The race to develop humanoid robots that can work alongside people in factories, warehouses and retail environments is attracting billions in investment. The talent powering this revolution is in critically short supply. Specialist AI researchers, robotics engineers, and machine learning experts are being sought by every company in the sector, from global tech giants to ambitious startups.
So, in this environment of talent scarcity, how much does the human side of recruiting matter?
My guest this week is Kathrin Selezneva, Talent Acquisition Lead at Humanoid. In our conversation, she shares her experience building a hiring function from scratch in one of the most competitive talent markets in the world and explains why, as AI transforms everything around it, the human skills of recruiting have never mattered more.
In the interview, we discuss:
• Building a TA function from zero
• Recruiting the world’s most challenging talent market
• Building trust with the most passive of candidates
• Why mission sells when salary can’t
• The vital importance of human recruiters
• Relationship building and strategic thinking
• Why talent should determine geography in global hiring
• What does the future look like?
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00:00
Matt Alder
The companies building the most advanced AI still need the most human approach to hiring. So what are the parts of the hiring process where human recruiters are still absolutely critical to success? Keep listening to find out.
00:16
Matt Alder
Support for this podcast comes from Maki. Maki enables businesses to build intelligent, science backed hiring strategies that predict on the job performance and adapt as roles and markets change. Companies today face a surge of undifferentiated AI, inflated CVs and often rely on manual screening or inconsistent processes. This leads to missed talent, weaker performance and a poor candidate experience. Maki combines science based assessments, behavioral signals and autonomous AI agents into one integrated engine. It evaluates every candidate, predicts who will succeed, and continuously improves hiring outcomes. Teams hire faster, more fairly and at a lower cost while delivering stronger on the job performance and a better experience for candidates and customers. To find out more you can go to makipeople.com and Maki is spelled M A K I and that’s makipeople.com.
01:42
Matt Alder
Hi there, welcome to episode 797 of Recruiting Future with me Matt Alder. The race to develop humanoid robots that can work alongside people in factories, warehouses and retail environments is attracting billions investment. The talent powering this revolution is in critically short supply. Specialist AI researchers, robotics engineers and machine learning experts are being sought by every company in the sector from global tech giants to ambitious startups. So in this environment of acute talent scarcity, how much does the human side of recruiting really matter? My guest this week is Kathrin Selezneva, Talent acquisition lead at Humanoid. In our conversation she shares her experience of building a hiring function from scratch in one of the most competitive talent markets in the world and explains why as AI transforms everything around it, the human skills of recruiting and have never mattered more.
02:45
Matt Alder
Hi Kathrin and welcome to the podcast.
02:47
Kathrin Selezneva
Hello Matt, nice to meet you and I’m so excited to be here and talk to you today.
02:53
Matt Alder
Absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Please could you introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do.
02:59
Kathrin Selezneva
My name is Kathrin and I’m a talent acquisition lead at Humanoid and I work at the intersection of AI, talent acquisition and the future of rock. So currently I’m responsible for talent acquisition at We Are Robotics Co. Building humanoid robots where I focusing on global talent acquisition strategy and helping scale teams in one of the most competitive industries today, AI and robotics. Over the years I’ve worked closely with deep tech and artificial intelligence companies so My expertise is in identifying and attracting highly specialized talent from AI researchers and robotics engineers to product and operational leader.
03:48
Matt Alder
So yeah, fantastic. And tell us more about what Humanoid’s actually making. What do the robots do? What are their use cases?
03:57
Kathrin Selezneva
We building our robots for real industrial work, not for them as or research labs. And our product is designed to automate repetitive, physically demanding tasks in such industries like manufacturing, logistics, warehouses, retail construction. So the main goal is to help the companies solve labor shortage and improve efficiency. So in general, our robots are built to work safely alongside people in existing facilities.
04:26
Matt Alder
And you mentioned that you’re working in kind of one of the most demanding talent markets in the world. The kind of intersection between AI and robotics. Tell us more about that. In terms of the hiring challenges that you have, is it just finding people?
04:41
Kathrin Selezneva
No, it’s not just finding people. So this burst industry, it’s probably one of the fastest moving and most talent constrained sectors in the world right now. And at Humanoid we are building humanoid robots. So and we sit at the intersection of several extremely competitive fields at once. AI, robotics, hardware, machine learning, etc. And one of the biggest hiring challenges is that the talent pool is incredibly small while demand is growing exponentially. So everyone is competing for the Same people, top AI researchers, robotics engineers, etc. And these candidates often have opportunities from the best companies globally. So another challenge is that many of these roles are highly interdisciplinary.
05:38
Kathrin Selezneva
So I suppose that the main challenges right now, so we’re not just looking for someone who is technically brilliant, we need the people who can operate across research and production, so who can work in environments where the technology is emulating in real time. There is also a huge cultural components as well. So in deep tech and artificial intelligence hiring, it’s not only about the skills, it’s about curiosity, adaptability, of course, mission alignment. So the people building systems are shaping technologies that could redefine how humans work and interact with machines. So mindset matters just as much as technical capability. And the final challenges, the speed of change is a major challenges. So the AI landscape evolves almost monthly, which means hiring strategy, assessment method and even the definition of top talent are constantly shifting.
06:46
Kathrin Selezneva
So the talent acquisition, I suppose has become much more strategic and data driven than it was even just a couple of years ago.
06:55
Matt Alder
And what kind of motivates those people to move, to move jobs, to change companies? How do you, how do you kind of persuade them that they should come and work for your organization?
07:06
Kathrin Selezneva
When I joined the Humanoid here we don’t have talent acquisition function at all. So no Hiring infrastructure, no processes, and the stage, not even a product or prototype. Honestly.
07:21
Matt Alder
Wow.
07:22
Kathrin Selezneva
So and the first challenge was not just hire people, recruiting people, but helping build the company itself from the ground up. So the very first thing we did was define what the organization could actually look like. So we identified the critical early hires. It was chief technology officer, chief operation officer and small group of foundational engineers who could start building the technical core of the company. And honestly at this stage every single hire had an outsized impact on the future of business. So they involved and they engaged into the culture of our company. And what made it especially challenging was that were asking people to join based almost entirely on our vision and mission. So there was no product demo, no traction, no proof yet. And honestly that made the hiring bar incredibly clear.
08:29
Kathrin Selezneva
If someone was not deeply aligned with the mission and excited by the scale of the challenges, there was nothing external that could convince them. And another one, important things we had to get right earlier was alignment around what the grade actually means. So we spent a lot of time with our leadership team and to define the competitors behaviors and values we wanted to build the company around. And it was not just technical expertise but things like adaptability, ownership, curiosity and probably ability to operate in ambiguity. So and that alignment became the foundation for every hiring decision, after war, afterward. But at the same time we built the build a structure hiring process much earlier than most startup typically do.
09:32
Kathrin Selezneva
So when the company was very small, we implemented structured interviews, clear evaluation criteria, applicant tracking system, and it probably looked overly operational for such an early stage company. But when we hyper growth starts, a structure is what protect quality without it. So honestly hiring becomes inconsistent very quickly. Very quickly. Yeah. So looking back, building talent acquisition function from Xero was really about creating the operating system for how the company reacted. And recruiting was only the one part of it. The bigger challenges was designing a scalable organization while the company itself was still being invented.
10:30
Matt Alder
Are you up to around 200, 300 people now?
10:33
Kathrin Selezneva
Yes, 272 as I remember correctly.
10:40
Matt Alder
So I mean that is a lot going on all at once. You’re trying to sort of design, work out what good looks like, design this process, bring in all the technology and hire people at the same time, including some of the, you know, the biggest hires in the organization. How did you kind of manage all those competing priorities?
10:58
Kathrin Selezneva
So when we started building our hiring function, one of the most important decision was fitting recruiting infrastructure. Seriously from the very beginning, as I mentioned before, a lot of startups wait too long to build the real hiring system. We growth up to 200 people, just only the first one and a half years. It’s pretty fast. Recruiting should be very structured before that you come across with hyper growth. So we built our tech stack early around a few core principles. Visibility, speed, consistency and scalability. First of all, the applicant tracking system became our central source of truth for every candidate and every hiring processes. As I mentioned, we implement interview workflows, standardized scorecard. So the goal was not bureaucracy, it was creating a system that would allow us to scale without losing quality first of all.
12:05
Kathrin Selezneva
And we also invested heavily in sourcing tools, talent intelligence, platform automation and internal knowledge management. In artificial intelligence and robotics. Recruiting is much closer to research honestly than traditional hiring. You’re mapping niche talent ecosystem globally, understanding research communities, understanding research strands, probably following publication, open source contribution, etc. Etc. And this is where artificial intelligence has genuinely become extremely useful. So because AI improves speed and efficiency in areas like talent mapping, sourcing, support, market research, outreach, optimization, etc. And center. And it helps us as a recruiters process enormous amount of information much faster than before. For example, AI is incredibly powerful when it comes to identifying patterns across talent pools, surfacing just backgrounds or helping cricket neutrals understand highly technical demands more quickly. And it can also help personalize outreach at scale far better than traditional automation tools that ever could.
13:27
Kathrin Selezneva
So because where AI still falls short is exactly where the highest value recruiting happens. So building trust with highly specialized passive candidates. So the people we hire are not responding to mass outreach campaign. So we reach out to them directly with. Because many of them are world class experts who received recruiter’s message every single day, they can immediately tell when communication is automated, generic, or lacks real technical understanding. And at that level recruiting becomes deeply human. It’s about understanding someone’s motivation, timing, intellectual interest because we pay attention when we reach out to the candidate, pay attention for their research direction, technology, long term, probably impact, etc. And center. So my view is honestly artificial intelligence becoming an incredible argument layer for recruiters, especially by removing repetitive operation work. But the strategic and relational side of recruiting is actually becoming even more important.
14:45
Matt Alder
I think that makes a lot of sense, particularly that kind of the outreach that you’re doing there. Well, what is it that kind of really resonates with people when you’re sort of reaching out to these world class experts? How do you stand out to make them want to talk to you?
15:01
Kathrin Selezneva
Yeah, so it’s a good question and probably it’s one of the hardest challenges today because the people we are looking for already have incredible opportunities. Because the best AR researchers, robotics engineers and technical leaders are being approached constantly by the biggest tech company in the world, often with enormous compensation package. Honestly, that’s our pain. Honestly, resources and probably brand recognition behind them. So the reality is that the early stage startup usually doesn’t win purely on sales, salary or prestige. So we win on mission impact and the scale of challenges. The people who join us are often deeply motivated by the opportunity to work on something generally groundbreaking. At large company. Even brilliant people can sometimes feel like they are optimizing a very small piece of massive machine in an early stage environment.
16:11
Kathrin Selezneva
So they had the chance to shape the direction of technology and the company itself from the very beginning. For the right people, that level of ownership, honestly, it’s incredibly compelling. In my opinion, one of our biggest competitive advantages is global approach for recruitment. And because robotic it’s very specific field, very specific industries. And honestly, the best specialists are spread across different continents companies, research labs. From the very beginning we approached hiring without some geographic limitations. So for example, that means when we open our Boston office and our Vancouver office, the main goal was to hire the people from the very specific companies. So we built our offices around the people. I think that one of the defining principle of modern global hiring, talent should determine geography, not geography determining the talent honestly.
17:16
Kathrin Selezneva
And of course the building a truly international team also creates significant challenges. We are managing different communication styles, cultural expectations, market dynamics, etc. And center. So that was our approach and we continue to move with this.
17:33
Matt Alder
And as a final question for you, I mean, as you say, things are moving so quickly with AI, not just in kind of the robotics sector, but also in talent acquisition. What does the future look like from your perspective?
17:46
Kathrin Selezneva
Honestly, it’s very interesting because I think both industries promoting the talent acquisition are going through huge changes right now. And in many ways those two words are becoming more connected than even so in robotics, we are moving into a phase where robots are no longer limited to factories or very controlled environments. With advance in artificial intelligence, humanoid robots are becoming more capable of working alongside people in real world. And the speed of progress is honestly incredible. Every few months the industry feels completely different. What especially interesting is that robots is no longer just a hardware industry, it’s now deeply connected to AI, which means the pace of innovation is accelerating fast and become of. And because of that, the demand for top talent is exploding as well.
18:48
Kathrin Selezneva
One of the biggest challenges for robotics company over the next few years won’t just be technology, it will be hiring because there simply are not enough highly specialized engineers, researchers and technical leaders for how quickly the industry is growing. That’s why talent acquisition is changing so much too. So recruiting today is becoming much more strategic. In industries like AI, robotics, research, ML hiring directly affects how fast a company can innovate and grow. The candidates we work with are usually not making decision based only on compensation. They care about the mission, the team, the leadership, the technical challenges and the impact they can have. Those are very human conversation. And don’t think AI replaces that.
19:50
Matt Alder
I think that’s really interesting because you know, as you say, the more sophisticated the AI becomes, then your hiring demands get even more complex and more sophisticated and the humans aren’t going away. It’s about putting the humans in the right place strategically in the process, isn’t it?
20:06
Kathrin Selezneva
Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.
20:08
Matt Alder
Kathrin, thank you very much for talking to me.
20:10
Kathrin Selezneva
Thank you so much, Matt.
20:13
Matt Alder
My thanks to Kathrin. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts on Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can search all the past episodes st recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast, and get the inside track on everything that’s coming up on the show. Thank you. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
