The story of Medtronic began in a Minneapolis garage in 1949, where electrical engineer Earl Bakken and his brother-in-law Palmer Hermundslie started a medical equipment repair shop. This "garage gang" kickstarted a legacy of innovation, including the world’s first battery-operated, wearable cardiac pacemaker in 1957. Today, as a global leader in medical technology with over 100,000 employees across 185 countries, that mission extends to how they treat their own people.
We can advance the way we provide service to our organization by embedding AI into nearly all the processes that we run for HR.
VP, HR & Finance Digital Technologies and Enablement
Engineering meets the extraordinary.
Medtronic’s AI journey accelerated in HR with Workday Human Capital Management with a bold goal: automate 80% of HR processes and transform the employee journey from hiring to development. For Sethi, the vision is clear that AI is a companion that augments rather than replaces people and allows employees to focus on strategic, human-centric work.
“When we are so advanced in creating medical products for our patients, we can’t be left behind in what we do for our own organization,” says Kunal Sethi, VP, HR & Finance Digital Technologies and Enablement. “Our mission is where engineering meets the extraordinary.”
Automating the manual, augmenting the human.
Nowhere was the need for augmentation more urgent than in talent acquisition. Medtronic’s high-volume hiring made manual interview scheduling increasingly unsustainable, with recruiters managing roughly 12,000 hires a year and sometimes 1,000 applicants for a single role. Coordinating interviews across candidates, recruiters, and hiring managers often took two to three days and consumed significant recruiter capacity.
With Workday Paradox Candidate Experience Agent, Medtronic introduced AI-powered conversational recruiting to transform this experience for employees and candidates. AI agent Sam engages candidates 24/7 by answering questions, enabling quick applications, and scheduling interviews quickly. And Medtronic configures Sam’s functionality based on role—Senior Medical Specialists go through a more nuanced, high-touched experience than one focused on transactional tasks.
“Using Paradox has been a true game changer,” says VP Global Talent Acquisition. “I’m hearing stories like, ‘In three minutes I was able to schedule eight candidates.’ That would not have been humanly possible with the prior way of working.”
The impact is tangible. In just three months, Medtronic scheduled 6,000 interviews, and the median time-to-schedule dropped from days to around 17 minutes.
In just three months, Medtronic scheduled 6,000 interviews, with recruiters able to schedule multiple candidates in minutes instead of days.
VP, Global Talent Acquisition
Beyond scheduling, Medtronic is utilizing data as the ‘currency for innovation.’ To further elevate the recruiter’s role from coordinator to strategic advisor, the team is implementing HiredScore AI. Embedded in existing workflows, this allows recruiters to conduct ‘mini workforce planning’ during intake meetings, using real-time data to challenge traditional hiring assumptions and make fairer, more consistent decisions. “We are using tools like HiredScore to paint a well-rounded picture of the talent market for our hiring managers,” said Jeralyn Brunette, Talent Acquisition Manager.
Data and AI through HiredScore will allow us to make better, fairer, and more consistent decisions.
VP, Global Talent Acquisition
Because progress starts with people.
For Sethi, Medtronic’s AI transformation is only a success if it remains human-centric. That means upskilling the workforce alongside the technology, and treating AI not as a way to remediate or replace people, but as a way to open new pathways for development. “We see AI as a partner—it handles the routine tasks, freeing up our people to be more strategic,” he says.
The next wave for Medtronic will be agentic, with Sethi excited about native, data-connected Workday AI agents for recruiting, talent, and onboarding, all embedded directly into the Workday platform. This promises an even more seamless continuum from candidate to employee, with AI quietly handling the routine so people can focus on what matters most.
At Medtronic, bringing tech back to MedTech means using AI to elevate both patient outcomes and employee experiences—turning complexity into clarity across a global healthcare giant.