Rebecca Carr is the CEO at SmartRecruiters. With over 15 years of expertise in recruiting and HR expertise, Rebecca brings a deep understanding and keenness for the house, supported by roles in product growth, pre-sales, and buyer success. Her contagious power and powerful management give her a singular perspective on this function and group.
Rebecca’s journey at SmartRecruiters began in September 2014, holding completely different positions together with SVP Progress, VP Product, and VP Options Consulting. She rejoined SmartRecruiters in July 2023 after two years at Checkr, the place she was the GM for Checkr Pay.
SmartRecruiters streamlines hiring with AI-powered instruments that automate duties, anticipate wants, and allow quicker, smarter expertise acquisition. Trusted by 4,000+ corporations worldwide, the platform affords an all-in-one answer for interviews, affords, and onboarding, with configurable workflows and seamless integrations. Designed to simplify recruitment, SmartRecruiters empowers groups to concentrate on discovering one of the best expertise whereas delivering actual outcomes.
You’ve spent almost a decade at SmartRecruiters, transitioning from CPO to CEO. How has your time as Chief Product Officer formed your imaginative and prescient and priorities as the corporate’s CEO?
My tenure as Chief Product Officer gave me a front-row seat to each the challenges and alternatives our clients face when looking for, rent, and retain prime expertise. It formed my perception that nice hiring begins with empowering the precise folks—whether or not recruiters, hiring managers, or enterprise leaders—with instruments that simplify complexity and amplify impression. As CEO, my imaginative and prescient is grounded in that precept: guaranteeing SmartRecruiters stays a strategic associate that not solely innovates but additionally transforms how organizations take into consideration and execute hiring methods. My precedence is to steer with empathy for our clients, protecting them on the coronary heart of each choice as we redefine the way forward for work.
What distinctive challenges did you encounter throughout your transition from a product-focused function to main the complete group, and the way did your expertise put together you for them?
Shifting from a product-focused function to main the corporate required me to assume past innovation to embrace extra complicated operational processes, work broadly to drive strategic alignment, and make investments time in prioritizing tradition and management. One problem was guaranteeing that our customer-first ethos prolonged throughout each perform of the group. My product background ready me effectively—I’ve spent years understanding buyer ache factors and designing options that resonate. That problem-solving mindset, mixed with a concentrate on collaboration and execution, geared up me to navigate the broader challenges of main SmartRecruiters.
As somebody deeply concerned in product innovation, how do you intend to stability technological developments with the broader strategic goals of SmartRecruiters?
Balancing technological development with technique is about aligning innovation with function. Each new functionality we develop should straight help our mission to create hiring success for every buyer. For example, our work with AI is about greater than algorithms—it’s about delivering actionable insights that assist corporations rent smarter and quicker. On the similar time, our broader technique focuses on being a associate to clients, extending hiring to their private circulate of labor, and guaranteeing that SmartRecruiters is the trusted spine of their hiring processes.
With SmartRecruiters investing closely in AI, what function do you see synthetic intelligence taking part in in reworking the recruitment trade?
AI is the game-changer that enables us to rethink hiring from the bottom up. At SmartRecruiters, we imagine AI has the potential to take away inefficiencies, help decision-making, and elevate the complete hiring expertise. It’s not nearly making suggestions—it’s about surfacing insights that empower customers to make higher selections. Whether or not it’s by way of automating repetitive duties, enabling predictive analytics, or offering proactive steerage, AI helps us rework hiring right into a quicker, fairer, and more practical course of.
Are you able to present particular examples of how AI and automation will simplify hiring processes in your clients?
Think about a hiring supervisor receiving a Slack notification with a curated shortlist of prime candidates prepared for overview or a recruiter supported to routinely schedule interviews with out lifting a finger. These are just some methods we combine AI and automation to simplify hiring. Winston AI delivers proactive insights like candidate prioritization and motion reminders, empowering customers to concentrate on making significant connections and selections reasonably than being slowed down by logistics. That is hiring elevated—smarter, quicker, and extra human.
How do you deal with issues round bias and transparency when integrating AI into expertise acquisition instruments?
Constructing belief in AI requires a basis of equity and transparency. At SmartRecruiters, we design AI methods to mitigate bias, incorporating rigorous testing and explainability options to make sure customers perceive how selections are made. We additionally present instruments for purchasers to evaluate and fine-tune their processes, to allow them to preserve a hiring framework that’s each moral and efficient. Transparency isn’t only a worth—it’s a necessity when constructing options that organizations belief to form their future workforce.
You’ve beforehand highlighted the significance of fixing buyer ache factors like disparate methods and information silos. What new initiatives or options are within the pipeline to deal with these challenges?
Our integrations with Slack, Groups, WhatsApp, SMS and different enterprise instruments are designed to unify workflows and eradicate silos, assembly customers the place they already work or seek for work. We’re additionally advancing our SmartAnalytics options to supply clients with a single supply of reality—aggregating information from throughout their hiring ecosystem and reworking it into actionable insights. This ensures that SmartRecruiters isn’t only a platform however the hub that connects and empowers each a part of the hiring course of.
In an period the place expertise acquisition expertise is turning into more and more aggressive, how do you plan to place SmartRecruiters because the go-to answer for enterprise hiring?
Our technique is to steer by delivering distinctive worth—combining progressive expertise with an unparalleled concentrate on buyer success. With the launch of Winston AI, we’re not simply enhancing current processes; we’re redefining the complete class by making hiring quicker, smarter, and extra clever than ever. By integrating seamlessly into enterprise workflows and offering transformative insights, we place SmartRecruiters because the associate enterprises belief to navigate the complexities of hiring at scale and quantity.
In your opinion, what would be the defining issue for corporations like SmartRecruiters to reach the way forward for recruitment expertise?
The defining issue is the flexibility to anticipate and adapt to buyer and candidate wants. Firms that succeed will mix technological excellence with a deep understanding of human behaviors, person expectations, and enterprise challenges. At SmartRecruiters, we concentrate on creating options which can be intuitive, adaptable, and impactful—options that not solely clear up at this time’s issues however evolve to satisfy the calls for of tomorrow’s workforce.
What’s your imaginative and prescient for the SmartRecruiters platform when it comes to person expertise and performance over the following 5 years?
Our imaginative and prescient is to reimagine hiring as a seamless, collaborative expertise. This implies empowering everybody concerned—recruiters, managers, and leaders—with instruments that work the place they do. Integrations with platforms like Slack and Groups are just the start. Winston AI would be the linchpin, not by dictating selections, however by offering context, suggestions, automations and insights at each step. Consider Winston because the information and orchestrator, guaranteeing that each motion taken feeds right into a unified system of intelligence. Over the following a number of years, we’ll broaden our platform’s adaptability and predictive capabilities, making SmartRecruiters the indispensable instrument that not solely powers hiring success however units the usual for a way organizations form their workforce and supply customized, built-in experiences for all.
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