Eller Leads Professional Development with Radian, Closing the Feedback Gap for Career Success

Michael Mandel, senior lecturer in Business Communication the Eller College of Management and a certified Hogan Assessments coach, is empowering individuals to redefine their professional reputations through the launch of a new app, Radian.

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While the concept of this professional development platform has evolved over nearly two decades of his personal and professional experience, Mandel said Radian, as a specific named platform, has been a “twinkle in my eye” for about seven years. 

“I had worked through various iterations of independent tools and assessments, from the confusing Qualtrics platform to a tedious mélange of Google Forms, Sheets and mail merge extensions,” he said. “Radian finally offers a full-stack, fully integrated ‘one-stop-shop’ that enables the depth of analysis our students and my private consulting clients deserve to best position them to achieve their own professional goals.”

Radian isn’t a traditional job-matching site. Instead, it provides individuals with a high level of self-awareness, helping them identify which organizational cultures and roles truly align with their values, communication styles, work environment preferences and professional goals.

“Once they have a sense of their potential fit, Radian further provides users with tools to polish their personal brand and tailor their communication based on hard data,” he said. “In turn, they become significantly more competitive for the ‘dream jobs’ they choose to pursue.”

Also, unlike traditional performance management tools owned and utilized by human resources departments to manage employees, Radian data is owned by individual professionals, allowing them to manage their own careers by helping them better understand their actual, current professional reputations.

Another unique aspect of this platform is how it was initially developed. Mandel turned to “vibe-coding” in the creation of Radian.

A transformative approach to software development where a domain expert uses generative AI like Google Gemini, ChatGPT or Anthropic Claude to write working code through plain-language prompts, vibe-coding allowed Mandel, a self-described “non-coder,” to simply explain the end-product he desired. AI then wrote the code aligned with that desire. 

“For Radian, my initial prompts focused on the feasibility and ease of creating the website I envisioned before actually asking Gemini to write a single line of code,” he said. “I think the early encouragement that it produced was most instrumental in my actual follow through and having it start generating the code.”

In addition to the non-coder advantage, Mandel names rapid prototyping and democratization as benefits to vibe-coding.

“In less than two weeks of my first vibe-code prompt, I had built a functional website, registered a domain and established a secure SQL database,” he said of rapid prototyping. “I can rapidly fix bugs and build and deploy new Radian components in a matter of days.”

He added that the process of democratization “proves that if you can clearly articulate a vision, AI can help you breathe life into it.”

Vibe-coding allows educators and subject matter experts to create sophisticated tools without waiting for technical co-founders or the funding to pay software engineers.

“With vibe-coding,” Mandel said, “I managed to realize a professional, lifelong vision over the course of just a few months.”

Radian serves as an alternative to HR-driven employee reviews and instead aims to empower executives, early professionals and students to take control of their professional reputations. With the tools that allow for rigorous self-discovery and personal brand development that exist beyond any company’s purview, Radian belongs solely to the individual. It allows them to maintain and optimize their professional reputation data at any point, and anywhere, in their careers.

“While I am happy to partner with HR departments to provide these tools, Radian eliminates the ‘middleman,’ ensuring that the employee remains the primary stakeholder in their own growth,” he said, adding, “Radian is a ‘force multiplier’ for professional growth. It levels the playing field by giving students and professionals at any stage of their careers access to evidence-based, psychometric assessments and AI-powered brand strategy that were previously too expensive or complex to access.”

Mandel emphasized that highly trained, sophisticated data interpretation and application services will always be valued. Radian simply helps expand access to that value so that more people can learn, grow and succeed on a wider scale.