What I actually do
Sometimes companies have a hiring problem. More often, they have a decision problem that shows up as a hiring problem.
I'm Kate Rose, formerly Smithson. I've spent nearly a decade in talent acquisition across agency, in-house, and leadership roles, with deep experience in GTM hiring (sales, marketing, legal, finance, and customer-facing leadership for companies scaling revenue). On the agency side, I ran searches for 100+ clients across technical, product, and specialized roles including electrical engineers and hardware engineers. Most recently, Head of Talent Acquisition at SCA Pharma, a PE-backed 600-person 503B outsourcing facility under FDA oversight, where I built the talent function from the ground up and led hiring across Clinical, Sales, Legal, Finance, Engineering, and Leadership. Before that, I led go-to-market talent at Redox, a VC-backed healthtech company, and delivered 75+ hires including doubling the sales team.
I build process, coach teams, help founders and leaders make better calls on who to hire, and set up the systems that make it repeatable, from kickoff to ATS selection and setup.
I also bring technical implementation experience that goes beyond TA. I've worked directly with regulated data through APIs and JSON, used AI-assisted workflows in my own work, and integrated AI data across systems. When a problem spans hiring and the systems around it, I can hold both.
I'd rather take longer to make the right hire than hit a deadline with the wrong one. That said, when I joined Redox I cut sales time-to-hire from 57 days to 20. The work I do usually makes hiring faster over time, not slower, because most of the slowness comes from shifting searches once gaps in the original scope surface. In regulated environments, a bad executive hire costs 2-3x the role's salary when you factor in failure risk. Speed matters. Speed at the expense of quality is what gets companies into trouble.
The common thread across everything I work on: regulated or complex environments where hiring mistakes cost more because the talent pool is narrower and the stakes are higher. The systems behind hiring (ATS, HRIS, data pipelines, AI workflows) have to be built deliberately, not bolted on.
