Eightfold AI Grows Talent Agents to 2.0 with Candidate Agent, Giving every Candidate a Connected, Conversational Hiring Journey

New agentic AI capability replaces the industry's generic form, and the silence that follows it, with an adaptive conversation that hands candidates seamlessly into the interview process.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., July 15, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Eightfold AI, the pioneer of AI-powered talent intelligence, today introduced Candidate Agent, an AI agent built for the candidate experience: giving every candidate a real, personalized conversation, so candidates stay in the loop throughout the process. The agent meets candidates on the channels they already use, from first message through application, and is available 24/7.

“Candidate Agent is an important step toward making hiring more intelligent, connected, and candidate-centered,” said Varun Kacholia, Cofounder and Chief Technology Officer at Eightfold AI. “This is not a generic chatbot bolted on existing legacy systems. Candidate Agent gives candidates one continuous, conversational experience across job discovery, application, scheduling, follow-ups, handoff into AI Interviewer and more. It supports 24+ languages, meets candidates across channels like SMS and WhatsApp, and is fully integrated with the enterprise systems rather than operating as yet another disconnected point solution. Early adopters of AI Interviewer are already seeing hiring cycles accelerate from 42 days to under a week and time to interview reduced by up to 90%. With Talent Agents, we are helping enterprises deliver a faster, more personal candidate experience while giving recruiters meaningful time back.”

Why the Candidate Experience Must Change
Hiring is moving from human scale to agent scale. AI has increased application volume, made resumes harder to interpret at face value, and raised candidate expectations for speed, personalization, and transparency. Yet the candidate experience is still too often fragmented: one tool for job search, another for applications, another for scheduling, another for interview follow-up, and long periods of silence in between.

That fragmentation creates real business consequences. Qualified candidates drop out, accept other offers, or leave with a negative impression of the company. Recruiters spend too much time answering repetitive questions, coordinating schedules, and chasing follow-ups instead of focusing on the highest-value human interactions.

Candidate Agent is designed to close that gap. It gives candidates a single conversational experience across job discovery, application, scheduling, reminders, status updates, and handoff into the interview process. Unlike generic chatbots or point solutions, Candidate Agent is built on Eightfold’s AI-native Talent Intelligence Platform and integrated into the enterprise HR stack, so the experience is connected, contextual, multilingual, and available 24/7.

The New Front Door to Hiring: Candidate Agent
Candidate Agent is built for the candidate experience: real answers instead of silence, one conversation instead of a dozen disconnected steps. It's not a smarter chatbot, it's a different way to run the front door of hiring, one that also gives enterprises the edge that comes from getting that experience right.

Candidate Agent does this by:

• Adapting to each candidate: A forklift operator is asked about certifications and shift availability; a software engineer is asked about languages and frameworks, with adaptive discovery questions tailored to the role, building a profile in real-time.
• Meeting candidates anywhere, anytime: Available 24/7 in 24+ languages, with SMS and WhatsApp engagement with voice support, scheduling and rescheduling, automatic résumé parsing, timely reminders, and interview prep tips, all in the same conversation.
• Helping search and match to roles: Candidates can search directly using simple conversation, with smart filters for shift and location, or let Candidate Agent match them by skills, not keyword search or a résumé that may have been AI-written. That matching draws on Eightfold's AI Native Talent Intelligence Platform and its 1.6 billion+ career trajectories, a capability Eightfold has offered for years: surfacing roles a candidate is genuinely a match for, not just the ones they think to search.
• Continuous thread, integrated with AI Interviewer: Point tools for sourcing, screening, and scheduling often leave a dozen different memories of the same candidate. Candidate Agent carries one, through role discovery, questions, and application initiation, with no re-introductions and no starting over, seamlessly connected with AI Interviewer.
• Running natively on day one: For organizations with Eightfold Career Site there is no separate integration required, so it's live as soon as an organization turns it on.
• Absorbing recruiter busywork: FAQs, scheduling, rescheduling, status updates, and follow-ups are handled in the conversation itself, so recruiters can spend more time on closing.

Talent Agents, Powered by Eightfold's Talent Intelligence
Candidate Agent, part of Eightfold's Talent Agents 2.0 release, is the candidate-facing front door, built on Eightfold's AI Native Talent Intelligence Platform and extending it beyond sourcing and matching into the full candidate journey. Eightfold is also introducing Avatar, a digital-human persona candidates interact with during the AI interview, also part of the 2.0 release. 360 Interview, arriving as part of Talent Agents 2.5 release, combines multiple interview types into a single conversation, letting recruiters evaluate a candidate across the skill dimensions a role requires in one continuous AI-led session, with a human-led final round still concluding the process. Candidate Agent, Avatar, and 360 Interview are all part of Eightfold Talent Agents built on one platform. Ultimately, these agents help advance Eightfold's mission: the right career for everyone.

Availability
Candidate Agent, part of Talent Agents 2.0 release, is now generally available for organizations with Eightfold's Personal Career Site enabled. 360 Interview and Avatar, part of Talent Agents 2.5 release, are both expected to reach general availability at the end of July.

About Eightfold's Responsible AI
Responsible AI at Eightfold spans four commitments: building AI-native, explainable systems across the talent lifecycle; applying that AI to improve hiring and workforce outcomes; governing it through defined principles and oversight; and grounding it in technical rigor. At its core, Eightfold prioritizes fairness, transparency, safety and reliability, and active monitoring, backed by regular third-party audits, including an independent bias audit of its matching model conducted by BABL AI Inc. under New York City's Local Law 144, and guided by an AI Ethics Council that advises on responsible AI use as regulations evolve. Learn more about Eightfold's approach to Responsible AI.

About Eightfold AI
Eightfold is the agentic talent intelligence company that gives every HR leader, recruiter, and people manager the intelligence to see, develop, and deploy the full depth of talent around them. Talent Intelligence, human-led. For more information, visit www.eightfold.ai.

Media Contact
Eightfold Communications
press@eightfold.ai

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