Mar 13, 2025

On Mar 13, 2025 Organizations Will Reshape How the Human Workforce Collaborates with AI to Address Real Industry Business Problems and Enhance Talent Experiences Phenom , an applied AI company specializing in HR, today announced major innovations during its product keynote at IAMPHENOM: X+ Ontologies, X+ Agent Studio, and a new range of verticalized X+ Agents. These enhancements expand on Phenom’s award-winning X+ generative AI capabilities by providing HR’s first hyper-relevant agents built for specific industry needs, job roles and use cases. The agents collaborate with HR teams to automate and augment manual processes, changing how global enterprises hire, develop and retain employees. Companies across every industry have been forced to make monumental shifts, triggering a universal dilemma: business strategies are evolving faster than human resources can keep up. Contending with reduced budgets and shrinking workforces, HR teams need more than incremental or overzealous AI solutions that promise future returns but fail to deliver. For the first time, enterprises can significantly reduce the lag between changing business strategies and HR execution. Built on 13 years of data and AI expertise, Phenom provides organizations with high-fidelity ontologies and purpose-built agents that adapt as needs evolve. Phenom’s AI Agents transcend basic conversational chatbots by processing vast enterprise data and applying complex reasoning to deliver personalized experiences. Redefining human-machine collaboration, Phenom’s agents autonomously execute tasks, navigate business processes, make informed decisions and identify when human intervention is necessary. This increases organizational resilience, growth and profitability — and creates a true partnership between the human workforce and AI that cuts HR workloads in half. “HR’s enemy is not AI. The enemy is slashed budgets, fewer resources and an aging, dwindling workforce,” said Mahe Bayireddi, CEO and Co-founder of Phenom. “AI is raising human intelligence, allowing people to reach higher and further than ever before. The future of AI is about collaboration — where machines unlock unprecedented efficiency and humans realize new levels of potential. This is how the world connects people with the right work and HR becomes more human.” X+ Ontologies Align Business Strategy with HR Operations To bridge the gap between business objectives and HR, Phenom standardizes disparate, unstructured and raw enterprise data, and transforms it into actionable insights. The platform’s company-specific ontologies decipher enterprise complexities, illuminating the relationships between skills, tasks, work and productivity. X+ Ontologies create a structured taxonomy of HR personas, hiring categories and support functions that provide HR leaders with robust intelligence including: Areas of business growth and attrition Financial modeling of workforce decisions Detailed talent development opportunities This approach dramatically reduces the 18-month lag between business strategy and HR execution, equipping leaders with insights to achieve alignment, integrate resource optimization, target employee upskilling and make more informed hiring, retention and team development decisions. X+ Agent Studio Provides Pre-Built, Zero-Config Agentic AI Solutions With X+ Ontologies at its core, X+ Agent Studio enables organizations to deploy pre-built X+ Agents that require zero setup or custom development and work together to reason and execute tasks with speed at scale. The agents understand organizations more thoroughly than they know themselves, combining their data and Phenom’s expertise in industry-specific use cases to execute talent strategies based on: Personas: Augment specific roles and responsibilities within HR to handle specialized tasks that traditionally consume significant bandwidth. Experience: Focus on enhancing interactions throughout the candidate, employee and alumni talent journeys to optimize internal operations while delivering personalized, exceptional experiences. X+ Agent Studio features a comprehensive library of components designed to eliminate bottlenecks while driving operational efficiency, seamless automation and augmentation, and human-centric interactions. X+ Agents Expand to Verticalized Use Cases Phenom developed additional X+ Agents that automate and augment specific talent processes across various industries such as healthcare, retail, financial services, manufacturing, hospitality, restaurants, transportation and education — with examples including: Healthcare Sourcing Agent: A hospital sourcer experiencing staff shortages is struggling to urgently fill positions for a registered nurse, a care manager and a licensed practical nurse. A Healthcare Sourcing Agent can be deployed to discover, engage and convert talent while accounting for the unique needs of these critical roles. The result is a steady pipeline of pre-screened, qualified candidates. Retail Scheduling Agent: ​​A district manager who oversees multiple stores has a scheduling conflict with in-person interviews at different locations. A Retail Scheduling Agent can resolve the situation by contacting affected candidates with alternate interview times and locations, and providing real-time progress reports on scheduled and pending interviews. The agent leaves a voicemail to ensure engagement, creating a seamless process that allows the manager to address urgent store needs while progressing hiring pipelines. Financial Services Talent Strategy Agent: A VP of Talent at a national bank must develop a talent strategy that supports their organization’s AI growth initiatives. A Financial Services Talent Strategy Agent can generate an interactive dashboard with executive summaries about employee distribution, geographical concentration, critical skills and market conditions. After reviewing, the VP can request a data-driven talent roadmap that aligns with the bank’s AI business objectives. Manufacturing Agents: A recruiter faces an influx of candidates after posting multiple jobs for assembly line, packaging and machine operator roles. A Manufacturing Voice Screening Agent can manage the high volume of applicants through conversational engagements with candidates. After the recruiter approves pre-screening questions, the agent evaluates candidates against role-specific criteria and presents recruiters with best-fit talent. Hospitality Skill Assessment Agent: A hotel chain shifting to skills-based hiring for specialized roles can deploy a Hospitality Skill Assessment Agent to structure interviews with situational assessments that evaluate targeted skills against required competencies. After analyzing responses, the agent produces a prioritized list of qualified candidates ready for formal interviews. Transportation Retention Agent: A Human Resources Business Partner (HRBP) notices attrition rates are high across distribution center logistics planners. A Transportation Retention Agent can investigate and conduct an analysis to determine if this is an internal or industry trend. After the agent rules out market-competitive compensation, the HRBP asks about potential manager-employee conflicts, and the agent confirms none exist. Further agent interaction surfaces employee job frustration due to skill and competency gaps and suggests personalized learning plans to improve retention. Restaurant Interview Compliance Agent: A restaurant chain hiring manager conducting interviews for catering sales representatives must ensure legal compliance throughout the process. An Interview Compliance Agent can monitor the interviews and send a timely warning about a non-compliant comment regarding family status. After the interview, it recommends additional training on discriminatory practices to avoid future legal issues. Education Pre-boarding Agent: After a newly hired school bus driver submits pre-employment documentation to an Education Pre-boarding Agent, it streamlines the complex compliance process by requesting essential documentation, including a Commercial Driver’s License, physical examination certificate, training verifications and background check clearances. The agent’s intelligent validation system detects incorrectly combined documents and immediately notifies the driver to correct the issue and resubmit. The result is a compliant onboarding experience that meets regulatory requirements while minimizing administrative burden. X+ Agents to Address Needs Throughout the Talent Lifecycle In addition to leveraging specialized industry knowledge, X+ Agents revolutionize how enterprises approach recruitment, workforce development and HR strategies: X+ Agents for Hiring Intelligence: Refine knowledge worker evaluation with AI that conducts candidate screening and interview scheduling at scale, while executing objective assessments to ensure skill and cultural alignment. They safeguard interview integrity by detecting bias, verifying answer authenticity, and providing real-time guidance to hiring teams. X+ Agents for Hiring Automation: Accelerate hiring while improving candidate experiences with an Early Talent Agent that discovers, engages and converts entry-level professionals by managing sourcing, university recruiting events and interview preparation; and Direct Sourcing Agents that scour contingent worker talent communities for critical short-term projects and automate interview scheduling. X+ Agents for Executive Recruiting: Transform the executive recruiting process and enhance productivity with an Executive Research Agent that conducts comprehensive market analysis to identify high-potential executive candidates; a Formatting Agent that summarizes executive candidate profiles to aid reviews; and an Executive Decision Agent that curates candidate shortlists and sends them to recruiters for review. X+ Agents for Coaching and Team Management: Strengthen recruiting manager efficiency by conducting ongoing team analyses and delivering actionable recommendations for deploying AI agents throughout the talent acquisition lifecycle. Recruitment leaders can dynamically adjust processes for specific roles, monitor agent performance metrics and implement guided improvements. X+ Agents for Onboarding & Talent Management: Improve new employee satisfaction, onboarding speed and workforce development with an Onboarding Agent that delivers personalized experiences for new employees; a Talent Development Agent that creates and tracks personalized growth and succession paths; and a People Manager Agent that provides timely guidance to managers to avoid employee disengagement, and works with the Employee Agent to accelerate productivity. X+ Agents for Strategic Workforce Planning: Maximize planning and resource allocation with a Skill Governance Agent that keeps talent data fresh by maintaining organizational competency frameworks; a Strategic Workforce Planning Agent that delivers predictive insights on future talent requirements; and a Resource Management Agent that optimizes personnel allocation across projects for rapid redeployment of internal talent to avoid contingent hiring. This all-new range of X+ Agents made possible by X+ Ontologies and X+ Agent Studio will be available to Phenom customers starting April 2025.