eightfold.ai Reviews

We've done some customizations on top of it, but it really focuses on leader management at the executive level – things like succession planning and leader development.

We haven't used it from a talent acquisition standpoint. It's really just been for talent management.  We primarily use their succession planning features. The AI component recommends potential successors for roles we're trying to fill or plan for.

We're just launching it. We have two clients using it. Our company, Heidrick & Struggles, partners with Eightfold.ai, and we use a lot of our own IP, such as digital spend, capabilities, competencies, and culture assessment information. A lot of what we do is gather that assessment data and make recommendations based on that, in addition to Eightfold.ai's insights. It's a combination of the two that really helps us accurately identify the best fit for executive leadership roles. 

It's purely data-driven, so we try to take human bias out of the process. That's really the sweet spot for this solution – the partnership between Heidrick's components and Eightfold's components. 

The AI recommends potential leaders, so you don't have to do a ton of thinking. You still want some human interaction, but from a pure recommendation standpoint, it reduces the bias you'd get if you did not use data points for these decisions.

I really like the AI piece. It helps you find the right folks for your succession plan. I think that's where Eightfold.ai has an edge over other competitors.

From my perspective, I think the usability could use some attention. Eightfold.ai offers modules for talent acquisition, talent management, and other areas like projects. They try to use a common UI for all of them, but it really needs to be more persona-based. That's the thing that I struggle with the most.

We've been using it for about two years.

Stability is fantastic. In the two years we've used it, I've only experienced one outage.

I would rate the stability a ten out of ten.

I would rate the scalability a five out of ten, one being easy to scale and ten being difficult to scale. There are a lot of manual components at this point. Since you have to ingest a large amount of leader data, that process is currently very manual with file feeds.

The customer service and support are horrible. They could improve in terms of friendliness and responsiveness. 

Negative

This was a solution we sought to build. We did research to determine the best partner, and through that process, we selected Eightfold.ai. So we didn't have a pre-existing solution in this area.

The initial setup is very complex. I would rate my experience with the initial setup a three out of ten, with one being highly complex and ten being easy to set up. 

The deployment took about seven or eight months. 

We use Amazon Web Services and Azure DevOps for deployment, so there's a lot of technical folks involved. So, there were probably ten people total involved in the deployment.

Maintenance is mainly required for onboarding new users and handling feature progression. As Eightfold.ai releases new features, our DevOps team and our managed services teams work with clients to implement them. 

Eightfold.ai hosts their side of things, so we don't have to worry about that piece. However, there's some additional complexity for us because we also integrate other applications within the Heidrick suite.

But just focusing on the Eightfold.ai perspective, there's not a lot of maintenance other than managing feature releases and moving those through our staging, UAT, and then enterprise environments.

Eightfold.ai contributed to reducing the hiring costs or improving employee retention for our clients. 

It helps reduce that cost from both an overhead and employee headcount perspective. For the client, it reduces overhead costs because they're not managing spreadsheets. The system takes care of all that.

The pricing is expensive. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with one being cheap and ten being expensive. 

I would recommend it to others. The AI piece is really what drove our decision to select Eightfold.ai. It truly fulfills the need when combined with our own intellectual property and the data points we gather. From that perspective, it serves the purpose well.

Eightfold.ai's data is robust, and as time goes on, the system learns and improves our recommendations. So, it's more about the learning aspect and being able to accurately pinpoint leaders with the right skill sets.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

I help align eightfold.ai within our corporate portfolio, primarily with our human capital management (HCM) application and some of our other lines of business, to help in the recruiting process. We also embed the technology and the intellectual property that eightfold.ai has built to accelerate our solution.

It really expedites the whole process and helps the end-customer hone in on what they need. With the evolution to remote work that we are currently going through, there's much more of a need to tailor recruiting. Not only are you not always going to have a face-to-face conversation, but you need to align things with the resources that you're going for.

eightfold.ai fills some gaps in our HCM solution, particularly around recruiting. The AI capabilities have added to that. It really seems that it's been an improvement for the customers. It's been very beneficial for us because it expands the footprint that we have and adds value on top of our product.

We classify it as an "endorsed business application." Within our partner program, that kind of application is one that is key to communicating with our customer base and adding value. They may be adding things that we have not developed within our product and that's where the partnership has been really beneficial.

One of the biggest features is the artificial intelligence and the ability it provides customers to tailor recruiting in a seamless manner. That enables them to get through more candidates.

It has been very intuitive to use. eightfold.ai is one of our top partners in the recruiting area. The ease of use for the customer makes it customizable for what they're looking to do.

We're looking at how eightfold.ai can expand into our corporate landscape and potentially adopt some of our technologies. AI is one of their biggest selling points and capabilities, but there are some other areas that we can expand into, such as workforce management. We'd like them to be able to adopt and leverage some of the platform tools that we have. Those are some things that could be improved upon.

I've been working with eightfold.ai for two years.

I'm not only involved in our partnership with eightfold.ai but with other partners as well. I get into conversations with a lot of those partners where a support issue is raised. But I only have to deal very minimally with eightfold.ai when it comes to support issues. Other partners, for other lines of business, have a lot more issues when it comes to fixing bugs or needing support.

We have had a couple of challenges with some of the things that we're currently trying to build out in our HCM application, and other things within the portfolio, but those aren't customer-facing issues. Those are things that we're working on internally from a development perspective. But outside of that, they're one that rarely pops up as having support issues.

The scalability of eightfold.ai is not an issue that is applicable, given my responsibilities. But I do see customers of our solution at all levels, including small, medium, and all the way up to the large enterprises. That tells me it's very customizable as far as scale and capabilities. I know how small or large our customers are, so eightfold.ai must be scalable if they're able to do work for that range of customers.

I haven't worked with their technical support. I primarily work with their technical architects and their developers who are working on the next iterations of the solution.

My interaction with their architects and developers has been very good and very collaborative. We take their feedback to our internal product teams to introduce areas that they may want to improve, so from that perspective, there is a good relationship. Also, the volume that they do and the number of sales that they help to take place make them one of our top partners when it comes to performance. That really speaks for itself over the past two years that I've been working with them.

From my perspective, the process is fairly straightforward. They primarily utilize our APIs to call the information they need from our products. That's a pretty straightforward integration and the setup is fairly easy. There are some areas of configuration that they may want to change and there may be things that we currently won't provide because it's not within our product roadmap.

I mostly deal with the integration process, so I don't know what their lead time is when going to a customer and setting up. The integration on our side is usually measured in weeks, and that includes some tailoring that may occur as the customer starts using it. There may be enhancements or changes in terms of the information they're collecting, and that's part of the timeframe.

Look at how they integrate and how they can enhance what you're currently doing. Do a self-evaluation to see where you do have gaps in your processes, and look at their capabilities and you'll see there's some alignment. They can enhance some of those things that you may currently be struggling with. And there are definitely capabilities to increase the speed and accuracy in acquiring candidates.

Judging by our overall portfolio, and everything that I've seen from eightfold.ai in my partner relationship for the past two years, they've really been one of our top performers. A lot of customers are adopting the technology and feel that it's very useful as they're going through their day-to-day recruitment processes.