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The Digital Executive
Sebastian Scott: Clera Cuts Through Hiring Noise with AI | Ep 1234
00:21:43
In this episode of The Digital Executive podcast, host Brian Thomas speaks with Sebastian Scott, co-founder and CEO of Clera, about how AI is reshaping the hiring landscape. Sebastian shares his entrepreneurial journey—from launching his first company at 17 to building Clera into a fast-growing AI-powered talent platform with over 75,000 professionals and 500+ startup clients. He explains how Clera flips the traditional recruiting model with a candidate-first approach, using AI agents to replicate and scale the work of human recruiters. The conversation dives into what’s broken in today’s hiring system—namely the overwhelming “noise” created by mass applications, misaligned incentives on job platforms, and widespread candidate ghosting. Looking ahead, Sebastian explores how AI will enable smarter matchmaking, reduce friction in job searches, and support greater career mobility in a rapidly changing workforce. As automation accelerates and job markets evolve, platforms like Clera ...
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- [00:00]
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Brian (Podcast Host)
Welcome to Coruscant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast. Do you work in emerging tech? Working on something innovative? Maybe an entrepreneur? Apply to be a guest at www.corazon.com brand welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is Sebastian Scott. Sebastian Scott is the co founder and CEO of Clara, an AI powered talent platform rethinking how professionals connect with career opportunities. He leads the company's strategy, fundraising and go to market efforts. Having grown Clara to more than 75,000 represented professionals and over 500 startup clients in under a year. He personally onboarded the company's first 100 plus startup clients and developed a success fee model. He also led Clara's 3 million pre seed round backed by 1984 ventures, deal ventures and angels from companies including OpenAI, LinkedIn and more. Well, good afternoon Sebastian. Welcome to the show.
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Sebastian Scott (Guest, CEO of Clara)
Thanks Brian for having me.
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Brian (Podcast Host)
Absolutely my friend. I appreciate you making the time and hailing out of San Francisco today. I'm in Kansas City. We're just traversing two time zones, but I always appreciate the efforts you all make to jump on a podcast with me and and Sebastian. Let's jump into your first question. You founded your first company at age 17 and have built multiple ventures across AI and talent platforms. What experiences shaped your journey to becoming CEO and co founder of Clara?
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Sebastian Scott (Guest, CEO of Clara)
That's a great question Brian. Thank you so much. I think it was actually a lucky coincidence that I had the privilege to start a company at 17. So me and my friends were still in high school. We were noticing challenges within our friends and age groups of connecting to other People and at the time we were pre university also trying to figure out what's next. And so we basically connected tutors to pupils to help them throughout their career. And we're able to scale the platform to quite a few users, actually ended up scaling it to 10,000 users. And it was actually a pretty intense time. But at the same time, when you're early, when you're young, you just start building because you don't really have anything else to overthink over. So I think it's been a great time. That shaped me a lot into having a bias for action and just going with your gut feeling and helping. And fundamentally what we noticed is that even at the young ages, a lot of these pupils and students were challenged in what they want to become in their career. So I kind of always wanted to had this itch to start something in the, in the career space and help them even after their school never had the chance to do so. But that was definitely one key pillar. And then what sort of made it tip in the end, roughly one, one and a half years ago, is someone from my family was actually laid off from his job and that stuck me quite a bit. I really tried helping and noticed the power that recruiters have in the market because there was a recruiter helping this family member of mine really understand what their passion is, what their background is, what they're really good at, and tried understanding which, which opportunity could be a great fit. And I was a bystander in this moment and I, I saw, wow, can we somehow provide the same quality, the same type of support to more people? Because I personally, I've never had the privilege in working with recruit. At the same time, I was working a lot on tech, on, on AI and I saw there's a huge opportunity in mimicking what a human recruiter does and scaling that to large amount of people. And that's what we're doing with Terra. We are providing an AI talent agent, an AI form of a human headhunter, to really help thousands, millions of talented people find and explore the next opportunity.
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Brian (Podcast Host)
That's awesome. Really appreciate that you're passionate about things, obviously you're curious. You know, you went through a couple of stories here, but you know, starting out with the backstory, there was a gap right in the, in the market, so to speak, when you were in school finding tutors to match with students and grew that to a significant number. I think that's pretty cool. But you always had a vision to help young grads also find opportunities. And then it really hits you when you share that story about that family member that was laid off in the
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Brian (Podcast Host)
The work that and the knowledge that goes behind the scenes as far as recruiting and you wanted to explore more and help people and I think that's just an awesome story. So thank you. And Sebastian Clara has grown rapidly, representing over 60,000 professionals and 500 startups in under a year. What key strategies enable that kind of early traction and scale?
- [06:21]
Sebastian Scott (Guest, CEO of Clara)
Yeah, that's a great question. Actually by now we've grown even further. So we just crossed the 75,000 professionals mark this week, which we're very excited about as a team. I think there, there's multiple pillars that, that we are focusing on. I think for one we, we've seen there, there's a lot of different approaches in the market and generally recruiting has always had a very company first approach where recruiters work for a company, they understand what type of role this company is looking for and then will approach candidates all over the country to see if there's a great fit. We felt for the first time that we can actually turn this around and really have a candidate first approach. And so our value proposition to people in startups, in tech is quite simple. We will be your talent agent, we'll understand your background and we'll always work for you. And this has really helped us grow our platform because a lot of our users are then referring us to friends and really supporting our mission there. Then secondly, I think what was important ultimately we are building a marketplace so we both serve candidates but also companies was that of course we needed to solve the chicken and egg challenge. So we started off acquiring some important customers and important startups that are fast growing, that are impressive and that have big brands. And so by showing to candidates all over that we are working with these great institutions, these great companies, we were able to already provide quite, quite some value there. And then I think ultimately the big disruption that we're seeing is that fundamentally if you're a really good recruiter, your work is amazing and everyone will refer you, but at some point you're just limited in time, right? You can only work seven days A week. And so scaling beyond that doesn't work. And that's where our new products is. An AI agent is basically able to scale because for the first time our learnings all go into the system and that can now serve 75,000, maybe 150,000 in a couple of months. And so this is for the first time that we think we can scale a really high touch white glove service. And then ultimately a lot about community, a lot about referrals, actually less on ads. This is something we want to explore more. But I think fundamentally what was important to us is understanding can we actually grow a community without paying for ads? Because this is the key feedback loop that we are looking for to understand
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Sebastian Scott (Guest, CEO of Clara)
The product that we're working on and providing is actually living up to its expectations.
- [09:37]
Brian (Podcast Host)
That's amazing. And just to highlight a few things, I think what you're doing is just great. But the milestone you did correct me is 75,000. You crossed that threshold this week, professionals, which is awesome. But I like your candidate first approach. You're building relationships, obviously you're representing these folks looking for jobs, you're their talent agency. But you're also helping employers, startups, making those perfect matches. But lastly, I love that you're leveraging the power of AI so that you can go beyond just a limitation of humans. Right. You know, there's a lot of work that goes into recruiting and as you said, there's only seven days in a week and AI can really advance and move that volume and connect people much more rapidly. So thank you. And Sebastian, you focused on solving the challenge of matching the right people to the right opportunities. What fundamentally, what's fundamentally broken in today's hiring and talent marketplace?
- [10:36]
Sebastian Scott (Guest, CEO of Clara)
Great question. And I think I could probably rumble on numbers for ages. But I think fundamentally the core problem that we are seeing is noise. So seeing a lot of volume over value, fundamentally meaning both sides of the market, be it hiring managers, companies, but also candidates are increasingly using leveraging AI to automate processes. And also Automate mass applications on both sides. And the challenge is that when both sides do this, it just leads to hundreds and thousands of applications that individual candidates make when they're looking for a job. Meaning that when a hiring manager receives an application, it's really hard for them to understand how genuinely interested this candidate actually is. And the same goes for the other side, right? Hiring managers using AI to scan resumes. And so there's fundamentally an environment basically of AI technology creating more volume, more noise, and it's really hard to understand who's actually a fit. And then secondly, what I've always found quite interesting is that there is a lot of job boards and job platforms that have fundamentally misaligned incentives. So most of them are actually paid by click and not per placement. So they're not incentivized to actually find you a job, but rather to get you to click on an ad. And so a lot of these job platforms actually are not even aware how many hires they make on a year because they can't track this data. And so for us, quite importantly, we always wanted to focus on how can we optimize and how can we work on maximizing the chances that everyone in our pool will actually land a job. And so that's how we work, and that's also how we are incentivized. So companies only pay us and reward us if we actually find them higher. And then the third root cause or challenge that I'm seeing right now, and I think that's causing a lot of also emotional damage for a lot of candidates that are frustrated and just challenged in this situation, is there's a lot of ghosting taking place. Because when hiring managers receive 5,000 applications for a job, it's really hard for them to be transparent. And where candidates are in the process, and this is really disencouraging for a lot and causing now at McDonald's a McDouble is 250.
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Sebastian Scott (Guest, CEO of Clara)
In my opinion, too large friction in the job market. So a lot of my friends are kind of not really that satisfied in their current job. But the thought of looking for a new opportunity, of exploring something else feels very emotionally draining. And I think this should never be the case. People should be more incentivized to change their current job if they're actually unhappy. And that's one of the key pillars that we're working towards with Clara in removing the friction and making it easier for people to find a job. They're actually really passionate to working.
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Brian (Podcast Host)
That's awesome. You're really solving the problem here. And you're right, I think AI, there's a lot of benefit to AI, but today, as you said, the core problem is all the noise people. It's this volume over value. Everybody's using it, so it's just again, creating that noise. I also like that you talk about this and a lot of people don't know this, but you know the incentives are backwards in my opinion. Right. You talked about them getting paid on clicks or matches, but really not paid on hiring the candidate or placing the candidate. And that's where you are certainly differentiating yourself. I know you're not the only one on the market, but again, that you're highlighting the value and the benefit of this type of model. And of course ghosting is a big problem, we all know that. And it is creating a lot of friction in the market, emotional challenges for candidates as well. So thank you. And Sebastian, last question of the day. As we look ahead, how do you see AI transforming hiring, talent discovery and career mobility over the next decade? And what role will platforms like Clara play in that evolution?
- [15:03]
Sebastian Scott (Guest, CEO of Clara)
Yeah, great question. I think my answer would probably be twofold. One, on the general improvements that AI have and can have on the process of getting hired and hiring, fundamentally. And then the second is more broadly or macroeconomically speaking, what impact AI will have on jobs themselves, on the job market, starting with the first. So I think fundamentally what we're seeing right now is there is an increased usage of agents. So for the first time, AI has been an enabler of doing end to end tasks automated. So when it comes to hiring, we're seeing a lot of advantages of basically removing a lot of these mundane tasks, especially for our hiring managers, but also for job applicants where maybe historically you would have needed to look through the newspaper or go to LinkedIn or job board every day to see if there's something new. But now you can have your personalized agent that will scan the market every morning and will inform you if there's something interesting. And that's also what we're leaning into with clever. Right? So we work as your personal career assistant and career partner, where whenever we see there's a new opportunity, we will reach out and we will share them with you. And then secondly, matching, I think just like in dating, we see actually a lot of similarities when it comes to the technology behind it so far, jobs and candidates, it's been very difficult to matchmake. Matchmaking has basically taken place on a keyword level or on a very limited technical way. And for the first time with large language models, you can go much deeper in understanding what do people want and what do these roles require. And you're much more precise in being able to match those sides. So I think that's probably one of the most exciting parts for me personally, that for example, we recently were able to connect a software engineer with a company. The software engineer fundamentally wouldn't have had the best credentials for this company as they would have only hired from Ivy league universities. But actually what our system found is that this software engineer had built a very, very similar project by himself and the company was looking for exactly this skill set. And so that's something that no existing job board could have provided for. And given his skill set, we were able to connect them and within two weeks he actually got an offer and it's now working for them. And that's just sort of the tip of the iceberg on what we're starting at. And the second dimension on the job market in general. I mean, I personally do expect quite a lot of layoffs happening this year. I think there's still ambiguity in the market whether these layoffs are actually truly triggered by AI or if corporates are using AI more as a scapegoat. So that's something we will still have to monitor more closely. But there is definitely going to be huge disruptions in the job market as more and more processes are automated. And what our take is that fundamentally there will be an ever growing mobility in the job market. So people will have to redefine their careers more often and more quickly and thus will require more of a matching technology. And so that's something that we want to lean into even further. And what's driving us quite a bit.
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Brian (Podcast Host)
Thank you. And I think that's important. You highlighted the layoffs that are happening and going to happen this year. The matching, that matching technology obviously is going to be key to really dial us in and narrow those matches, make them a lot better, obviously. But we know that AI in the future is only going to get better. You talked about that today. Agents are doing that end to end work through a lot of these tasks, but it's only going to get better. And I really like your kind of stepping through the similarities with the dating industry. Right. You're going deep into the candidates experience, education, projects, etc. Again, for better outcomes. In the end, we want to have a win win situation. So I really appreciate that. And Sebastian, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
- [19:28]
Sebastian Scott (Guest, CEO of Clara)
Equally, thanks for the thoughtful questions. Brian was a pleasure.
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Brian (Podcast Host)
Bye for now.
- [19:42]
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