James Hardie is the company behind Hardie, TimberTech, and AZEK Exteriors, a global leader in exterior home and building solutions. Running talent acquisition for a company that size, especially one growing through acquisition, takes someone who has learned to lead through other people instead of fixing everything herself.
Doris Smart is the Head of Global Talent Acquisition at James Hardie. Her path started in contract recruiting for healthcare, taken almost by accident after college, and grew into a career built on listening, developing others, and bringing new companies into the fold without losing what makes them work.
In this episode, she talks about what changed when she stopped being the person who solved every problem and started developing the people around her, why integrating people is the hardest part of any acquisition, and how AI is reshaping the administrative side of recruiting without touching the part of the job that requires a real conversation.
You’ll also hear:
- What “leading the witness” means in an interview, and why most recruiters do it without realizing
- Why quality of hire is the metric she always comes back to, and why it’s so hard to measure
- How James Hardie is investing in AI training and tools across the organization
Connect with Doris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doriszavala/
Learn more about James Hardie: www.jameshardie.com
Connect with us:
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💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ziprecruiter/
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