Utah-based HireVue uses video interviews to examine candidates' word choice, voice inflection, and micro gestures for subtle clues, such as whether their facial expressions contradict their words. Yale School of Management professor Jason Dana, who has studied hiring for years, recently made waves with a high-profile article in the New York Times that excoriated job interviews as useless. But when Google examined its internal evidence, it found that grades, test scores, and a school's pedigree weren't a good predictor of job success. Google created a program called qDroid, which drafts questions for interviewers based on how qDroid parses the data the applicant provided on the qualities Google emphasizes.

Its main AI and HR analytics product is Cornerstone Insights, what CTO Mark Goldin called "machine learning in a box." The dispassionate analysis that AI brought to Expedia's recruiting practices can also be applied to performance management, which Holger Mueller, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, considers talent management's core function -- and the part that's most broken. "The applications of AI basically are analytics applications, where the software is using history and algorithms and data to be smarter and smarter over time," Bersin explained. HR is a good target for AI because many HR practices are "handcrafted," cultural in nature and could be better at handling data, according to Josh Bersin, principal and founder of consulting firm Bersin by Deloitte.