Ep 101: Reshaping the Workforce Through Sensemaking and Trusted Talent Intelligence with Vijay Swami

Bob Pulver talks with Vijay Swami, Co-Founder and CEO of Draup, a global leader in AI-powered talent intelligence. Vijay shares his journey from early roles in call center forecasting to founding a management consultancy and then TalentNeuron, later acquired by CEB. With deep roots in data science and a vision for empowering internal analytics teams, Vijay built Draup to tackle labor market complexity using advanced AI, unstructured data, and rich taxonomies. Vijay and Bob discuss building trusted, AI-powered talent intelligence platforms that bridge data complexity and business decision-making, and how human-centric, explainable AI is reshaping strategic workforce planning. They cover the growing importance of verification skills, ethical AI practices, the future of people analytics, the architecture of trusted and explainable AI systems, and the evolving role of humans and agents in enterprise workflows.



Keywords



Vijay Swami, Draup, AI in HR, People Analytics, Strategic Workforce Planning, verification skills, ethical AI, talent intelligence, agentic AI, skills-based hiring, cloud data, explainability, trust, synthetic data, digital twins, ETTER, Curie, job displacement, augmented intelligence, transparency



Takeaways




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AI's value in HR lies in sense-making from complex and unstructured data, not just simplifying workflows.




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Verification skills—like content and narrative validation—are emerging as critical in a world flooded with AI-generated data.




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Draup’s AI agent Curie supports HR and analytics professionals with leadership-ready narratives and scenario planning.




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The platform's ETTER model goes beyond job descriptions to assess real work through contracts, SLAs, and KPIs.




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Transparency and traceability are foundational to building trust in AI systems; Draup compares its models against industry benchmarks.




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Ethical AI practices include open documentation, interpretability, and empowering analysts to correct or clarify information.




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AI should not be viewed solely as a job killer; clear, specific skills definitions in job postings can increase hiring and help target investments.




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True transformation requires shifting from jobs to workflows and task orchestration, blending human effort, AI agents, and automation.






Quotes




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“We want to tell the story—not just show the data—to help people analytics become a leadership engine.”




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“Verification skills are the next battery of capabilities organizations must build for a trustworthy enterprise.”




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“Transparency is about giving customers the right to know—even if they don’t ask.”




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“HR has the opportunity to become heroes in this AI wave by unlocking the true nature of work.”




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“We should be therapists for data anxiety—helping organizations see what’s real versus what’s a myth.”




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“I’m a net AI job creator guy—because there’s no shortage of work, just a need to match skills and workflows more intelligently.”







Chapters



00:05 - Introduction and Vijay’s background



00:57 - From forecasting analyst to AI-powered platforms



03:18 - Rethinking labor intelligence beyond job descriptions



05:39 - Building a sense-making engine from complex data



07:42 - Storytelling, context, and executive alignment



11:15 - The rise of verification skills



14:04 - Creating a trusted and transparent AI ecosystem



19:31 - Unlocking the true nature of work through ETTER



22:44 - Ethical AI and human-centric design



32:19 - How data becomes a therapeutic tool



35:14 - AI’s real impact on jobs and skills demand



45:25 - Strategic work planning beyond job roles



49:19 - Optimism, augmentation, and future-proofing teams



50:34 - Closing thoughts and appreciation








Vijay Swami:   / vijay-swaminathan-a44101  



Draup: https://draup.com/








For advisory work and marketing inquiries:



Bob Pulver:⁠⁠ ⁠  / bobpulver⁠⁠⁠  



Elevate Your AIQ:⁠⁠ ⁠https://elevateyouraiq.com⁠⁠⁠



Substack: ⁠https://elevateyouraiq.substack.com⁠