Jennifer Rakow
CoreWeave
“You have to be open, even as a leader or a recruiter or anybody in this industry, to really be open still with that growth mindset.”
Jennifer Rakow has been named to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, the annual award recognizing up to 100 leaders in each category of talent acquisition. Honorees are nominated by peers or found by committees that look for excellent work wherever it happens, then chosen for the depth of their craft and their impact on hiring. This is Jennifer's story.
The Conversation That Started a Career
A manager at Extreme Networks once walked past a college-aged coordinator, caught part of her phone conversation, and stopped to listen. By the end of the day, Jennifer Rakow had been moved into recruiting. More than three decades later, she is still practicing the very skill that first set her apart: treating the person on the other end of the line as the most important part of the process.
Jennifer has spent more than 30 years in talent acquisition, beginning her career at Extreme Networks, Sony, then Google, eBay, continuing at Apple, and later joining Uber and now CoreWeave, where she recruited and led global teams. What distinguishes her is not simply her longevity, but her humility and commitment to continued growth. She has never confused experience with mastery. Even after three decades in the field, she maintains a trusted group of advisors she turns to when faced with a particularly difficult challenge.
The entry point was almost accidental. Jennifer was looking for a job to keep herself busy when a friend at an agency mentioned that the team at Extreme Networks was hiring coordinators. She took an honest inventory of her strengths: she was organized, detail-oriented, and more than capable of managing interview schedules. So she took the job.
Three or four months later, a candidate reached out with a long list of questions about the hiring process, whom they would be meeting, and what to expect next. The candidate was clearly uneasy. The easiest option would have been to pass the conversation along to the recruiter, leaving the candidate to wait for another appointment. Jennifer chose not to do that. She answered the questions herself because, as she put it, talking to people was "just kind of my nature."
Her manager overheard the conversation. At the end of the day, he approached her and asked whom she had been speaking with. After she explained, his response was immediate: "I'm going to move you into recruiting."
It's a small story with a lasting lesson, one that has shaped her entire career. Candidate experience isn't a program or a survey score. It's what happens when someone with questions reaches a real person who is willing to answer them.
Skipping Sourcing, Keeping the Coordinator's Eye
The promotion came with an unusual shortcut. Jennifer bypassed sourcing entirely and moved directly into recruiting, developing her craft from the candidate conversation outward rather than from the top of the funnel down. She has been refining that approach ever since.
The qualities she had identified when assessing herself for the coordinator role, organization and attention to detail, proved not to be entry-level traits she would eventually outgrow. They became the foundation of her work. Coordination is where the seams of hiring are most visible: a poorly sequenced interview loop or an unanswered question can become the detail a candidate remembers most.
Jennifer learned the mechanics of the process from the inside before she was ever responsible for selling a role. That sequence is unusual. Most recruiters learn to find candidates first and guide them through the process later. Jennifer learned to shepherd the candidate first, and built her recruiting philosophy from there.
What Three Decades Teaches
Jennifer is candid that not every relationship in her career has been positive. As she puts it, she has encountered "some not-so-great people," an experience she is quick to say is common in talent acquisition, not unique to her. But she does not linger on those experiences. Instead, she looks for the lesson: identifying the leaders worth emulating, learning from those she would not follow, and carrying the best of both experiences forward. Most importantly, honing your craft, always putting people first and celebrating those who laid the foundation for the rest of us.
That mindset has remained consistent, from the part-time coordinator role she took to fill an open college schedule to now leading a global TA team at CoreWeave. Throughout her career, Jennifer has chosen the more difficult and more human path: answer the question yourself, protect your people, and remain open to what you have yet to learn.
It served her well during a phone conversation just months into her first job. It continues to guide her today.
The Talent 100 exists to celebrate the people shaping the future of how the world hires, and few embody that better than Jennifer. We are honored to welcome Jennifer Rakow to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, and grateful for the experience, perspective, and craft they bring to this community. Congratulations, Jennifer. Welcome to the Talent 100.
About the Talent 100
The Talent 100 is an annual list spotlighting the leaders who push HR and talent acquisition forward, organized by Noon AI. Honorees are selected through peer nominations and independent selection committees. Selection is entirely merit-based, with no fees or pay-to-play requirements.
