent management professionals of administrative tasks like manual sourcing, screening, and scheduling so they can focus on more strategic work and rel

Related reading: Introducing Phenom X+: Generative AI for HR

What are your key takeaways on AI regulations?

“With any technology, get to know it first. Don’t rely on it completely,” Goren said. “Remember the episode of The Office where Michael blindly followed GPS right into a lake? You don’t want to be the lawyer citing fake cases, and you don’t want to d

“We’re in the infancy of Generative AI, and there’s obviously a ton of unknowns about the potential consequences of its use,” Goren said. “Never completely rely on it … make it a tool that enhances your work, and make sure the output you’re getting i

If you want to go a step further and dig into Phenom’s data models powering HR technology, impact and use cases of AI across industries, regulatory compliance, and integrations that streamline data into models, you can view AI Day, Phenom’s annual AI tech showcase for HR, right here.

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to forge its place in both our personal and professional lives. But not all AI is created equal. 

At Phenom, we believe AI needs to draw from rich context to deliver the experiences that candidates and employees expect with the precision that empowers HR teams, employees, and managers to reach superhuman levels of efficiency. 

Our second annual AI Day explored the intricacies of this approach by highlighting the:

• Latest AI advancements in HR 

• Hiring and retention challenges they solve 

• Innovations that lie ahead

Over the course of 4+ hours, our domain experts provided a technical deep-dive that spanned some of the biggest HR topics today, including: the data models powering HR technology; bias and ethics; and AI’s impact on candidates, employees, recruiters,

Read further to get key takeaways and discover how AI has been designed to maximize HR team efficiency while keeping humans in the driver’s seat. Want more than just the highlight reel? Check out the full-length, on-demand replay here. 

The State of AI – and What this Means for HR

We all know that AI has been interwoven into the background of our experiences — from Amazon product recommendations to suggested shows to watch on Netflix. But recently, the hype around AI has been driven by newly adopted Generative AI platforms, li

But underneath all the hype and news coverage, there have been elements of AI that have plateaued and become stable in the last 10 years, said Mahe Bayireddi, our CEO, during his opening remarks. For example, autonomous cars, dynamic content, and kno

But what does all of this mean for HR, and how can companies continue to implement AI to achieve their goals faster, smarter, and more efficiently? 

According to Bayireddi, there are four key areas that will help paint the picture of what AI means to HR in the coming years:

1. Skills will change dramatically, altering the work landscape

2. AI is an assistant — not autonomous — especially in HR 

3. The balance between AI and humans is essential, important, and critical

4. AI regulation can be modeled after other high-stakes industries (e.g., nuclear, climate change, aviation)

You might be wondering, “What about right now? How can I use Phenom AI to impact my every day?” By understanding where AI is going, our teams spent the time to create a scalable solution that addresses the problems of today — and tomorrow. 

To do so, we custom-built intelligent frameworks, databases, guardrails, and infrastructures specifically for HR and talent experiences using billions of data points compiled from proprietary Phenom platform data. 

This ensemble approach helps keep innovation at your fingertips, giving you a competitive edge when it comes to attracting, engaging, and retaining talent. Keep reading to explore how our custom HR solutions and meticulously trained AI benefit your t

Solving Real World HR Problems with Generative AI

Generative AI (or GenAI) is transforming the way we work. Its most well-known application is assisting in the content creation process. Our teams took that benefit one step further by leveraging the tool to offer various streamlined processes through

Within the Phenom platform, GenAI can:

• Summarize candidate profiles and notes from interviews to give recruiters more detailed information about each candidate

• Identify succession planning opportunities for high-performing employees

• Automate interview transcripts to allow interviewers to focus on the interview instead of taking notes 

• Detect skills gaps and surfaces upskilling and reskilling opportunities

• Analyze and summarize key points based on interview transcripts, providing meaningful evaluations of candidates 

• Generate personalized emails and campaigns to evolve employees 

• Reference career site pages to provide the platform bot with more context to answer questions from site visitors 

• Create audience segments to personalize and scale development efforts 

• Generate content on the fly to assist with targeted messaging for campaigns based on intended audiences 

And those are just a couple of examples of how we’re integrating GenAI into the platform to support your teams across both talent acquisition (TA) and talent management (TM).

Now let’s take a look under the hood to explore the infrastructure of Phenom AI that makes GenAI use cases possible.

A look inside Phenom’s Generative AI Infrastructure

Phenom’s technology encompasses hardware, software, and security layers. Within these layers, there are numerous frameworks, databases, models, and experiences. The following components comprise the infrastructure that allows users of the Phenom plat

• Experience layer 

• Data and Trust layer

• Large language learning models (LLMs)

All of these elements work together to provide critical enterprise context that is enriched with each interaction that occurs throughout our Intelligent Talent Experience Platform.

But our teams didn’t stop there. To ensure that our AI has the necessary data points required to allow it to obtain critical context surrounding each recommendation, decision, profile, and user, we trained our own LLM for HR-specific applications. 

This decision stems from our commitment to addressing the unique challenges and intricacies of the HR domain. The development teams achieved this by fine-tuning a Llama-2-7b model using an extensive dataset of 50 billion tokens from the Phenom domain

Now, let’s take a look at another layer of context that helps decipher these massive sets of data in a way that helps TA and TM teams identify, engage, nurture, and retain top talent within your organization.

The Intelligence Layer: Building the Right Infrastructure To Scale Phenom AI

Typically, location, skills, job titles, and additional information are passed to a platform in multiples because this data is getting pulled into the system from numerous endpoints — think of your ATS, resume submissions, manual imports, etc. 

This data is beneficial, but only if it’s standardized and segmented appropriately. That’s where our data standardization model becomes integral. Data standardization is a critical area that provides our products with a uniform understanding and rich

Once the attributes are cleaned up and standardized before being integrated into our platform, our universal knowledge graphs and recommendation systems can leverage the clean data and understand the numerous variations. 

But before we created systems that can operate on this level and parse accurate understanding of pertinent data, we had to train our models to do so. 

This process involved building standard datasets and taxonomies that ensure AI can interpret and contextualize the massive data sets effectively and accurately. We combined custom potentially unwanted program (PUP) data with data standardization, nor

To take these in-depth insights to another level, we combine our platform knowledge graphs with enterprise talent graphs so we better understand your enterprise, your roles, your infrastructure, and your users. 

But why do we do this? Our goal is to build knowledge graphs at the enterprise level to offer maximum context about a client that can be used for recommendations and insights throughout the platform, ultimately driving a more personalized experience. 

It also certifies that our platform and infrastructure can scale and evolve alongside your organization, delivering better insights every day.

The Benefits of a Talent Data Platform

Although enterprise talent graphs and context are an integral piece of the puzzle, understanding how HR at your organization operates on a daily basis is much more complex. That’s why we paired enterprise context with a talent data platform (TDP) tha

The Phenom Intelligent Talent Experience platform captures data about individual talent across products like a Career Site, Talent Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) software, Applicant Tracking System (ATS), Talent Employee Relationship Managem

TDP brings in Intelligent Identity resolution with human feedback loops for conflict resolution. This is followed by configuration-driven consolidations and data governance. Finally, it provides seamless integration into People Analytics and Data Eng

So what does that mean for you and your teams? It means that instead of viewing candidate profiles from one or two lenses and assessing them in a silo, our platform views that data from all sides and assesses how the information within those profiles relate to one another, creating a universal u

Going From Talent Scarcity to Prosperity with AI

“At Phenom, we don’t just provide career sites — leveraging AI, we curate personalized experiences, matching the right candidate to the right job,” said Lindsay Mareau, Vice President of Strategy at Phenom. 

To continually deliver unparalleled experiences for all users within our platform, our teams have prioritized building intelligent systems that account for the nuances of HR and talent data — because after all, HR is personal. 

We do this by leveraging Phenom BERT, O*NET classifications, and education taxonomy classifications to help our AI interpret context accurately, appropriately, and efficiently. Here’s a quick overview of each of these systems: 

• Phenom BERT: a bidirectional encoder transformers-based language model trained specifically on the HR domain based on 24 million training samples across all 23 job families, creating 2 billion tokens for training. Our fine-tuned Phenom BERT model is three times
  

• O*NET Classifications: designed to bridge the gap in job-candidate matching by reorganizing jobs for accurate recommendations while fostering AI transparency and explainability using job titles, skills, and job descriptions. Rolling out this solution drove a 12% increase
  

• Education Taxonomy Classifications: this solution was driven by the need to address the problem of training an Education Taxonomy Model based on the International Standard Classification of Education, which is maintained by UNESCO. Our hierarchy follows their guidelines but we adjust

All of these systems work in parallel to give our product features the context needed to recommend quick actions, identify best-fit candidates faster, and reduce time spent on repetitive tasks, allowing your teams to win the race to engage talent. 

Let’s take a closer look at a new development that has been underway for the last two years and will directly impact how effective your recruiters can be. 

Taking Career Sites Search to a New Level  

Traditional career sites lack advanced AI capabilities, limiting their ability to provide precise, relevant matches and optimized user experiences. 

To solve this problem, we developed Phenom AI-powered Intelligent Search. This feature was designed to improve the 8M searches that are happening across our platform every day. Our Intelligent Search allows for: 

• Typeahead search

• Enriched intent detection 

• Auto synonym detection 

• Personalized results 

• Dynamic re-ranking 

• AI adaptive learning 

• Rules engine 

• Built-in A/B testing

But again, we didn’t stop there. We paired this enhanced search functionality with new elements of personalization to create a well-rounded, seamless, and user-friendly experience for both recruiters and candidates. 

Using Audience Personalized Widgets (AWPs), site visitors can expect a new career site experience almost every time they visit. AWPs are engineered to actively interpret and respond to the specific user, including a stranger, visitor, lead, qualified

Depending on each user category, these widgets populate relevant information to communicate available roles, recommend content, highlight recently viewed jobs, and more. Consistently delivering new content through an AWP ensures candidates receive to

What About Conversational AI and Chatbot? 

To support an intuitive and personalized career site experience, chatbots outfitted with conversational AI serve as always-on assistants to your recruiters. Today, most chatbots are driven by workflows, outfitted with prefilled answers to a set number of frequently asked questions, and are only available on the web — leading to chatbot experiences that leave a lot to be de

Specifically, our teams found that chatbot conversion funnels are suboptimal, the job views-to-applications ratio is too low, and there are a high number of unanswered questions. To fix these issues and increase the efficacy of your career site chatbot, we revolutionized conversational AI. 

Now, the Phenom Chatbot is equipped to: 

• Have natural, human-like conversations instead of flow-driven conversations

• Provide contextual answers to questions by combining multiple knowledge bases and user-level contexts

• Offer omnichannel experiences, enabling users to continue the conversation anywhere at any time

• Empower a multilingual experience that allows people to converse in their preferred languages 

Our teams have left few stones unturned when it comes to creating stellar experiences for all of our platform users, ensuring your organization can make a great impression on talent throughout every stage of the talent lifecycle. 

Unlocking Recruiter and Hiring Team Efficiency 

The old way of searching for talent is outdated, which is one of the many reasons HR teams are adopting AI to streamline their recruitment process. Today’s modern approach that transforms old methods of searching for talent is Intelligent Sourcing.

Intelligent Sourcing is deeply rooted in the effort to improve the relevance and effectiveness of the search process by leveraging ML algorithms to re-rank the search results. With the goal of improving search relevance, personalizing search results

By creating a two-phase solution in the search flow, our development teams improved the entire framework — and as a result, search capabilities and outputs are enhanced. Our new search process is enriched with Intent/Entity Extraction and Recruiter T

We also implemented Learning to Rank (LTR) model in the post-search phase which focuses on re-ranking search results to efficiently prioritize job listings within a vast database of content. Pairing this integration with our in-house trained Phenom B

We coupled this updated search model with our recruiter-facing X+ Bot to assist with everyday activities, like adding notes to candidate records, and answer any questions recruiters may have when moving throughout the platform, like learning how to c

Let’s take a look at how our team tackled another problem area for recruiters and designed a solution that’s making a positive impact on key hiring metrics. 

Scoring and Matching for Knowledge Work Using AI Discovery and Fit Score 

Recruiters today face numerous challenges when hiring for their organizations. It can be time-consuming to manually sift through an overwhelmingly large pool of candidates to connect the best-fit talent with available roles. Plus, the longer it takes

Fit Score — a dynamically generated score based on desired skills, title, experience, and location — can solve many of these bottlenecks the AI way. And when paired with AI Discovery, recruiters can achieve superhuman levels of efficiency with confid

AI Discovery quickly shortlists candidates based on their qualifications and how well those data points line up with specified job requirements. This feature starts functioning in the background the moment a job has been created. 

AI Discovery recommendations consist of internal and external candidates that are already in your CRM, and talent outside your CRM that can be added to specific jobs — offering a full breadth of potential options to help recruiters find the best fit

Over time, these recommendations change based on feedback and recruiter preferences, which allow for continuous evolution. Then, candidates are organized into a shortlist, quickly highlighting the top options that recruiters should look at first. Thi

It’s important to note that Fit Scores aren’t arbitrary. They’re generated after analyzing numerous data points, including but not limited to previous skill sets held by individuals hired to that role in the past, geographic location fit, job title r

Although Fit Score has already proven effective, our teams wanted to enhance its capabilities further. Our updated Supervised Fit Score has client-specific neural network models, which score a candidate based on past hiring decisions. Recruiter actio

Let’s look at the results: 

Keep reading to learn how we apply our AI to another element of our platform — our Automation Workflow Engine — to drive improvements that translate to time and cost savings for our customers.

Leveraging Automation for Proactive Hiring 

HR teams struggle to build efficient and effective processes at scale. At best, they’re typically only able to construct automations within siloed point solutions. That’s where our Automation Engine comes in. We build personalized and highly automate

For example, Automation Engine can automate tasks like:

• Posting a job requisition

• Scheduling and rescheduling interviews

• Sending candidates follow-up communications

• Sharing job templates with hiring managers,

• Notifying recruiters when responses are input

• Providing recruiters with a candidate list

• Notifying you when qualified candidates apply

When powered by AI technologies, Automation Engine can also rank candidates based on psychometric assessments, auto-schedule interviews for eligible candidates, and handle communications with hiring managers.

Here’s a list of the most frequently used automation recipes across the platform: 

• Send an email

• Update candidate field

• Add to campaign

• Add tag

• Send SMS

• Add to list 

• Change hiring status 

Did we mention that automation recipes can be combined to handle end-to-end use cases? By leveraging our AI-powered Automation Engine, your repetitive systems can run on repeat automatically, saving your team's time so they can focus on making meaninbefore your competitors do. 

 With all of these innovative and intuitive AI applications, you might be curious about the implications of AI when it comes to compliance and privacy. Keep reading to find out how we apply cutting-edge compliance to cutting-edge AI.

Navigating AI Compliance

We want to make it easy for you to adopt AI and leverage it responsibly to achieve impactful outcomes for your business. A large component of this relies on our ability to ensure AI compliance. 

Our teams are detailed and meticulous when assessing our product features for compliance with privacy and compliance requirements. Here’s a list of the areas of compliance we abide by within the Phenom platform: 

• Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP): employment-based internet applicant rule mandating appropriate recordkeeping with EEO reporting guidelines that mandate data collection on applicant demographics. 

• Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (UGESP): employment-based compliance guidelines designed to assist employers, labor organizations, employment agencies, and licensing and certification boards to comply with requirements of Federal law prohibiting employment practices that discriminate on g

• NYC Local Law 144: AI-based compliance detailing that automated employment decision tools must be audited and the audit results are required to be disclosed. 

• EU AI Act: AI-based compliance that aims to ensure AI systems placed and used on the Union market are safe and respect existing laws on fundamental rights and Union values. 

• California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA): privacy act that requires companies to comply with user requests for all data collected and stored, each category of sources where data is collected, the business purpose of collecting and selling user data, as well as a list of third parties that

• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): EU privacy law that dictates an organization that falls within the scope of the GDPR meets the requirements for properly handling personal data as defined in the law.

Additionally, our teams conduct risk assessments following our Governance Policy for AI technologies. This policy is based on the Model Artificial Intelligence Governance Framework originally developed by the government of Singapore for the World Eco

Under the Phenom Governance Policy, AI-driven technologies are assessed based on their probability and severity of harm, prospective mitigations, and need for humans in the loop. 

Based on this policy and the desire to accommodate your preferences and needs within the platform, you can:

• Enable or disable Fit Score to fit within location jurisdiction requirements 

• Offer an opt-out functionality to applicants so they can decide whether they’re comfortable having an AI-based tool evaluate them

With the legal definitions out of the way, keep reading to explore how we take those policies yet another step further to ensure AI safety at scale using Industrial/organizational psychology and other principles.

AI Safety at Scale 

Our teams focus on the importance of ethical hiring at the enterprise scale. “All good AI needs an off button, a control panel, a monitoring tool, and success metrics to ensure you’re meeting your goals,” said Phenom’s James Schlitt, Ph.D., Senior Da

To do this, we focus on the following areas of concern:

• Valid AI: the degree to which artificial intelligence’s predictions or decisions are accurate, reliable, and appropriate for a particular context or purpose. 

• Fair AI: the application of algorithms and machine learning models in a way that they provide equal opportunities, avoid discrimination, and prevent biases based on certain attributes such as race, gender, or age. 

The last area of concern is bias, but there are multiple ways to define bias based on statistics, machine learning, and Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology.

• Statistical Bias refers to systematic errors that skew findings or conclusions. It happens when the process of collecting data or the methods of analysis favor certain outcomes over others, leading to inaccurate representations of populations or phenomena.

• Machine Learning Bias is a phenomenon that occurs when an algorithm produces results that are systematically prejudiced due to erroneous assumptions in the ML process. 

• I/O Psychology Bias is any complex of unfair or unbalanced beliefs, preferences, or prejudices toward certain groups, characteristics, or ideas that influence decision-making processes or assessments within a workplace context. 

At Phenom, we take all three definitions of bias into consideration — so much so that we built the Phenom Fairness and Validity Framework to help us monitor, test, and determine if our AI-powered features are compliant with everything we just highlig

One use case example is our Fit Score feature. To test its adverse impact on the hiring process, we performed a bias audit. The results?

Phenom AI: The Backbone of an Intelligent Talent Experience

AI Day 2023 was full of technical insights into what really goes on in the background. The immense intricacies and overwhelming number of data points, guidelines, infrastructures, and custom-trained models are what make the Phenom platform different

Our commitment to helping one billion people find the right work drives our development and product teams to create innovative solutions that help:

• Best-fit candidates find and choose the right job faster

• Employees develop their skills and evolve their careers

• Recruiters become wildly productive

• Managers build stronger-performing teams 

• HR leaders align employee development with company goals through an intelligent workforce planning solution

• HRIS teams seamlessly integrate with your HR tech stack

We pay attention to the details to ensure that each of our customers can feel confident using AI to streamline their everyday activities and create more impactful, positive experiences for individuals in each stage of the talent lifecycle. And with o

To discover exactly how Phenom AI can help your TA and TM teams hire, develop, and retain top talent, book a personalized demo with our team today.

Interviews consume a tremendous amount of valuable time and resources from organizations and job seekers. In some cases, the number of interactions in a hiring cycle can be anywhere from three to even ten interviews!

Despite the amount of time that can be expended by applicants and hiring teams, not nearly enough effort is put into adequate preparation to ensure that time is well spent and the right questions are being asked by the prospective employer.

When organizations put more emphasis on defining what the hiring process should look like with effective interview training, the time that is put into each cycle becomes more efficient for recruiters, hiring managers, and interviewers. Even more impo

The Divide in Interview Training Today

In many cases, businesses are failing to conduct or mandate any interview training whatsoever. Requisitions are approved, jobs are posted, and then it’s open season for hiring managers and interviewers to narrow down the candidates of their choosing

Other organizations, however, recognize the need to put process and structure in place to adequately prepare their hiring teams. These companies:

• Conduct in-person training sessions and workshops (e.g., how to conduct interviews)

• Distribute guides and manuals (e.g., how to avoid biased or inappropriate questions)

• Facilitate knowledge sharing via mentorships and peer learning engagements

Even with these well-intentioned exercises, the training is often ineffective and broad versus personalized to the specific job or interviewer. And the guides shared are not well understood — if they’re even being read in the first place. Because of

Implementing Interview Guidance to Reduce Bias

Although guidance from HR teams may be well intentioned, applying these recommendations and making them meaningful can be difficult for hiring decision-makers to do. This is often because guidance is not directly applicable to or personalized for eve

This calls for more feedback loops put in place by HR teams that make it easy for curated guidance to be provided — which can only happen when appropriate context is taken into account.

For example, a hiring manager may ask a particular question each time he meets with a candidate — while unknowingly opening the company up to potential risk. Depending on the severity, this could even mean potential legal action. If the company had a mechanism in place to identify when this was occurring:

• The hiring manager could be made aware that this question should be avoided — and why

• Feedback could be given to steer the manager on the right path for future engagements

• Future interview performance could be improved, and the potential for bias reduced

With Phenom Interview Intelligence, HR teams can implement these types of feedback loops — leveraging the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to move past the traditional methods of preparation and interview training and produce better outcomes. There are various ways that Intervie

Getting Ready for a Solid Interview

At this stage of the process, a hiring manager or interviewer needs to be fully aware of the job they are interviewing candidates for. Important aspects they need to know include the core competencies they should be profiling for and the job requirements, so that they may appropriately evaluate the candidate’s eligibility.

Interview training for hiring managers is extremely important to ensure that candidates are being appropriately evaluated, and the right ones move forward in the process. Interview Intelligence can draw upon this context to comprise tailor-made interview guides. With this method, AI generates personalized questions that are entirely based on the job requirements and core competencies needed to perform the job. It also uses context to serve up the questions and topics that would be best to avoid.

Furthermore, interviewers can prepare for their next conversation by reviewing takeaways from past interviews that were automatically recorded and transcribed. AI facilitates a proper interviewer reflection process by serving up recommendations based on the outcomes of previous engagements. This contextually relevant guidance and interview training for hiring managers affords them with an understanding of where there may have been missed opportunities to ask the right questions — and how that learning can be applied in the next interaction.

Facilitating Top Notch Interactions in Real-Time

Because Interview Intelligence automatically records and transcribes interviews, it can provide interviewers with immediate feedback in real time — analyzing and addressing bias.

For example, if an interviewer mistakenly introduces bias into the conversation by asking a potentially risky question like “Are you planning to have children soon?", the AI can detect it in real-time and share a different approach — for example, offering a recommendation to ask the question a different way or to omit it completely.

Because this feedback is made immediately, the interviewer can course correct while keeping the process fair and appropriate for the candidate they are evaluating.

Interview Intelligence can also consider the amount of time that has been spent in each conversation and prompt the interviewer with additional questions to ask that are aligned to the role and its requirements, ensuring the right ones get surfaced before the end of the exchange.

Optimizing Each Interview Interaction

With Interview Intelligence, the entire team gets the opportunity to reflect on how the interview went. AI makes this process easy by highlighting key moments from each conversation and providing contextually relevant feedback. This can include ackno

The team can evaluate whether the right questions were asked and what types of responses were received. If there are gaps that are important to address before deciding to move forward with a candidate, the team can bring those actionable takeaways to the next interview to make it even more impactful.

Overall, these data-driven insights from Interview Intelligence make it easy to spot trends, highlight potential risks, and keep the process moving forward as efficiently as possible for all parties involved.

See Interview Intelligence in Action

Every organization has different requirements when it comes to hiring: Different jobs to be done, talent that needs to be evaluated, and processes for attracting, engaging, and converting prospective hires. There is, however, a pressing need that appall organizations, no matter how they’re choosing to hire: the need to prepare for the most impactful, efficient, and fair interactions with job seekers. Not only have candidates come to expect this, but it also keeps brands protected from encountering potential legal troubles.

Interview Intelligence simplifies this process by providing a holistic solution that cuts across the interview process from start to finish. It continually optimizes the way that hiring teams engage with applicants to create phenomenal experiences that result in better hiring decisions.

Request a personalized demo today to see how your organization can benefit from putting Interview Intelligence into practice.

This blog is part of a series dedicated to improving the way organizations approach the overall interview process to create better candidate experiences, improve hiring team collaboration, and reduce total time and cost to hire. Click here to catch u

• 4 Ways to Improve the Interview Experience

• Best Practices for Structuring and Preparing for an Interview

• 5 Ways to Boost Hiring Team Communication and Efficiency

In our next and final blog of the series, we will be touching on the best ways to streamline interview experiences for candidates. Be on the lookout for more to come in the weeks ahead!

Phenom AI Day. By now, you’ve probably seen it featured on social media or read an email about it — but what is it?

Phenom AI Day is an annual AI tech broadcast, streaming live from Phenom’s world headquarters in Ambler, PA on September 14 at 11 am ET. During the event, domain experts will explore AI innovations for human resources, and how they’re designed to address your big

We believe AI needs to be intelligently applied and contextual to deliver the experiences and precision that empower HR teams, employees, and managers to reach superhuman levels of efficiency. Because of this, the broadcast will cover the different t

Who should attend?

HR practitioners — including CHROs, talent acquisition and talent management leaders, recruiters, sourcers, and talent marketers — will find value in joining AI Day. Data scientists, AI enthusiasts, and specialists should also be part of it.

This broadcast will provide a unique opportunity to look under the proverbial hood of AI to see how it improves productivity and efficiency, helps talent acquisition teams discover best-fit candidates and hire faster, and empowers talent management t

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What to expect

Attendees who view AI Day live or on demand will gain exclusive exposure to the inner workings of talent intelligence and discover how Phenom’s decade of innovation laid the foundation for a multi-billion datapoint-driven system of intelligence. Atte

• Discover the data models powering HR tech

• Overcome the ambiguity, complexity, and fear surrounding AI

• Leverage generative AI to create better experiences and improve productivity

• Take a skills-based approach to engage employees

• Explore real-world use cases and impact across industries

• Uncover the extent of integrations that streamline data into AI models

• Earn SHRM credits

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Have questions?

Here are some frequently asked questions that our team has been getting about Phenom AI Day.

How long is the event?

Phenom AI Day is a ~2-hour broadcast. Plenty of time to deep dive into AI but short enough that you won’t have to block off the whole day.

What if I register and can’t make the live broadcast?

We designed this event so you can experience Phenom AI Day your way. If you can’t make it for the entire live broadcast, we suggest that you register anyway so that you are able to catch the replay on your own time.

I don’t know anything about AI. Should I still attend?

Yes! For those looking to learn more about AI and its applications, the event will demonstrate what AI is capable of, the different types of AI, how AI works, its impact across the talent landscape, and responsible use cases for TA, TM, and HR profes

Where can I watch the event on demand?

Visit the Phenom AI Day website.

Companies around the world are facing the same uncertainties — fear of recession, digital transformation, the Great Resignation, and others. 

A major topic of concern is employee retention. In a tumultuous labor market with high turnovers, layoffs, and organizational restructuring, businesses have to start looking for new solutions. 

One way companies can mitigate uncertainty while developing a resilient, capable workforce is by embracing the importance of skills — specifically, upskilling and reskilling.

 Why is upskilling important? 

Companies can benefit from upskilling and reskilling in many ways. 

Employees across all industries are placing a greater emphasis on learning and development opportunities — skills fall directly into that category. More specifically, 74% of employees are willing to learn new skills or be reskilled to support their job performance. 

On the flip side, a McKinsey study found 87% of CEOs believe they currently have or will have skills gaps within their organization. By acknowledging talent’s desire to evolve and the current skill gaps a business has, leadership can start to bridge the gap in an effective way that allows upskilling a

So how do you leverage skills development to better engage your workforce? Having a skills identification and training program offers employees reassurance that organizations are committed to mutual success, which should lead to higher retention and better performance.

Related: Designing Employee Retention Strategies for 2023

Companies that implement workforce intelligence and skills programs will be better able to fill these gaps, compete, and adapt to digital transformation. Additionally, since the cost to replace an employee costs 21% of that employees salary, upskilling and reskilling is often a far more cost-effective option. 

What exactly are skills and what is the difference between upskilling and reskilling? 

When referring to the evolution and development of the workforce, there a few common terms that come up:

• Skills are the attributes an individual possesses that allows them to be successful at a given task or role. Skills are dynamic and continually evolving over time based on education, work history, and life experiences. They can be categorized in many ways, like soft skills, which stem from an individual's inherent ability to be creative and collaborate, to hard s
  

• Upskilling is the development of new knowledge, skills, and competencies that enable better performance within a role or responsibility area. For example, a software engineer learns a trending programming language to work on disruptive technologies. Upskilling builds on an individual’s existing expertise to hone skills or acquire new related skills that allow them to be more adaptable and

• Reskilling is the development of new knowledge, skills, and competencies that enable an employee to switch to a new role, team, or business unit. For example, a Marketing specialist moving into Product Management. Reskilling focuses on developing talent in a way that extends outside of their existing expertise or skill sets, allowing them to broaden their knowledge in different areas of the b

• Redeployment is the actual process of moving an employee between roles when their existing role is removed. Redeployment necessitates an understanding of an employee's skills, and how they can be applied successfully in different roles. When the workforce is prim

How to approach upskilling and reskilling

Maya Angelou once said, “you can’t really know where you are going until you know where you have been,” and the same thing could be said about skills. Understanding the skills necessary to evolve to a new role or perform better in an existing positio

Skills can be identified and validated in many ways, including:

• Parsed from resumes, social profiles, and job descriptions 

• Pulled from multiple data sources via APIs

• Automatically identified through AI

• Manually entered by employees or managers 

Once the information is parsed and inputted, employees and managers can validate their skills within an opportunity portal or talent marketplace. Within a talent marketplace, employees should have access to gigs, mentorships, and learning programs th

Related: Leveraging Skills To Bounce Back from the Great Attrition

I know my employee's skills, what now?  

Without an understanding of an individual’s career goals, or a business’s future skill needs, it would be impossible to know what skills to prioritize for an employee’s learning and development. 

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there” -  Lewis Carrol

By creating an upskilling and reskilling program, your company can begin to support employees on their development journey while closing skill gaps within the business. But how do you get started? 

In the same talent marketplace where employees can input and validate skills, they should be able to identify their career goals, job preferences, learning paths, and other areas of interests. This allows them to input specific information that may n

It’s also important to create a skills program. Every upskilling and reskilling program needs to have ‘goal posts’ that inform skills gap analysis and outlines recommendations on skills to pursue to close those gaps. 

AI can identify these skills gaps and deliver personalized recommendations on learning and development courses, gigs, mentorship opportunities, or open roles, streamlining how your business upskills, reskills, and redeploys talent. 

4 reasons you should implement an upskilling and reskilling program

When created and implemented effectively, upskilling and reskilling programs are beneficial for both the business and the individual. Here are four reasons you should implement an upskilling and reskilling program at your organization. 

1. Increase employee engagement by offering new opportunities for growth

Investing in your employees is investing in your company's future. By offering them new opportunities for growth and development, you’re not only increasing their engagement with your company, but you’re also supporting them as they acquire new skill

Confidently showing your employees that you care about their professional development and their success helps them feel valued, supported, and challenged. When individuals feel like an integral part of the company’s success, they’re more likely to st

Related: Why is Upskilling and Reskilling Important for Employee Development? 

2. Fuel innovation with upskilling and reskilling programs that encourage employees to think outside the box 

One of the best ways to fuel innovation is through upskilling and reskilling programs that encourage employees to think outside the box. In these programs, employees can learn new skills, offer a fresh pair of eyes, and gain knowledge and experience

While being immersed in areas that are typically outside of their day-to-day responsibilities, employees can gain a better understanding of how each role impacts the bottom line.

They also have the ability to explore areas of the business they might be interested in, and develop collaborative skills that help them work well with others — simultaneously, they make new relationships through networking that may not have otherwis

3. Positively impact productivity by giving workers the skills they need to be successful

HR leaders understand the importance of having a productive and motivated workforce. But the question is, how do you achieve that? The answer lies in skills development. 

By providing your workers with the necessary skills to excel in their roles, you not only improve productivity but also boost morale, as they feel more confident in their abilities. With access to training on a regular basis, your workers will be equ

Upskilling and reskilling current employees also fosters a culture of continuous learning and development, making businesses more agile and adaptive to changes in their industry.

4. Reduce costs associated with hiring by upskilling or reskilling existing talent

It can be costly to hire and onboard new talent. But, businesses can save money by investing in their current employees and connecting them to reskilling opportunities that allow them to grow into critical roles across the enterprise. 

By helping individuals acquire new or existing skill sets, companies can enhance their workforce's capabilities and demonstrate a commitment to employee growth — which is appealing to new hires when upskilling or reskilling isn't a viable option for

What’s next in skills?

There have been quite a few labor trends over the past two years — the Great Resignation, the Big Quit, Quiet Quitting, and more. In response to these employee retention trends, the next few years could likely be defined as a “Great Reskilling.” 

Employees have an appetite for upskilling and reskilling programs, and employers have shown a massive need for one. A path forward, toward mutual success, lies in having a strong skills identification and training program within your talent marketpla

Related: Skill Disruption: What is it and what does it mean for HR?

Invest in upskilling and reskilling with Phenom Talent Marketplace 

Preparing your workforce for upskilling, reskilling, and redeployment goes beyond recommending a couple of courses. By leveraging a talent marketplace, you can use AI and machine learning to identify skills gaps, perform mentor/mentee matching, recom

Skills intelligence is an important part of creating an agile workforce that’s primed to handle uncertain situations. With Phenom Talent Marketplace, you can provide your employees with the tools they need to thrive and meet evolving business needs. 

Ready to expedite how you upskill and reskill employees? Check out this blog on How to Launch a Talent Marketplace.