HR
What 'AI-powered' actually means in HR software
A screening chatbot, a skills graph, and a job-post editor are three different products. HR buyers keep getting pitched all three as the same miracle.
Open a modern HR RFP and 'AI' appears in every line. That word is doing three unrelated jobs, and mixing them up is how you spend a year implementing the wrong system.
1. Conversation and coordination
This is Paradox / Olivia territory: text the candidate, ask the knockout questions, book the slot, answer 'what does it pay.' It is close to a coordinator. It is not talent intelligence. If your pain is no-shows and unworked hourly reqs, this is the job.
2. Matching and mobility
This is Eightfold's lane: a skills graph, internal mobility, a less dumb ranking of inbound. It assumes you have data, an owner, and patience. It will not text a candidate back at 9pm. Buy it when the tragedy is that you keep hiring externally for skills you already pay for.
3. Language
Textio (and, more loosely, Grammarly) sit on the words you already ship: job posts, career-site copy, outreach. Cheap compared with a platform. Useless if nobody writes posts because the leak is further down the funnel.
Bias is not a feature toggle
Any system that ranks people is a high-risk system. 'We use AI' does not make it fairer; sometimes it just makes the unfairness harder to see. Demand documentation, a human path for adverse decisions, and the right to turn a model off. Then have legal in the implementation, not the launch party.
Our HR ranking is deliberately short. That is the point. Pick the job, then pick the tool.