AI recruiting and talent intelligence platforms

Going out to find candidates, then using AI to understand them

Market Segment 12.4, Applicant tracking systems (ATS) and recruitment marketing, waits for candidates to apply. This one goes and finds them. Then it tries to understand them.

Picture the technology centre of a large bank in Pune. It needs 20 data engineers by March, and not enough good people have applied. It also wonders whether some of its own staff could move into those roles, and what skills it will need in five years.

The software in this Market Segment does two jobs:

Sourcing searches outside the bank for people who could fill its 20 roles, while talent intelligence shows which of its own staff could move into them and what skills it will need.

Sourcing

it searches the open web and the company's own records for people who could do a job, and contacts them.

Talent intelligence

it studies millions of career histories, and builds a model of which skills lead to which roles. From that, an employer can see who to hire, who to promote, and what its workforce will need in five years.

AI models remade both jobs before most of the rest of Industry Vertical 12 had noticed. The buyers are companies' recruiting and HR teams.

This is a young and small Market Segment, and largely Indian-founded. Eightfold, the largest talent-intelligence company, was started by Indian engineers. Five of its nine companies are Indian start-ups, and one of them hires blue-collar workers over messaging apps.

Two neighbours are covered elsewhere, or not at all:

Marketplaces that find people for companies as a service, instead of selling software, are covered elsewhere. (More on them in the services-world collection.)
LinkedIn, whose profiles most of these companies search, is part of Microsoft. (More on it in Microsoft, in the big-tech collection.)

Every company named here has posted software engineering jobs in India. Famous companies that don't actively hire software engineers in India are left out.

This Market Segment has two sub-segments, from finding people to understanding them:

Sourcing and outreach: software that does the recruiter's search.

Talent intelligence: platforms that reason about the whole workforce.

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Sourcing and outreach
Talent intelligence

Sourcing and outreach

Automated sourcing, candidate outreach, screening and matching, high-volume and blue-collar hiring

Back to the bank's 20 data engineers from the start of this Market Segment. A recruiter used to find them by hand: searching profiles, sending messages, and phoning former colleagues for an informal opinion. The companies in this sub-segment do that search in software.

Weekday

founded in Bengaluru, with engineers in Bengaluru, Chennai and Delhi, has the most job postings in this Market Segment. It sells the recruiter's search as software. Its engine finds engineers and contacts them automatically. It also adds the back-channel reference: the informal word from a former colleague, which recruiters used to gather by phone.

HireQuotient

with engineers in Bengaluru and Delhi, sells the same automated outreach and screening.

Senseloaf AI

a small Bengaluru company, sells the matching engine underneath. It compares a CV with a job by meaning, which is called semantic matching. This replaced searching for keywords.

Navii

a five-person Pune start-up, sells an AI agent that matches candidates, writes the job description, and sits in on the interview.

micro1

with engineers in Bengaluru, runs an AI recruiter. It interviews and checks engineers for the companies that hire through it. That puts it on the border with the talent marketplaces covered in the services-world collection.

One company here works on a very different kind of hiring instead:

Vahan.ai

with engineers in Bengaluru, runs an AI recruitment platform for blue-collar hiring. It matches delivery riders and warehouse workers to the gig platforms and logistics companies that need thousands of them every week. It does this over the messaging apps the workers already use.

The recruiter as an agent.

Each step of sourcing is now being done by an AI model: the search, the first message, the screening call and the reference check. The newest companies here, Navii and micro1, sell the whole sequence as one AI agent. What is left of the recruiter's job is the conversation with the candidate the agent found.

The search, the first message, the screening call and the reference check are each now done by an AI model, leaving the recruiter the conversation with the candidate.

Talent intelligence

Talent intelligence platforms, skills-based matching, internal mobility, workforce planning analytics

Back to the bank from the start of this Market Segment. Could some of its own software testers become data engineers? The companies in this sub-segment answer questions like that. Moving staff into new roles inside the company is called internal mobility. Deciding what skills the company will need in future is called workforce planning.

Eightfold

was founded by Indian engineers, and has engineers in Bengaluru and Delhi. It built a model of careers from hundreds of millions of profiles. From the jobs a person has held, it works out the skills they have, and the roles they could do next. It sells this to large employers for hiring, for moving people internally, and for planning the workforce. Its Indian centres are a large share of the company.

Findem

with engineers in Bengaluru, does the same from the outside in. It labels what every candidate on the web has done, so a recruiter can search for a person by what they have done, not by their job title.

SeekOut

with engineers in Bengaluru, sells sourcing and internal mobility built on the same kind of data. An AI recruiting assistant now sits in front of it.

So the bank from the start of this Market Segment can fill its 20 roles two ways. Sourcing software finds and contacts the right people outside. And talent intelligence shows which of its own staff could grow into the roles.

Who they hire

Who these companies hire, and for what, is on What HR tech companies hire for.

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