Kerry Wang is the CEO & co-founder of Searchlight. Kerry graduated from Stanford with a BA with distinction in Human Biology (Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Human Behavior) and an MS in Computer Science. Prior to Searchlight, she worked as a Product Sales Lead at Google and management consultant at McKinsey. She is a Forbes 2021 30 under 30 honoree.

Anna Wang is the CTO & co-founder of Searchlight. Anna graduated from Stanford with a BS in Computer Science and an MS in Artificial Intelligence. Prior to Searchlight, she worked as a Product Manager at Google, Software Engineer at Uber, and management consultant at McKinsey. She is a Forbes 2021 30 under 30 honoree.

What inspired you/your team to create this company?
Esther Perel said: “”We are in the era of identity economy. People look to their relationships and work for identity formation.”” Our parents certainly modeled that quote for my co-founder/CTO/twin Anna and me. As Chinese immigrants in a new country, they overcame countless obstacles for the promise of meaningful work.

When it came time to go out into the job search myself, I wasn’t simply looking for a new job – I was looking to craft my identity. But to my surprise, I found that I was labeled purely based on where I’d gone to school or worked in the past. Recruiters went so far as to call Anna and I “the same person” because we had similar names on our resumes — McKinsey, Stanford, Google. But the achievements and skills we gained at each were different, and traditional hiring processes miss that nuance in strengths and working style. 89% of mishires are due to soft skills mismatch, and these mistakes are a threat to a business and devastating to the employee.

Anna and I approached this hiring problem as a data problem, and with her knowledge in AI and mine in organizational behavior, we founded Searchlight.

What distinguishes your company and product in the market?
The recruiting tech space, most solutions focus on the pipeline problem of sourcing candidates rather than the assessment problem of finding the right candidates for a company.

Solving the problem of finding the right talent is complex as it involves both the recruiting and HR departments within companies. At Searchlight, our first product of “reference checks as a service” uniquely positions us to bridge those departments. We impact both the tail-end of the recruiting process and the start of the HR onboarding.

Our Customer Advisory Board of both Chief People Officers and Heads of Recruiting reflects our approach to the market. We have John Foster (Chief People Officer of TrueCar, ex-CHRO of Hulu) and Jeff Diana (CPO of Calendly, ex-CPO of Atlassian) advising alongside Greg Russell (Head of Talent at Snapdocs, co-founder of MitchelLake).

Our Quality of Hire platform is new in the market, and we’re focused on our entry point and customer feedback to grow.