Rebecca Carr is the CEO at SmartRecruiters. With over 15 years of expertise in recruiting and HR know-how, Rebecca brings a deep understanding and keenness for the area, supported by roles in product improvement, pre-sales, and buyer success. Her contagious power and powerful management give her a novel perspective on this position 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+ firms 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 the very best expertise whereas delivering actual outcomes.
You’ve spent practically 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 best folks—whether or not recruiters, hiring managers, or enterprise leaders—with instruments that simplify complexity and amplify affect. As CEO, my imaginative and prescient is grounded in that precept: making certain SmartRecruiters stays a strategic accomplice that not solely innovates but in addition transforms how organizations take into consideration and execute hiring methods. My precedence is to steer with empathy for our clients, maintaining 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 position to main all the group, and the way did your expertise put together you for them?
Shifting from a product-focused position to main the corporate required me to suppose 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 making certain 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 propose 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 instantly 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 firms rent smarter and quicker. On the similar time, our broader technique focuses on being a accomplice to clients, extending hiring to their private move of labor, and making certain that SmartRecruiters is the trusted spine of their hiring processes.
With SmartRecruiters investing closely in AI, what position do you see synthetic intelligence taking part in in remodeling 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 all the hiring expertise. It’s not nearly making suggestions—it’s about surfacing insights that empower customers to make higher choices. Whether or not it’s by automating repetitive duties, enabling predictive analytics, or offering proactive steering, AI helps us remodel hiring right into a quicker, fairer, and simpler course of.
Are you able to present particular examples of how AI and automation will simplify hiring processes on your clients?
Think about a hiring supervisor receiving a Slack notification with a curated shortlist of prime candidates prepared for evaluate or a recruiter supported to mechanically schedule interviews with out lifting a finger. These are only a few 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 choices quite 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 techniques to mitigate bias, incorporating rigorous testing and explainability options to make sure customers perceive how choices are made. We additionally present instruments for purchasers to evaluate and fine-tune their processes, to allow them to keep 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 techniques and knowledge 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 offer clients with a single supply of reality—aggregating knowledge 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 know-how is changing into more and more aggressive, how do you propose to place SmartRecruiters because the go-to answer for enterprise hiring?
Our technique is to steer by delivering distinctive worth—combining revolutionary know-how with an unparalleled concentrate on buyer success. With the launch of Winston AI, we’re not simply enhancing present processes; we’re redefining all the 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 accomplice enterprises belief to navigate the complexities of hiring at scale and quantity.
In your opinion, what would be the defining issue for firms like SmartRecruiters to achieve the way forward for recruitment know-how?
The defining issue is the flexibility to anticipate and adapt to buyer and candidate wants. Corporations 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 are intuitive, adaptable, and impactful—options that not solely clear up in the present day’s issues however evolve to fulfill the calls for of tomorrow’s workforce.
What’s your imaginative and prescient for the SmartRecruiters platform by way of person expertise and performance over the subsequent 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 choices, however by offering context, suggestions, automations and insights at each step. Consider Winston because the information and orchestrator, making certain that each motion taken feeds right into a unified system of intelligence. Over the subsequent a number of years, we are going to increase our platform’s adaptability and predictive capabilities, making SmartRecruiters the indispensable software that not solely powers hiring success however units the usual for the way organizations form their workforce and supply personalised, built-in experiences for all.
Thanks for the good interview, readers who want to be taught extra ought to go to SmartRecruiters.
