Business Talk Magazine

Digitization has been reshaping and redefining our lives over the last decade. But COVID-19 fired up the tempo and disrupted our way of life entirely. It also sparked seismic shifts in the way companies operate, accelerating the adoption of digital innovations like AI to establish more adaptive, agile, and fluid workforces.

Even though technologies have transformed how companies hire and build a better experience for applicants, a holistic AI-based talent management framework is needed to address the looming workforce challenges and help connect the right people to the right jobs. retrain.ai is a one-stop solution for solving these looming gaps. Its data-driven talent intelligence platform gives enterprises an edge in hiring, retaining and developing skilled employees.

A DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION

retrain.ai was founded to shape the future of talent management by blending technology and workforce operations. By leveraging the power of responsible AI and real-time labor market data, it helps enterprises recruit, retain, and prepare their workforce for the constantly changing market. The retrain.ai talent intelligence platform integrates with existing HR systems to determine the available skills present in a workforce as well as skills needed for the future, and how to connect the two with personalized upskilling and career pathing for every employee. Its skill-based talent mapping framework allows enterprises to connect suitable talent with available opportunities, fostering effective employee engagement through upskilling opportunities that fuel the full workforce potential.

The unprecedented and rapid digital transformation caused by the pandemic has created a huge skills gap. With digitization moving at lightning speed, much of the talent pool is left behind due to a lack of skills. Ultimately, people may become not just unemployed, but unemployable–a catastrophic outcome for both the individual and society as a whole. 

To address the crisis, retrain.ai aims to address the skills emergency by closing skill gaps, enabling companies to thrive–not just survive–in a highly competitive labor market. Their AI-powered, data-driven solution tracks workforce trends, identifies skills-based workforce opportunities and nurtures employees through a customized L&D framework.  Enterprises can not only retain their employees but also engage them by providing tangible steps to fuel their career paths.

REDEFINING THE TRADITIONAL RECRUITMENT MODEL

retrain.ai’s philosophy of revamping the recruitment space is defined by continuous innovations in product enhancement. Its data and product teams sprint collaboratively to achieve technical advancements while being nimble enough to respond to evolving market demands. Their strong leadership also supports them in further transparency and inter-departmental cohesion. retrain.ai is set to be an innovation paradigm in the recruitment industry. Their offerings are backed by real-time labor market data, internal and external data sources to create comprehensive human capital analytics. This allows clients to analyze growth drivers and market trends that help in unfurling employment opportunities and evolving skills in demand. 

For employers, this imparts a shift from the traditional mindset to a digitally transformed, fast-moving marketplace. It means searching for the right talent instead of what was traditionally thought of as the top talent. Titles and professional pedigrees won’t necessarily stand up to the proficiencies mandated by today’s enterprise landscape; bringing in the right talent means hiring for the skills needed to fuel business growth. 

The change in mindset also means moving away from outdated, disparate HR systems. Siloed functions don’t allow for intercommunication or collaboration around a clear vision of workforce trends. Employees must also learn to think beyond traditional, title-driven advancement as well, choosing instead to embrace the idea that there are many career paths available to them based on the skills they have and those they can gain. 

retrain.ai seeks to shift the traditional mindsets of both employers and employees towards forward-thinking. By demonstrating how they can optimize the full talent lifecycle, retrain.ai enables enterprises to harness opportunities for both business and employee growth. 

WHAT FUELS THEIR PROWESS

As workforce dynamics keep evolving at a rapid pace, retrain.ai’s R&D efforts help track and interpret trends while adjusting to skill demand and talent mapping models. Using these publicly available sources, the firm has built a global skills framework comprising billions of data points. Blending with an enterprise’s internal workforce data, their talent intelligence platform drives actionable insights. 

Another growth practice is retrain.ai’s semantics approach to skills mapping. Unlike keyword-based AI solutions that consistently connect specific text to define job roles or an employee’s skills, retrain.ai infers skills from those roles, CVs, etc, compiling a talent map based on capabilities rather than tasks performed. This provides a more accurate, actionable, and constantly evolving view of workforce capabilities. 

Within their industry, retrain.ai is at the forefront of responsible AI; their skills-based platform serves to greatly lower unintended bias throughout the talent lifecycle. Theirs is also a white-box platform whose explainable AI enables users to clearly see the processes and methods behind the output of their machine learning algorithms.

POWERED BY TECHNOLOGY, LED BY THOUGHT LEADERS

Change cannot be driven solely by technology; it requires specialists who can guide their ventures to their intended destination. To that end, retrain.ai has a world-class technical team of AI, ML, and NLP experts. The team includes:

• Dr. Shay David (Co-founder & CEO): A scholar and serial entrepreneur known for co-founding the leading video enterprise, Kaltura. Dr. Shay’s Ph.D. work at Cornell University and postdoc at Yale University focused on large-scale open information systems and access to knowledge.

• Isabelle Bichler-Eliasaf (Co-founder & COO): Prior to retrain.ai, Bichler-Eliasaf co-founded an HR startup and led its successful acquisition. She has also managed an investment portfolio built around fast-growing tech companies, holds a law degree from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Masters of Science in Risk Management from the New York University Stern School of Business where she studied Risk in AI and DEI.

• Avi Simon (Co-founder & CTO): Col.(res) of the Israeli Defense Forces, and the CIO and CTO of the Israeli military intelligence corps, Simon has founded and commanded several R&D units specializing in data science and big data.

retrain.ai’s leadership is made up of forward-thinking technical innovators with strong track records of building capable teams and successful businesses. Each leader, in their own right, recognizes the global impact of a shifting workforce and the widening skills gap. As the pandemic inflamed the situation, they saw an opportunity to address the newfound skills emergency by utilizing the strength of AI and data integration to help people stay employed today and in the future. Building on that vision, they added to the team: 

• Itamar Yoniso (VP of R&D): Yoniso has garnered over a decade of R&D leadership experience, including establishing and managing R&D algorithms in the AI space. He has been instrumental in forming many startups and has key expertise in building products and teams from the ground up.

• Dr. Zach Solan (VP Data & AI): Dr. Solan is a machine learning expert specializing in NLP and semantic analysis, with years of both hands-on research and data science team leadership. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Tel Aviv University with a thesis on unsupervised learning of natural languages.
  

A MISSION-DRIVEN WORK CULTURE

retrain.ai was launched as a meticulous and actionable response to address the expanding skills gap exacerbated by COVID. This core purpose drives a shared sense of dedication across its team. Not only do they believe in the mission, but they are also sharp, driven, and bring invaluable expertise to their individual roles. They are team-oriented and consistently contribute beyond their responsibilities to see their colleagues grow. “With digitization and automation moving at lightning speed, many people are left behind due to a lack of skills ultimately becoming not just unemployed, but unemployable–a catastrophic outcome for both the individual and society as a whole and an impediment to business growth. Using responsible AI, however, we can change this outcome, and maximize human potential,” says Dr. David.

The leaders are passionate about technology and people and operate with the belief that they can impart a significant change to global challenges. They advocate that the riskiest strategy is to take no risks at all. They encourage employees to communicate ideas, offer strategies, and operate with transparency. The team stays updated with all organizational breakthroughs that will create a genuine impact.

REVVING UP THROUGH STEADY RECOGNITION

The most important milestone for a company is to see its mission thrive. To that end, retrain.ai predominantly serves financial services, healthcare, and the public sector. Some of its leading clients include Maccabi Healthcare Services, the leading HMO in Israel with over 18,000 employees and 2.5 million members with over 200 locations. Maccabi enlisted retrain.ai to address their talent management while also mapping the next layer of leadership at the mid-manager level. 

retrain.ai also works with Vehadarta, a leading non-profit helping integrate senior citizens back into the workforce. They selected retrain.ai to work on their “Experience Required” initiative, which focuses on revolutionizing older adults’ employment in Israel. Lastly, retrain.ai client Tevet is a national portal connecting thousands of job seekers to training opportunities by providing unique insights regarding suitable, high-demand careers and suitable training programs.

Such impactful endeavors haven’t gone unnoticed. Last year, retrain.ai was named the “Best AI-Enhanced Workforce Transformation Solutions Provider in North America” by Corporate Vision and “Most Promising HR Tech Solution provider” by CIO Review.

Their steady ascent also paves the way for the next steps. retrain.ai is constantly working on addressing talent and skill emergencies with its critical data-driven solutions. To that end, the company will continue to release new products and features in the coming years. They are also planning to expand their team and strengthen partnerships to collectively drive workforce innovation.

AN IMPORTANT NOTE FOR ASPIRERS 

“To lead successfully, one must focus on human value creation. Only by fully understanding the challenge on a human scale can a team build a valuable solution that will scale and last. Besides being customer-centric, innovators must also be data-centric, optimizing data to decide, test ideas in the real world, and validate choices. Data centricity makes a significant difference in an organization’s capacity to achieve product-market fit and scale for the long term.”

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