DeWayne Griffin, Chief Digital and Information Officer at Insight Global, said artificial intelligence has a big role in human resources, staffing and recruitment, but you will need a human in the loop to assess soft skills and cultural fit.

I caught up with Griffin shortly after Constellation Research's Connected Enterprise conference where it was inducted into the 2025 BT150 class.

Here are the takeaways of my conversation with Griffin.

Multiple views of the business: Griffin leads Insight Global's internal technology organization and joined in June 2023 after a 22-year career at State Farm Insurance, but became familiar with the company as a board member in 2021 to help with digital transformation. Those roles gave Griffin a good view of the business and technology's role in it across multiple touchpoints in the hiring journey.

"Insight Global at its simplest form helps people find jobs. We have to really understand Fortune 1000 hiring needs and then match them with a wide field of candidates," said Griffin. "My job is to power that connection through the use of technology."

The role of data. Griffin said Insight Global is focused on the known data in job candidates and then there's data still exploring. "We are still going through the digitization of various parts of our business to understand insights and meaning to help us deliver our services at a higher level," said Griffin. "Data is the anchor of our business and it starts with our candidate-consultant population. We have about 30,000 consultants who trust us to help put them to work. We have a rich pool of data from understanding that population as well as data from our 20-year history to help match."

Job demand. Insight Global provides staff and professional services and a core part of the business is in the technology sector. "It has been a difficult market over the past few years and the market has contracted," said Griffin. "If there's AI connected to a role, there's high demand. Other roles are data roles and data science roles. Engineering roles are in high demand and so is cybersecurity."

Griffin added that Insight Gobal also has healthcare roles to fill, but the key is finding new roles as they come up. "There are different pockets of new roles and exploration that we're following the market to go after," he said.

Use of AI internally. Griffin said AI has taken over the conversation since he joined the company. "Where AI has made a difference for us is improving the richness of our data sets around candidate and consultants. We have used AI to help matching industry needs for skills against our pool of candidates and available consultants coming off engagements," said Griffin. "We're using AI, not generative AI per se, and machine learning for the predictive modeling. We've differentiated when we're helping align a candidate who has been interviewed and selected for an opportunity. We've modeled risks of competing offers, delays in hiring and behaviors of hiring managers."

Use of AI in the hiring process. Griffin said AI is already involved in the hiring process and Insight Global said there's value add of AI being used in applicant suitability, skills assessment and training. "There's also this nuance that AI has enhanced the confidence of value and efficiency in the hiring process, but it can't replace the human decision making," said Griffin. "We've seen the investments, but now it's about how AI and human decision-making intersects." 

Human in the loop. Griffin said the human in the loop in hiring revolves around the human interaction and behaviors around culture, fit and soft skills. "Hard skills that are on the resumes can be synthesized as can a one-way video interview, but there has to be a human interaction with the recruiter," said Griffin.

The tech stack. Griffin is heavily focused on infrastructure primarily in the cloud with some data centers for core corporate functions. He said Insight Global is modernizing its data estate to be in a position for AI use cases. Global Insights will buy software for common functions, but build for differentiation. "You have to have the ability to buy and build. I think you should buy and build," said Griffin. "If there's something that we think makes us special in how we deliver our services we build those things. Otherwise, we buy world-class software and integrate it with the flow of data."

Advice to college grads. Griffin said recent grads may want to think about contract and temp work. "When we start our careers we want experiences and you can get that through contract work that can get you professional service engagement, scrum teams and other skills," said Griffin. "It's all about staying sharp with your skills--technical and soft skills. What gets lost in this world of digital interactions is soft skills and in-person interactions. Add those soft skills to your repertoire."

2025 plans. "I'm really focusing on the journey of our customers and anticipating processes and the job posture where there is economic uncertainty," said Griffin. "That uncertainty is going to require some agility for us to help meet those core skills in demand. We will be using AI in more advanced ways, take advantage of our cloud services and building out our overall enterprise data strategy. A big part of our innovation agenda is about chasing the growth opportunity."

BT150 interviews:

Roles

Chief Information Officer, Chief People Officer

Tags

BT150, #AI #artificialintelligence #machinelearning #ML #generativeAI, human capital management