Kim Wilkes
BrightHire
“If you're looking to pivot into a new field or expand your skills, talk openly about it and ask for the opportunity to get involved.”
Kim Wilkes has been named to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, the annual award recognizing the 100 most exceptional leaders and practitioners in talent acquisition. Honorees are selected by the Talent 100 committee from thousands of nominations and candidates across the industry, chosen for the impact of their work, the depth of their craft, and their influence on the future of recruiting. This is Kim's story.
For Kim Wilkes, who leads customer marketing at BrightHire, recruiting was never part of a carefully planned career path. It was something she discovered through experience, curiosity, and a willingness to take a chance on something new.
Before she entered the profession, Kim worked in retail B2B sales, a role that quietly handed her a first look at interviewing, onboarding, HR paperwork, and training and development. When she set out to relocate from Pittsburgh to Indianapolis, she wanted a job that would let her put those skills to work in a more formal way. Scrolling through openings, she stumbled across recruiting roles online and was immediately drawn to the idea of building relationships, having conversations, and connecting people with new opportunities. This was a time when recruiting was nowhere near as widely understood a career as it is today.
Finding the profession turned out to be easier than getting into it. Kim applied to several recruiting positions and was turned down multiple times before she finally landed her first recruiting role at PrincetonOne RPO, and that opportunity changed everything. A manager took a chance on her despite her lack of formal recruiting experience, recognizing transferable skills and a strong foundation in communication and relationship building. From there Kim immersed herself in learning the craft and quickly fell in love with the work. What began as an unexpected career move became a long-term passion for talent attraction, employer branding, candidate experience, and leadership.
What Shaped Her Leadership Philosophy
Kim credits several leaders across her career with shaping the way she approaches leadership, coaching, and talent development today. The first was Damon Grothe, her very first manager at PrincetonOne RPO. Entering recruiting with no formal experience, she leaned heavily on his mentorship as she learned the fundamentals of sourcing, candidate engagement, and recruiting strategy.
His coaching style was hands-on and unusually intentional. He had her record her calls and voicemails so the two of them could review them together afterward, an exercise she admits was uncomfortable at the time. “That helped me take a step back and reflect on my approach from a different perspective,” she said. He also introduced her to LinkedIn, taught her about networking, and pointed her toward several highly impactful recruiting resources, including Johnny Campbell’s Social Talent courses.
During her time at PrincetonOne, Kim’s role expanded into a leadership position and she began coaching and training a team of Recruiters. Damon was equally supportive of that shift, helping her grow her leadership capabilities alongside her recruiting craft.
Asking for the Opportunity
The second turning point came at Uber in 2019, when Kim met Victoria Earle. It was under Victoria’s leadership that Kim began to delve into employer brand, and the door opened because she asked. After talking with her manager about her desire to develop her skills in the EB space, she reached out for an introduction to Victoria, then a Sr. Manager of EB Marketing, and the two began working closely on a few key EB projects.
The work stretched her quickly. Kim conducted candidate experience audits, learned how to create content campaigns, and helped launch a brand ambassador program. Victoria also introduced her to other brand leaders in the space, including Raaj Govintharajah and his team at The Martec. Together they collaborated on a content campaign, and Kim attended their community events alongside other brand practitioners, further honing her skills and building her network.
“If you’re looking to pivot into a new field or expand your skills, talk openly about it and ask for the opportunity to get involved,” Kim shared. “My career has completely shifted since asking for that introductory call with Victoria. She was an incredible coach and mentor, and I’m grateful that we’re still in touch today.”
Coming Full Circle at BrightHire
From there, Kim went on to lead talent attraction and employer brand at Palo Alto Networks and Zapier. In 2025, she moved to BrightHire, a leading interview intelligence platform, where she leads customer marketing.
“It’s incredible that it’s all come full circle,” she said. “I’ve always had a desire to work in a creative capacity, so now calling myself a ‘marketer’ is kind of wild to me. I’m now in a role where I have the opportunity to use my experience across employer brand, social, and events to make an impact at a company I’ve always admired.” She had used BrightHire’s platform at Zapier and was a huge fan long before she joined the team. Coming from the talent space, she has found it rewarding to keep working with TA leaders across industries, simply in a different capacity.
She is quick to credit the marketing team at BrightHire for helping her get up to speed, and singles out Patrick Wolf, Head of Growth Marketing, as a strong coach and mentor. “Pat has been wonderful about helping me learn the ins and outs of marketing,” she said. “He regularly shares resources and offers context to help me deliver quality work in a very fast-paced environment.” What she values most is the balance he strikes between challenging her and making sure she feels supported and recognized.
How AI Is Reshaping Recruiting
Kim believes AI and automation have fundamentally transformed the recruiting landscape, particularly when it comes to creating efficiency, improving candidate experience, and giving recruiters more time to focus on human connection. Her own exposure accelerated significantly at Zapier, where she worked alongside teams building AI-powered workflows and automations across the organization. Through that experience she learned to build workflows, agents, and automations that quietly handled repetitive tasks in the background, saving significant time and freeing her to focus more deeply on leadership, strategy, and communication.
The biggest value of AI, in her view, is not replacing recruiters but giving them time back. When administrative work is automated, recruiters can spend more of their day having meaningful conversations, coaching teams, improving strategy, and building stronger candidate relationships.
Today Kim continues to work at the forefront of AI-driven recruiting innovation through her role at BrightHire, whose AI copilots and agents integrate directly into a variety of ATSs and communication platforms to improve recruiting efficiency, scale a structured and consistent interview process, and deliver actionable insight that help talent teams make higher-quality decisions. For Kim, the principle holds throughout: AI works best when it enhances human connection rather than replacing it.
Advice for Talent Leaders in 2026
As AI adoption accelerates across recruiting, Kim encourages talent leaders to take a thoughtful and strategic approach rather than rushing to implement every new tool available. One of the most impactful exercises her team completed at Zapier involved mapping every stage of the hiring process, from application through offer stage, and evaluating where AI should and should not be used. Each step was rated on a scale based on potential impact, followed by collaborative discussions about why certain areas made sense for automation while others required a stronger human touch. Those conversations were valuable precisely because they forced leaders to intentionally define where technology truly adds value.
Her biggest piece of advice going forward is to resist the urge to solve everything at once. “There’s a lot of noise right now,” she explained. “Everyone’s trying to do more with less, and there are endless tools being introduced every week.” Rather than chasing every new platform, she believes organizations should identify one meaningful problem, test solutions carefully, gather feedback, and scale intentionally from there.
The recruiting organizations that succeed, she argues, will be the ones that strike the right balance between technology and human connection. AI can create efficiency, consistency, and scale, but relationships, empathy, and communication will always remain central to effective recruiting. That combination of curiosity, strategic thinking, and people-first leadership is what makes Kim Wilkes a standout voice in modern talent acquisition.
The Talent 100 exists to celebrate the people shaping the future of how the world hires, and few embody that better than Kim. We are honored to welcome Kim Wilkes to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, and grateful for the experience, perspective, and craft they bring to this community. Congratulations, Kim. 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.
