2021 Influential Businesswoman Awards

16 Acquisition International - Influential Businesswoman Awards 2021 Jul21133 Best Software Organisation Account Director (UK): Sarah Callery Despite the buoyancy of the technical sales sector, women occupy only 20% of roles, a fact that is not lost on Enterprise Account Sales Director, Sarah Callery. Sarah’s experience in sales and recruitment led her to her current role with recruitment tech giant, SmartRecruiters. She’s currently tasked with identifying and onboarding global enterprise clients whose workforce number 50,000 employees and above. ver recent years, recruitment has become more and more competitive. The long game is long gone, and speed and efficiency are crucial to success. Finding ways to improve recruiter productivity, facilitate hiring team collaboration, and enhance the candidate experience are essential to defining a slick process. Not only that, they could be the difference between finding the perfect candidate and being left with a vacancy you can’t fill. In 2010, technology company SmartRecruiters was born. Its vision was to provide a platform to modernise recruitment for good. In its first four years, the company focused its efforts solely on the research and development of new HR technology. And in 2014, the firm launched its first paid corporate subscription. The response was overwhelming. Today, SmartRecruiters is a global leader in the provision of enterprise recruiting software, providing over 4000 companies worldwide with a reliable solution to driving hiring success. Brands such as LinkedIn, Visa, Bosch, Skechers and Avery Dennison number among SmartRecruiters clients. The firm offers a state-of- the-art cloud-based talent acquisition suite that enables businesses to attract, select and hire the best people. The modern and flexible platform allows customers to manage often vast recruitment functions from one centralized, integrated system. Ensuring that companies are aware of the benefits of working with SmartRecruiters is the role of Enterprise Sales Account Director, Sarah Callery. Sarah has been with the firm for two and a half years. In that time, she’s received numerous awards for her work identifying and onboarding large enterprise clients. Among these are the MVP Superstar award and the genially named ‘Smartian’ of the year. Sarah also smashed last year’s sales target by achieving a staggering 190% of her quota. In September of this year Sarah was promoted into a Strategic Sales role partnering with organisations with over 50,000 employees. Sarah attributes her success, in part, to her extensive experience. Her career, which currently spans over 20 years, has seen her in various roles in recruitment, direct and indirect sales and recruitment technology. Her time spent in recruitment before arriving at O SmartRecruiters allowed Sarah to understand people, what drives and motivates them, and to establish herself as a subject matter expert in the industry. Although it’s easy to view sales as her primary role, Sarah sees herself as more of a project manager who supports her customers on their SmartRecruiters journey. She’s passionate about helping her clients to achieve success and goes all out to understand her customers’ challenges and identify solutions that fit their requirements. It’s important for Sarah to deliver on her promises to her clients, and she continues to act as their internal advocate throughout the customer journey with SmartRecruiters to ensure everything aligns as it should. An example of this was when Sarah secured a contract with a client that is the world’s second-largest clothing retailer. She’s proud of the lasting relationship that she’s built with the client, supporting them through implementation and go-live. Despite her current success, Sarah is no stranger to the workings of the infamous ‘boys club’. It’s an unfortunate fact that it still prevails in many corporate companies today, and in technical sales in particular. In the past, she’s found herself overlooked or excluded from applying for certain roles. Bullying and accusations of being too aggressive are tactics that are all too familiar to many women in male-dominated industries, and Sarah has had to deal with both. Fortunately, today Sarah works with a forward-thinking mentor at SmartRecruiters. A sales leader who does not conform to any of the old-fashioned stereotypes, and who supports and guides her. Early in her career, Sarah tells us she spent a lot of time trying to fit in. But once she realised it wasn’t helping, she stopped. At that point, her authenticity was able to shine through, and she began to stand out from the crowd. Today she lets her achievements speak for themselves. Her advice to other women looking to succeed in the industry is simple: “Don’t be afraid to speak up. Trust your intuition. Build your own tribe both in and outside your organisation. Share your stories to inspire others, and never, ever give up!” When asked what the key attributes for success in tech sales are, Sarah lists creativity, tenacity, integrity, knowledge and communication skills as her top five.