What does it look like to evolve your talent strategy while sitting at the center of the AI revolution? Just ask Sarah Tilley.
As SVP of Global Talent Management and Acquisition at ServiceNow, Sarah oversees a large-scale but agile operation that processed 1.7 million applications last year alone.
In this episode, she shares how her team uses AI not just to streamline recruiting—but to deeply enhance how they assess, hire, and develop talent.
She also explains why brand alignment matters in B2B, how to make the case for innovation within lean teams, and what "quality of hire" really means in 2025.
You’ll learn:
Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahtilley/
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[00:00:00] Sarah Tilley: How are you using AI driven insights in assessing your process, the content of your interviews, who you've got doing the interviews, the length of the interviews, it's going to redefine what we know when it comes to how we assess, hire, and develop talent.
[00:00:19] Dave Travers: So what does it really take for your business to attract world-class talent today? I'm Dave Travers, President of ZipRecruiter, and on Talent All-Stars, we shine a light on the people and the day-to-day processes behind recruitment and retention at some of the world's most influential businesses. Today's Talent All-Star is Sarah Tilley, the SVP of Global Talent Management and Acquisition at ServiceNow, an AI platform for business transformation.
ServiceNow helps companies streamline and automate workflows. Something everyone is thinking about these days, especially talent leaders and especially Sarah, whose team processed 1.7 million job applications last year. So let's jump into this conversation with Sarah Tilley from ServiceNow. Sarah, welcome to Talent All-Stars.
[00:01:07] Sarah Tilley: Thank you. Happy to be here.
[00:01:08] Dave Travers: So excited to have you, so much to talk about. You're in the heart of the AI transformation that the whole economy, whole world, and talent acquisition in particular is going through. So I want to get to that. But first I want to go back earlier in your career. You've worked at some amazing places.
Disney, a former employer, we share in common. Warner Brothers, Heidrick. So go back early when you were in your talent career and was there a moment when you thought that this could become not just something that is like your current job, but this could be a career or a calling?
[00:01:45] Sarah Tilley: It was very early on. So before he, I worked for a contingency firm, and I, I actually couldn't believe that companies would hire you to do this type of work. You know, just go out and, and find talented individuals that matched their specific needs. So it was really just a, like a person to person, um, relationship transaction. And I, so I was hooked pretty much from the beginning. It is a version of selling, but the most interesting product in the world, which is like other people. So I, I, I pretty much knew that I had found this thing that was a fit very early.
[00:02:24] Dave Travers: I love it. And when did you realize that it might not just be something where you wanna be the individual? Recruiter, but this might be something where I'm gonna become a leader of a function or lead a whole strategy around it.
[00:02:37] Sarah Tilley: I didn't actually have really big ambitions. I just wanted to work for a company that I really respected and liked, and I wanted to work with interesting people, and I wanted to feel good about the work, but I, I wasn't super ambitious. Right or wrong, I just wasn't. But when I was at Warner Brothers, one of my former bosses at Heidrich came in and started to leave the global town acquisition function at Warner Brothers.
And so she and I had known each other from a past life, and she was the one who brought me out of the business segment into corporate headquarters for Warner Brothers and said, I'd like for you to take on a leadership role. So I came in, I was pretty young. I looked even younger than I was, and so I think I, I felt like I had something to prove.
And this is a question you ask people. I would imagine you hear this answer quite a bit when people start off in their leadership journey, but I, I thought that I had to come in with a really heavy command and control approach, you know, and I thought being a leader meant you had to have all of the answers and make all the decisions.
But I was really quick that I learned that it's actually about how you empower people and how you get the best out of people. And I started asking better questions, giving my team the space and the safety to experiment and focusing more on how do I enable them? And seeing myself as a coach and a, and a cheerleader rather than just like, this is what you have to do.
So that was an early learning. How do you scale? Impact through others, and that's a completely different skillset and something I still see as one of the hardest transitions for people everywhere.
[00:04:17] Dave Travers: Yes, I couldn't agree more. So, go back and if you can give advice to younger Sarah in that moment, when you start out doing the more command and control style, how would you coach them through? Because a lot of it I think is confidence, and so how do you coach someone to have the confidence to not mess that up that way?
[00:04:36] Sarah Tilley: This topic and many topics, it's really about paying attention to that inner dialogue because to your point on it being about confidence, how do you listen less to the dialogue that is telling you you've got something to prove.
And the way to do that is by pretending to be this or that, or not being vulnerable or not being curious about what you can learn from people that are technically in lower-level positions. So I really do think it is about trusting your instincts more, being super curious, recognizing that you don't have to have all the answers, and just looking at leaders that you admire and watching how they operate.
And I would imagine. It's, it becomes real obvious, real quick, who are those leaders that are leading in I, I think a more contemporary way, you know, versus this outdated command and control approach. And you can really see they are the ones that are empathetic. They are curious. They do empower, they're encouraging.
I think that's probably the advice I would've given a younger me and would still give.
[00:05:50] Dave Travers: I think that's so true. So as you think about then having become a leader and now leading talent acquisition across multiple amazing companies, one of the interesting things about where you at are at now, ServiceNow is a super big, powerful, important, innovative company, but doesn't have the same consumer brand that a Disney has. So what's the difference in talent acquisition? Where within the realm of your customers and within the realm of people who might be applying to a lot of your jobs, ServiceNow, very well established, but doesn't have the, everybody on the street knows exactly who Disney is, consumer brand.
Does that affect your talent acquisition strategy at all when you're at a Disney versus a ServiceNow?
[00:06:34] Sarah Tilley: You know, naively, I thought when I came in it was going to a lot more than it has, and I think that might have something to do with the type of talent that we're. We go after. But I also think it has to do with an employment brand versus a consumer brand and what's important and is very different in those two things.
So I was actually just at a la political, like a local politician roast last night. Um, I, you know, I'm on the board for a local nonprofit and. So I, I was invited to this and when I was with Disney for so many years, you know, it was fun to see people light up when you would tell them where you worked. And then I was talking with someone at the table and I said, oh, I'm, you know, they, oh, what do you do?
Right? And I said, oh, I'm an enterprise software. And they're, they're like, yes, go on. And I'm like, oh, okay. Well, I work for a company called ServiceNow. They're like, yeah, of cours,e everyone knows ServiceNow. And I was like, yeah, I forget the, you know, we've, we've definitely, our profile has elevated. In the last couple of years, and we're definitely having a moment right now for all the right reasons, but I think that in the world of employment, we're pretty well known and definitely within the circles that we're most interested in and the type of talent that we're most interested in, which is the talent that's making the biggest, you know, impact from an innovation standpoint, from tech, from go to market, how we serve customers.
So we're, we're definitely well known. And so I've been here three years now. We had just under 2 million applications last year. And that is exponentially grown, significantly like in the last couple of years. And so I think we're on people's radar in a way that we haven't been in the past. But it's also interesting because our CEO.
Does believe that branding, even for a B2B, you know, SaaS company like ourselves, like it is important. And so every single one of us. Play. When I say us, I, I say those of us that are in leadership roles across the company, but definitely those of us in that are in senior leadership roles are playing a role in elevating our profile even further.
And we are very aligned in how we talk about the company and how we talk about the company's strengths and our products and our values. And so that is, I think, the key to continuing to build and strengthen a brand. So. I think we're all bought into the idea that ServiceNow actually will it, it will never be a consumer brand like Disney, but it certainly has branding power and, and I think we're just getting started.
[00:09:08] Dave Travers: So one of the things you mentioned there is that ServiceNow is having a moment, and I think one aspect of that is AI is having a moment. You guys are right in the middle of that. And so all of us in every industry, but in talent acquisition specifically feel compelled to have like smart things to say when asked about how we're utilizing AI, and as somebody whose whole company is right in the middle of that, how do you think about AI for talent acquisition?
Specifically, coach us on how to think about what are the smart things to say when asked what are the smart things to be doing given what's possible today that wasn't possible very recently.
[00:09:46] Sarah Tilley: Yeah, and I think that it has been exciting to be part of this movement and we are the AI platform for business transformation that's very real.
Companies are capitalizing on that. More and more, literally just before I jumped on this podcast, hit, you know, posted on LinkedIn a, it was an article that I just happened to stumble across from our chief revenue officer and president of our customer and field ops. So it happens to be one of our leaders, but, but it was something that resonated with me, that was something along the lines of.
Don't wait until things are perfect to take advantage of AI. And I think that that is a, something that I've personally had to really focus on, almost reprogramming this idea that, you know, I come from an organization where you, you measure twice, you measure three times, cut once. We're just not in that moment, you know?
It's like just start cutting. And so I think that's one thing that I think about just broadly when I think about ai. And what good advice for anyone? I think in AI for talent acquisition, I actually think the most interesting use cases for AI and HR are in TA. I'm biased, of course, but I think it's like fundamentally changing.
Every aspect of TA. And I think we're just, again, at the beginning of that. So of course there's the how do you automate, how do you augment all the things that are obvious that you should be doing that. But I think it has a deep implication in all the right ways to get better on how we actually assess and subsequently, like develop talent.
So we've been talking about the, you know, skills first approach for years. Some people are fatigued on it because the reality is it's taken a little bit of time to figure out how do we actually take advantage of that. But I think AI is finally going to make that possible at scale. And so when I say how do we assess and, and hire and ultimately develop talent using skills to hire, that was a way to say, okay, how do we look past job titles or degrees?
And, but I think it's even more, how are you using AI-driven insights? To lookat all aspects of someone's capabilities, their mindset, their potential, their learning agility. But you can also now start to look at how do you use it in assessing like your process, the content of your interviews, who you've got actually doing the interviews, what are, you know, the length of the interviews, all of the contextual stuff.
You can, over time, we're gonna be able to say, we're gonna be able to pinpoint, okay, actually these types of questions, when mirrored with this insight about this type of talent is going to lead to the best hire for us, our specific organization and our specific culture and our specific product or sales needs or whatever it may be.
We're gonna have the ability. To do all the things with how do we just take the grunt work and make that better and easier? But I think it is ultimately going to redefine what we know when it comes to how we assess, hire, and develop talent.
[00:13:03] Dave Travers: So as you talk about all the power of AI and the overlay of using AI for skills-based rather than more traditional proxies like educational degrees or things like that, as you think about someone who's earlier on in this journey, if there's a TA leader.
Who has some software that's helping out manage the process and compliance, but isn't leveraging AI to transform their process today, having been through it, how would you coach someone to get started?
[00:13:33] Sarah Tilley: Honestly, I think that AI specifically. I think the biggest opportunities that we have are like that top of funnel, you know, piece of it. Yeah. There's just trillions and trillions of points of data out there, and now there's tools that can aggregate that and serve it up in a way that's like most valuable for your specific needs. So to me, that's, that's a no-brainer as to where you get started.
[00:13:59] Dave Travers: Makes total sense. Like the, to the extent you are using the mo, the most powerful modern technology to bring people into the very start of the process, every step beyond that will get better if you're bringing the right candidates in at the top of the funnel
[00:14:12] Sarah Tilley: And doing a lot of, again, you know, kind of regression analysis and, and correlating, but you know, that's where you, it gets smarter over time, right? So you can correlate. But, you know, we were talking about earlier in my career, it used to be the value was in recruiting that you could find the talent.
That's, that's not the value anymore really. If you, if you're using AI in the right way, it is, how do you, how do you get smarter about exactly what talent is a fit for your specific needs now and in the future? And then, how are you using the human-to-human connection? Because it is a very emotional thing to change jobs, and so you, you really do need to have recruiters and sourcers focusing on that building trust and building the relationship in order to make it most effective.
[00:15:03] Dave Travers: I think that is super insightful because there are, to oversimplify, I've seen different companies use two different paradigms. One is to use technology to remove the need for humans in the process and then there's using technology to accelerate the rate at which two human beings are talking to each other in a way where it's really impactful for both of them.
And that latter one is so powerful when you get people to remove the toil in just the unnecessary wait time. And like all of a sudden, I'm immediately talking to somebody I should absolutely be talking to. That's really great.
[00:15:35] Sarah Tilley: Yeah. I mean, think about it. It's, it's up there with who you choose to marry, where you choose to live. I mean, it's a. It's one of the most, again, emotional decisions you'll make.
[00:15:44] Dave Travers: That's exactly right. Okay. So, as you think about your own company, where the talent is so core to the strategy, and I've heard your CEO speak about this, about how talent strategy and corporate strategy are. So in a knowledge worker-oriented business like yours are so integrally linked.
How do you think about the interplay of just managing your function as the talent leader? And how do you marry that with what's happening out in the business and the needs of the business in that strategy, and vice versa. How do you use what you're seeing in terms of the talent landscape and who's available to attract and recruit and retain and marry that to where the business is heading?
[00:16:27] Sarah Tilley: Yeah, and I, and I do love that bill, is so consistent in how he talks about the tagline is kind of like, you know, the business strategy is the talent strategy. The talent strategy is the business strategy. But underneath that, it really is like he has such an understanding of it's all about the team that you assemble, is how you win the game.
And so that means you've gotta really invest in that team. You've got to instill loyalty within that team. You've gotta coach that team. You've gotta reward that team, all of those things. Loyalty is very big. To him, and it works because we all do feel like it gets bigger every day, but this big company feels smaller to us and we feel like it's ours, you know?
And so I think that's, can't underestimate that. But in to your question about like, how do you think about the work that you're doing in the context of the, the larger. Company priorities or strategy? You know, I think that it, it sort of goes back to what I was talking about in terms of figuring out who are you trying to serve, what are you trying to serve?
And I think you have to start by being really smart on what's happening within the business. To me, again, that's table stakes. It's like learn the business, understand the strategy. Ask questions about the revenue goals, customer challenges, market trends, you know, speak the language of the business. You have to start there.
Then you go even further about taking that understanding on, okay, now what is the business care about? What is this persona that we're looking to serve care about? And then you're designing your hiring strategies, your development strategies around those needs rather than doing, which certainly is how I started off.
You create a solution, right? Like, I've got the answer, I'm gonna build this, create it, and then I'm gonna, you know, retrofit this into the business. So I think it really is the, you know, you have to work very closely with all the stakeholders to understand what are the priorities, what are the challenges, and then solve for that.
It's just like when a developer is focusing on the end user experiencing when designing a product. It's the same approach that we take to all things employees and leaders, and their journey. From onboarding to learning to performance, starting with recruiting, but it is really about taking that approach and then using continuous feedback.
Iterate, iterate, iterate as you get smarter, but continuing to make sure you're putting that persona, the people at the center of every decision and designing. For their needs.
[00:18:57] Dave Travers: That is absolutely critical, and I think one of the things that comes up is you think about doing all the things you are talking about in terms of understanding the business needs and then being responsive to that from TA standpoint.
As we were talking earlier about AI and skills-based hiring and all the tools you need and the people you need to change processes to adapt to be able to conduct talent acquisition in a new and better way. One of the things that comes up is. In order to be able to effectively do all that, you need resources like you need to be able to say to the business, Hey, if we're gonna do all this stuff, we're gonna adapt to the types of people we have.
We're gonna embrace new technology, we're gonna change our processes. It can't be just a lean team who's just screening candidates all day long. You need some people with the bandwidth and the technology budget to go out and do some of these things, or internal. Development budget for a tech company like you.
So the question I think a lot of TA leaders struggle with. Is, how do I go out and start advocating for resources if my team is so lean right now that I don't have time to be interacting with all the executives to understand corporate strategy better, or it doesn't feel like I have the people on my team who can go out and assess what technology is out there that would be best for my process and my talent needs?
How do you make the case for that?
[00:20:19] Sarah Tilley: That's a really interesting question. I've learned a lot on that actually, even in the last couple of years. I honestly think, and we've already done this at ServiceNow to a certain extent within my team, like you find people that are just really good at the innovation piece of our world.
They're, they're the ones that can picture like sci-fi tthat is, you know, they can, they can kind of think of the moonshot initiatives and you create space for them to start to shape what could be. I do think it's pretty important that you try to distinguish some of the day-to-day from the dedicated focus on innovation, even if you have to get scrappy on how you do that because if you have people that are equally burdened with both. Then you're just not gonna get, I think, the most out of either side of that. So I think finding those individuals who love it, who are really good at it, who can think innovatively, and then having them build. Out some very specific use case ideas, like really compelling that is going to like allow you to deinvest in expensive, clunky investments that you have and be able to like articulate a very tangible like result.
So, you know, it's like build this, this use case. Here's what we're committing to. That's a much better way to get some of the incremental investment, I believe that gets you going on that path. And then once you get some wins on the board, then you can continue to commit to like deinvest in areas that will allow you to reinvest in the things that are, are going to propel you.
[00:22:03] Dave Travers: That is so smart because saying, I'm gonna boil the whole ocean. And we're going to increase productivity by 10% and reduce cost by 10%. If we do this project leaves the finance team or whoever you're having to sell, like being like, what evidence do I have of this is really gonna work? Whereas if you say, listen, we all agree.
Our biggest talent shortfall right now where we're having the most trouble filling roles, is in this department with this specific role. The, I can get 90 more people next month if we implement this new process by making this investment. All of a sudden, now you have somebody leaning in by being super specific, and then you can add on.
By the way, when this works, I wanna roll this out with the whole company, but let's start with the super tactical problem we all agree on. All of a sudden, you have somebody whose job is a gatekeeper leaning back. All of a sudden, they're leaning in.
[00:22:53] Sarah Tilley: That's right.
[00:22:54] Dave Travers: Okay, Sarah, we always end these episodes with a little bit of a rapid fire round, so I want you to imagine your case bill, the CEO of ServiceNow as getting in the elevator or saddling up next to you to make a cup of coffee in the kitchen at headquarters or whatever the case may be, and you have 30 or 60 seconds and he says, Hey, Sarah, I always talk about business strateg or our talent strategy.
And our talent strategy is our business strategy, but. As I think about going forward, the talent strategy part of that, how should we be measuring a year from now, two years from now, that what we're doing is working? What would your answer to that be?
[00:23:29] Sarah Tilley: I wish there was a better phrase for this. 'cause my mind goes to quality of hire. There's, there's gotta be a better way of, of saying that, but it really is, if you look at that in the broadest sense possible, like, okay, bill, the talent that we're hiring. Are they staying? Are they performing? Are they outperforming? If they're leaders, are their teams performing? Are their teams having a good experience with that leader?
[00:23:49] Sarah Tilley: That ultimately is that's it. You know, that's what you're trying to drive. And I think related to that, it is, okay, we've said we're gonna increase these types of skills, right? We've been targeting people that bring in this skills. Is that actually correlating to performance and how quickly they are ramping up and delivering impact and all of those things.
I think that at the end of the day. Is, that's the whole point.
[00:24:12] Dave Travers: Yep. Couldn't agree more tying talent results back to business results will work with business leaders every time. Okay. One more. So same scenario, CEO walks into the elevator and says, Hey Sarah, I spent a lot of time my time recruiting and interviewing executives and people for this company.
Gimme your one best tip. To get better at interviewing.
[00:24:35] Sarah Tilley: Get them to articulate very real situations that demonstrate their adaptability and adaptability. To me, there's a lot that goes into that. So that means they're resilient, right? They get over stuff and they pivot quickly. They're curious and they use that information to adapt, you know, have them articulate and press and probe to really sort of get a sense of how adaptable they are, because I think that that is the.
The number one thing that that you want, especially in this moment in time when AI is transforming everything, and I think you really do look for examples, situations, accomplishments that required adaptability.
[00:25:18] Dave Travers: That is so smart, Sarah, because the future is gonna be different than the present. And so somebody who just wants to stay doing the exact same thing is not gonna be as successful as somebody who's super adaptable.
So I love that. Sarah Tilley, it is clear why you're a talent all star. Thanks so much for taking the time with us today.
[00:25:36] Sarah Tilley: Thanks for having me. What a pleasure. So much fun.
[00:25:42] Dave Travers: That's Sarah Tilley, the Senior Vice President of Global Talent Acquisition at ServiceNow. We'll put her LinkedIn profile in the notes below. And just a reminder, we put the video versions of these conversations on YouTube, also on the official ZipRecruiter channel. Want to get in touch with us? Send us an email at talentallstars@ziprecruiter.com. I'm Dave Travers. Thanks for listening to Talent All Stars, and we'll see you next week.