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 house, supported by roles in product growth, pre-sales, and buyer success. Her contagious vitality and powerful management give her a singular perspective on this position and group.
Rebecca’s journey at SmartRecruiters began in September 2014, holding completely different positions together with SVP Growth, VP Product, and VP Solutions 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 resolution for interviews, affords, and onboarding, with configurable workflows and seamless integrations. Designed to simplify recruitment, SmartRecruiters empowers groups to deal with discovering the most effective 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 prospects face when looking for, rent, and retain prime expertise. It formed my perception that nice hiring begins with empowering the fitting individuals—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: guaranteeing SmartRecruiters stays a strategic companion that not solely innovates but in addition transforms how organizations take into consideration and execute hiring methods. My precedence is to guide with empathy for our prospects, protecting them on the coronary heart of each determination 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?
Moving from a product-focused position 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 nicely—I’ve spent years understanding buyer ache factors and designing options that resonate. That problem-solving mindset, mixed with a deal with collaboration and execution, outfitted me to navigate the broader challenges of main SmartRecruiters.
As somebody deeply concerned in product innovation, how do you intend to steadiness technological developments with the broader strategic aims of SmartRecruiters?
Balancing technological development with technique is about aligning innovation with objective. Every new functionality we develop should instantly help our mission to create hiring success for each buyer. For occasion, our work with AI is about greater than algorithms—it’s about delivering actionable insights that assist corporations rent smarter and quicker. At the identical time, our broader technique focuses on being a companion to prospects, extending hiring to their private move of labor, and guaranteeing 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 reworking the recruitment business?
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 it’s by automating repetitive duties, enabling predictive analytics, or offering proactive steerage, AI helps us rework hiring right into a quicker, fairer, and simpler course of.
Can you present particular examples of how AI and automation will simplify hiring processes on your prospects?
Imagine a hiring supervisor receiving a Slack notification with a curated shortlist of prime candidates prepared for evaluation or a recruiter supported to mechanically 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 deal with making significant connections and choices reasonably than being slowed down by logistics. This is hiring elevated—smarter, quicker, and extra human.
How do you deal with considerations round bias and transparency when integrating AI into expertise acquisition instruments?
Building belief in AI requires a basis of equity and transparency. At SmartRecruiters, we design AI programs to mitigate bias, incorporating rigorous testing and explainability options to make sure customers perceive how choices are made. We additionally present instruments for patrons 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 programs and knowledge silos. What new initiatives or options are within the pipeline to deal with these challenges?
Our integrations with Slack, Teams, WhatsApp, SMS and different enterprise instruments are designed to unify workflows and remove silos, assembly customers the place they already work or seek for work. We’re additionally advancing our SmartAnalytics options to supply prospects with a single supply of fact—aggregating knowledge from throughout their hiring ecosystem and remodeling 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 turning into more and more aggressive, how do you plan to place SmartRecruiters because the go-to resolution for enterprise hiring?
Our technique is to guide by delivering distinctive worth—combining modern know-how with an unparalleled deal with 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 companion 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 know-how?
The defining issue is the flexibility to anticipate and adapt to buyer and candidate wants. Companies that succeed will mix technological excellence with a deep understanding of human behaviors, person expectations, and enterprise challenges. At SmartRecruiters, we deal with creating options which are intuitive, adaptable, and impactful—options that not solely resolve right now’s issues however evolve to fulfill the calls for of tomorrow’s workforce.
What is your imaginative and prescient for the SmartRecruiters platform when it comes to person expertise and performance over the subsequent 5 years?
Our imaginative and prescient is to reimagine hiring as a seamless, collaborative expertise. This means empowering everybody concerned—recruiters, managers, and leaders—with instruments that work the place they do. Integrations with platforms like Slack and Teams are only the start. Winston AI would be the linchpin, not by dictating choices, however by offering context, suggestions, automations and insights at each step. Think of Winston because the information and orchestrator, guaranteeing that each motion taken feeds right into a unified system of intelligence. Over the subsequent a number of years, we’ll broaden our platform’s adaptability and predictive capabilities, making SmartRecruiters the indispensable device that not solely powers hiring success however units the usual for the way organizations form their workforce and provide personalised, built-in experiences for all.
Thank you for the nice interview, readers who want to be taught extra ought to go to SmartRecruiters.