The Pulse
Eightfold’s Ashutosh Garg Pitches AI Twins for First-Round Interviews
Eightfold co-founder Ashutosh Garg says TwinCafe could let recruiters question candidates’ AI twins before meeting them. A day after Fortune published his pitch, Eightfold named Joe Korngiebel CEO and made Garg board chairman.
AI.info Team · Written with AI ·
On October 12, Ashutosh Garg pitched a change to the first job interview: let recruiters question a candidate’s AI twin before they meet the person. The Eightfold co-founder said his recently launched TwinCafe lets job seekers build a digital version of themselves from résumés, LinkedIn profiles, work samples and other documents. Its shareable link could sit at the top of a résumé or LinkedIn profile, he told Fortune.
TwinCafe puts a candidate’s documents in the first screen
Garg’s pitch starts with a familiar hiring task: walking through a résumé and checking what it leaves unclear. A recruiter could ask the twin about previous roles, skills or gaps in a candidate’s work history before scheduling a conversation with the candidate. Garg says that could leave the live interview more time for questions involving human judgment and interaction.
“My main motivation was that a résumé is so limiting,” Garg told Fortune. He said a twin could “fill in the blanks” about parts of a person’s background that might raise questions, including career breaks or moves between industries. The service, as described in the interview, draws on material supplied by the job seeker; it does not establish that the material or the twin’s answers have been independently verified.
“Why limit a screening to five candidates?” Garg says. “Why not interview everyone?”
Ashutosh Garg, in Fortune
Garg describes a possibility, not a recruiter-free process
The proposal has two stages. In the first, a recruiter questions a candidate’s twin before meeting the person; in the more automated version Garg envisions, a recruiter’s own AI agent talks to the twin. He says that could help companies consider people a standard résumé screen might rule out and let them screen more applicants.
Fortune’s account presents those agent-to-agent interviews as Garg’s vision for the future, not as a documented feature already in use. Nor does the interview describe how TwinCafe handles errors, checks a twin against its creator’s actual experience, or gives candidates control over how a recruiter interprets its answers. Those details matter if an AI-generated exchange shapes who advances to a live interview.
Eightfold changes CEOs one day after the pitch
Garg spoke to Fortune as Eightfold’s CEO, but the company announced a leadership change on October 13. Eightfold named Joe Korngiebel CEO, replacing Garg, who will serve as chairman of the board. The announcement identifies Korngiebel as the company’s new chief executive; it does not describe TwinCafe as an Eightfold product.
The timing leaves two separate developments: Garg’s proposal to put candidate-built AI twins ahead of first-round interviews, and his departure from Eightfold’s chief executive role. The practical test for TwinCafe is whether recruiters treat a twin as a useful introduction to a candidate—or as a stand-in for hearing from that candidate directly.