In an exclusive interview at the Unleash World Conference 2023 in Paris, SmartRecruiters CEO Rebecca Carr shared insights on the company’s evolution, its global reach, and how AI is revolutionising recruitment.
‘We’re beautiful’
SmartRecruiters has established itself as a comprehensive hiring platform, covering the entire recruitment lifecycle. Carr explains, “Smart recruiters is a hiring platform. Everything from pre-hire talent attraction products, branded career sites, CRM’s, all the way into community management, prospecting applicant tracking pre-hire onboarding products. And then we’re layered with some integration elements and AI.”
“We are, I know this sounds a little bit nuts, but we’re beautiful.”
This holistic approach sets SmartRecruiters apart in a crowded market. The platform’s key advantages, according to Carr, lie in its usability, flexibility, and connectivity. “We are, I know this sounds a little bit nuts, but we’re beautiful”, Carr states, highlighting the platform’s user-friendly interface. “SmartRecruiters’ focus on user experience has been a significant draw, especially for high-volume hiring sectors like retail and manufacturing.”
Flexibility as a cornerstone for success
The platform’s flexibility is another cornerstone of its success. “You don’t need a big implementation to come in to code software and to get you up and running and everything. Even our integrations are self-service. In many capacities, we have over 600 partners connected and you can just do it in a couple of clicks. So that level of flexibility clearly a differentiator.”
“Even our integrations are self-service. In many capacities, we have over 600 partners connected and you can just do it in a couple of clicks.”
Connectivity is the third pillar of SmartRecruiters’ advantage. “We very early on invested in APIs,” Carr explains. “We’ve got nearing 50% domain coverage at this point, which is much more than you see for many of our competitors. And I think as a result, we’ve seen customers that really want a certain level of customisation on top of the platform, are attracted to wanting to be a part of our our suite and our customer base.”
‘Speed isn’t the only factor’
At its heart, SmartRecruiters aims to solve a fundamental problem in recruitment: helping companies hire faster and smarter. “Speed is important, especially in our core customer profiles of retail, manufacturing, healthcare, high tech, where every day means that they can’t deliver revenue back to their business because they might not have a candidate in seats.”
However, speed isn’t the only factor. The platform also focuses on improving hire quality through efficient automated workflows and seamless candidate experiences. “It is paving the way for those customers to hire faster and smarter. And the smarter element really being deeply rooted in AI and insight and data products atop our platform.”
A global focus
SmartRecruiters has significantly expanded its global footprint since its founding in the United States, with candidates and hiring managers in 102 countries around the world. The company has seen particularly strong growth in the UK and Nordics, while also making significant inroads in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). “That region has obviously some very specific use cases that need to be made”, Carr notes. “Especially around compliance, which we’ve leaned into and seen great success.”
Perhaps most surprising has been the rapid growth in Australia and New Zealand. “Our Australia-New Zealand group has seen significant growth”, Carr says. “We have data centers there, we’ve got implementation and support sales, everybody on the ground, and our customers have responded very well.”
Expanding product offerings
SmartRecruiters continues to innovate and expand its product offerings. Recent additions include an onboarding product and branded career sites with programmatic advertising capabilities. “In 2022. we launched our onboarding product, which was sort of the post-hire experience, the extension of the applicant tracking system. Frankly, if you want to play in the talent acquisition suite space, that post-career journey, the delay between an offer and the day they start and how you engage candidates is very important.”
“Frankly, if you want to play in the talent acquisition suite space, that post-career journey, the delay between an offer and the day they start and how you engage candidates is very important.”
The company also acquired a UK-based firm specialising in branded career sites and programmatic advertising. “People need to be discovered faster in order to hire faster. And so that problem space is one that I think a lot of talent acquisition teams are not equipped to address, and we lean into with that product.”
Embracing AI in Recruitment
As AI reshapes industries, SmartRecruiters is at the forefront of integrating AI into recruitment processes. Carr revealed several AI initiatives, including candidate matching, AI Copilots for task automation, and the use of generative AI for creating job descriptions and reports. Perhaps most intriguing is the company’s focus on using AI for compliance and process insights.
“How can we, based on behaviours in the system, tell customers that they are not doing something?”
“We are going to be leaning a lot into AI for insight”, Carr says. “Which is essentially: how can we, based on behaviours in the system, tell customers that they are not doing something? You don’t have enough candidates from this gender or ethnicity group on your job, for example. You should post to this board, because we know it will get you this kind of traffic or you are not you’re not purging candidates from this country on a fast enough basis.”
“Why did something go wrong in your process or should you want to configure that? So, trying to educate and guide, we’ll obviously have to be careful with that and will test selectively. We’ll also allow a lot of organisations to put their own process rules in place, so that it can really guide-based on the requirements of that organisation. But I think it will be that will be a fun one, because I think it’s a use case that isn’t the most obvious one, but actually addresses an issue around risk management that is particularly top of mind for a lot of companies.”
A holistic approach to hiring
While recruiters remain a primary focus, Carr emphasized that SmartRecruiters takes a company-wide view of the hiring process. “Hiring is critically important to every single person in the organization,” she stated. “And therefore, we should build company products for companies, not just for recruiters. Now, recruiters are key stakeholders in that, and we should always build delightful experiences for them. But I think there’s there’s problems that other people need to solve that we can tackle just as easily with some of the same infrastructure that we’ve created. And I’m excited about that, especially when people need to do more with less.”
