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What happens when a 161-year-old iconic brand decides it’s time to reinvent how it hires? In this episode of The Frontlines, Tim Sackett and Madeline Laurano sit down—live from Workday Horizons in Atlanta—with Jason Smith, Director of Talent Acquisition at Carter’s, to talk about the company’s journey from decentralized recruiting to an AI-enabled hiring strategy spanning retail stores, distribution centers, and corporate teams.
Jason shares how Carter’s began using Paradox in 2022 to solve an urgent high-volume hiring challenge. During peak season, the company may need to hire hundreds of distribution center employees at once—and it competes for that talent with some of the largest employers in the country. Carter’s realized it couldn’t always win on pay, but it could win on speed. By automating candidate engagement and interview scheduling, the TA team can now move applicants from application to an in-person interview in as little as 24 to 48 hours. After proving the model in its distribution centers, Carter’s expanded it into corporate hiring and, most recently, across its retail stores.
But this conversation goes far beyond efficiency. Jason explains how Carter’s is deliberately choosing where automation belongs—and where human interaction still matters. Scheduling, routine communication, and other administrative tasks can be automated. Hiring decisions, meaningful candidate conversations, and the relationships between recruiters and business leaders remain human. The goal isn’t to remove recruiters; it’s to give them the capacity to become better talent advisors.
The group also tackles some of the most fascinating—and controversial—questions facing TA today. When Carter’s receives 20,000 applications for just 70 college hires, can traditional recruiting processes genuinely give every qualified candidate a fair chance? Is AI rejecting candidates, or can it actually help more people get considered? Should candidates be allowed to use ChatGPT to prepare for interviews, strengthen their resumes, or organize their responses? And where is the line between smart preparation and candidate fraud?
Jason also discusses the renewed importance of in-person campus recruiting, candidate expectations for speed and convenience, multilingual hiring experiences, and why even a part-time applicant still wants to speak with a real person before accepting a job.
This episode is sponsored by Paradox by Workday, helping organizations simplify high-volume hiring through conversational AI, mobile-first candidate experiences, automated scheduling, and faster connections between employers and talent.
If you’re trying to balance AI, automation, candidate experience, recruiter capacity, and the human moments that make hiring work, this episode delivers a refreshingly practical look at how one of America’s most recognized brands is doing it on the frontlines.
