Wendi Zhang, former Business Development and Partnerships leader at Google’s AI-focused fund Gradient Ventures and Google’s Devices & Services team, joins emerging recruiting tech startup Celential.ai
Despite layoffs dominating the headlines, recruiting budgets shrinking, and uncertain hiring plans, one thing remains ultimately true in the technical recruiting space: there are still thousands of tech jobs open and top tech talent are still looking for that next rocket ship to join into the future.
At a critical juncture for the technical recruiting industry, Wendi Zhang brings 10+ years of business leadership and operational excellence to Celential.ai’s executive team. In this role, she will expand Celential’s strategic partners in helping companies fulfill their tech talent needs efficiently. Zhang will also lead business and people operations, driving positive changes to the internal organization and culture.
Zhang joins Celential at a time when most companies are still relying on traditional recruiting methods, such as job boards or professional networks, to connect with tech talent, the majority of which are passive and unresponsive. Building a strong pipeline of passive candidates requires a combination of deep recruiting expertise and effective tools — both are difficult to acquire, especially in uncertain economic times.
Celential.ai is dedicated to solving the challenges in technical recruiting with its AI-powered, human-in-the-loop talent sourcing solution. It enables hiring teams large and small to access high-quality passive candidates efficiently without any learning curve. In doing so, Celential also helps talent optimize their career potential by introducing them to their best next step. Zhang’s track record of success in business development at Google, Gradient Ventures, and early-stage startups positions her as the ideal leader to expedite Celential and partners’ joint impact in revolutionizing the technical recruiting process.
“When we first spoke with Wendi, we knew she was the missing piece to expanding our partnership network and accelerating our business,” said Andrew Dong, Co-Founder and CEO of Celential.ai. “She will be a crucial part of our success as we meet the rapidly growing demand of companies focused on keeping their hiring processes lean and adaptable to the current market and beyond.”
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Prior to joining Celential, Zhang led go-to-market for multiple early-stage startups and served as the Business Development Partner at Google’s AI-focused fund Gradient Ventures, where she advised portfolio companies on their business strategy and helped them win partnership and sales deals with Fortune 500 companies. She also led partnerships for different parts of the Google Devices & Services team and worked closely with developers and engineering leaders.
Through her time with tech companies across all stages and sizes, Zhang witnessed engineering and people leaders spending significant time and resources on technical recruiting and realized that the whole process was highly inefficient.
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“What Celential is doing is brilliant and addresses major pain points for companies and talent alike,” said Zhang. “By applying machine learning models to well-defined processes within technical sourcing, Celential has been able to build incredibly deep domain expertise that unlocks comprehensive insight into talent and companies beyond a resume or online profile. It is then able to apply those insights in activating those talents through highly personalized outreach that yields positive responses far above the industry average. Celential transforms how innovative companies and amazing people can find each other, and that is highly inspirational to me.