Taylar Martin

“My goal isn't to automate every single interaction; it's to automate the things that allow us to spend more time on the interactions that do matter.”

By ninth grade, Taylar Martin had a five-year plan. Recruiting appeared nowhere on it. Today she is a Lead Talent Acquisition Partner at StackAdapt, the advertising-technology company where she recruits engineers and where headcount has grown from roughly 1,100 to 1,900 during her tenure.

Looking back, she finds the career that replaced the plan follows a clear pattern: being put in uncomfortable positions, and meeting people willing to take a chance on her. That pattern explains her approach to the work. She champions candidates who look less impressive on paper than they are in practice, she is wary of technology that would screen them out, and she believes credibility is earned by admitting what you do not yet know.

A Childhood Designed for Growth

Her father was a sales manager, and his profession followed him home. Every prospective hire on his team completed a DISC personality assessment to gauge whether they could succeed in sales, so his daughter was taking DISC assessments in middle school. Sayings like "Time kills all deals" and "Always be closing" were household vocabulary, and a competitive family motto known as KATAN, something her father would say at sports events, is still printed on the mouse pad at her desk.

He also believed that growth happens in uncomfortable situations. In high school, Taylar traveled to Taiwan as a Rotary exchange student, said goodbye for a year, lived with a host family, and learned Mandarin Chinese. Later she joined ROTC to help pay for college, until a medical disqualification derailed the plan she had drawn up at 14.

Careers Built on Someone Saying Yes

The next detour led directly to her profession. After moving from Washington, D.C., to Florida for her now husband's job, she knew no one and turned to Bumble BFF to make friends. One of her matches was an agency recruiter who encouraged her to apply. She got the job without a degree and fell in love with the work, especially the moment a signed offer letter arrives in the inbox.

Wayfair came next, and so did a second leap of faith. When HR noticed there was no degree on her application and asked whether it was an error, she explained that she was still in college. Hiring her would be unprecedented, an exception the team had to approve. Her manager approved it, and she still remembers the satisfaction of telling colleagues she would be out one Friday because she was walking across the stage at graduation. She has been fortunate with managers throughout her career, she says; until her wedding, every one of them was on the guest list.

Those experiences became a working philosophy. Recruiters, Taylar believes, can pay that trust forward by recognizing potential in candidates who might not look the best on paper. Potential does not always come through in assessments, and spotting it goes a long way.

Proving It at Scale

At Wayfair, the bet paid off. She earned a couple of promotions, became one of the top recruiters on her team, and helped build out one of the company's technology development centers in Bangalore, an early offshoring effort for the business.

At StackAdapt, which she joined as a remote employee, she took on engineering recruiting, a space she describes as unfamiliar when she started. It was another uncomfortable position, and she has spent her tenure helping the company add roughly 800 people.

AI With the Human Element Intact

Enthusiastic about AI, Taylar has built her own tools to make her days more efficient, and her current focus is helping the people around her work better too, moving from individual contributor gains to empowering the whole team. She sees the technology as fantastic for research, sourcing support, administrative tasks, and spotting patterns in large volumes of data that people might otherwise miss.

The risk, in her view, is an obsession with automation and efficiency that makes recruiting even more transactional, deepening complaints that recruiters never follow up or only reach out when they have a role to fill. Empathy, judgment, and trust with stakeholders and candidates still require people. Relying too heavily on data and patterns to evaluate candidates also risks missing a diamond in the rough, the kind of candidate she once was. "My goal isn't to automate every single interaction," she says. "It's to automate the things that allow us to spend more time on the interactions that do matter."

Advice for the Year Ahead

Her counsel for talent leaders centers on credibility. Many people fall short of their full potential, she believes, because they have not built it with candidates, hiring managers, or their own teams. She built hers by asking a lot of questions, doing the work to understand the business, and following through on what she says she will do.

The best recruiters and leaders are adaptable, she adds, and adaptability inevitably lands people in situations where they are not yet the strongest or most trusted voice. That is exactly when credibility matters most, whether with direct reports, candidates, or a manager. "It's not pretending to be an expert in everything," Taylar says. "It's becoming that person people can trust to figure it out and then deliver on that."