The advancements in systems deploying large language models (LLMs), as well as improvements in their ability to act as agents with predefined templates, provide an opportunity to conduct qualitative, individualized assessments, creating a bridge between qualitative and quantitative methods for candidates seeking career progression. In this paper, we develop a platform that allows candidates to run AI-led interviews to assess their current career stage and curate coursework to enable progression to the next level. Our approach incorporates predefined career trajectories, associated skills, and a method to recommend the best resources for gaining the necessary skills for advancement. We employ OpenAI API calls along with expertly compiled chat templates to assess candidate competence. Our platform is highly configurable due to the modularity of the development, is easy to deploy and use, and available as a web interface where the only requirement is candidate resumes in PDF format. We demonstrate a use-case centered on software engineering and intend to extend this platform to be domain-agnostic, requiring only regular updates to chat templates as industries evolve.

Career exploration is uncertain, requiring decisions with limited information and unpredictable outcomes. While generative AI offers new opportunities for career guidance, most systems rely on linear chat interfaces that produce overly comprehensive and idealized suggestions, overlooking the non-linear and effortful nature of real-world trajectories. We present CareerPooler, a generative AI-powered system that employs a pool-table metaphor to simulate career development as a spatial and narrative interaction. Users strike balls representing milestones, skills, and random events, where hints, collisions, and rebounds embody decision-making under uncertainty. In a within-subjects study with 24 participants, CareerPooler significantly improved engagement, information gain, satisfaction, and career clarity compared to a chatbot baseline. Qualitative findings show that spatial-narrative interaction fosters experience-based learning, resilience through setbacks, and reduced psychological burden. Our findings contribute to the design of AI-assisted career exploration systems and more broadly suggest that visually grounded analogical interactions can make generative systems engaging and satisfying.

Precisely in order to avoid reaching that fatigue or stress that causes professionals to'burn out' in their work, a new weapon has emerged. This platform is the result of an international study involving the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM), which began when a mixture of "stress and frenzy" at work was detected on a regular basis, which "often causes people to enter a feeling of mental fog". The development of this platform, called MBioTracker, has been carried out by an international team of scientists from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, in Switzerland) and the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). It consists of a physiological signal acquisition and processing system that incorporates new algorithms and processing methods to monitor cognitive load on the task. This provides valuable information for decision making and can provide for adaptive support for the worker.

In an effort to serve its consumers more directly, Nike has released a plan of action that details an innovative approach to transforming its supply chain. The company issued a statement listing four key components to help make its goal successful. First, Nike intends to open several regional distribution centers across the US and Europe, in addition to having its own dedicated train – the Nike "Sole Train" – to increase capacity and speed, and help power long term growth. This step would transform the brand's central distribution centers in Memphis, TN, into omni-channel facilities. Second, the brand will leverage technology by using AI and machine learning to deliver products faster and more precisely.

Some call it an employee's journey in their current workplace; others describe it as uncovering the tools and culture employees need to do their work successfully. But whatever you call the employee experience, it is driving employers even harder to better understand how they can offer a much more positive work environment -- no easy task, especially in the wake of the past 16 or so months as COVID changed the workplace. "I believe the entire dynamic and what employee experience looked like shifted since the pandemic," says Sugi Venkatesh, division vice president – HR, for Global Product and Technology on ADP's Human Resources team. Venkatesh adds that during the pandemic, ensuring a positive employee experience not only meant the workforce was engaged and taking care of customers, but it also became the only way to stay in business. "Many organizations went from employee experience being a focus area to it being the top priority, with real dollar investments," he says, adding that the paradigm shift also brought with it a need to accelerate the employee experience through technology.

One of the beauties of cloud solutions is the opportunity they offer for immediate feedback towards product improvement. Oracle understands this challenge very well, having implemented thousands of enhancements over the past year--with the vast majority of them based on customer opinion. Never let it be said that your voice doesn't matter. The suggestions and ideas offered by customers are among the most important building blocks of a modern HR solution. Oracle's ongoing dialogue with customers ensures that the resulting software resolves the real-world issues that HR professionals grapple with daily.

AI is finding its way to more places in organizations, including human resources. Human capital management providers are building AI into their solutions, but depending on the details, it may be wiser to build your own application than buy something off-the-shelf. Earlier this year, Gartner issued a research note exploring AI use cases in human capital management (HCM). Its author, VP Analyst Helen Poitevin, concluded that many of these applications were still in the "demo candy" stage, mainly to demonstrate product roadmaps. In other words, AI-related expectations are outpacing reality.

For Wärtsilä, a Finnish headquartered firm that employs around 18,000 workers and which manufactures and services power sources and other equipment in the marine and energy markets, digital business transformation is a very practical thing. In fact, back in December 2016, Marco claimed that Wärtsilä was "embarking on one of the boldest, innovative and most exciting digital transformation programmes in the industrial, marine and energy sectors." The company is not the most famous of firms, unless you work in the marine or renewable energy business, you may have never heard of it, but in fact, roughly one in two marine vessels in the world are either serviced, powered, navigated or propelled by Wartsila's technology. But what about today, how is the digital business transformation programme performing? "One of the things we've now decided to do is create a sort of digital boot camp, a digital academy, with a leadership programme on what it means to lead in a digitally-enabled business. Marco Ryan, a veteran in digital business transformation, likens this process to a digital onion, and compares the old way of doing things to the Parthenon. "At Wärtsilä, we had over 300 ideas submitted by colleagues in the last 18 months, of which about 50 or 60 have actually come into our incubation centres.

Jeanne Meister believes that HR should take the lead in shepherding artificial intelligence (AI) software into the workplace, transforming the human resources function and enhancing the employee experience. Meister is the founding partner of Future Workplace, a New York City-based HR executive network and research firm dedicated to the future of learning and working. Future Workplace has created an online course featuring Hilton, IBM, Intel, GE and others who are using AI and realizing business benefits across the organization. She sat down with SHRM Online to discuss why and how CHROs and their teams should start learning about and crafting a strategy for how to best leverage artificial intelligence for HR. SHRM Online: Why should HR pioneer the development of AI strategy in their organizations?

No matter the field, it's the people that make or break companies. Yet historically, HR has been treated as an administrative cost center rather than a strategic department that drives productivity and value. Today's technology-driven world is constantly changing, and there is a continuous scarcity of high-value talent in ever-changing fields. This, together with millennials' different expectations about their jobs, puts pressure on companies to adjust how they handle their human capital. And while employers have realized that retention is key for their success, they are still struggling to increase it.