On June 10, 2025, SmartRecruiters launched a brand-new AI-powered hiring platform — and with it, we said goodbye to the old way of using Applicant Tracking Systems. At the center of this change is Winston, our AI recruiting companion that makes hiring faster, easier, and more personal for everyone involved.
But this story isn’t just about technology. It’s also about the teamwork, creativity, and determination of Smartians across different teams. In this interview, three of them — Victor Montalvao (Senior Group Design Manager), Ghislain Fouche (Team Lead, Solutions Consulting), and Matteo Sumberaz (Engineering Manager) — share what it was like to bring Winston to life. From designing a better experience, solving technical challenges, and showing customers the real value — each brought something unique to the table.
Watch the video to hear their story, or keep reading to see the key moments in their own words.
Designing for Real People: Why Winston Matters
What part did you play in launching this product, and what made it exciting for you as a design leader?
Victor Montalvao, Senior Group Design Manager: As a design leader, my focus was on connecting the vision with real job seekers' needs and setting up the team to design a great experience.
What made it exciting? That’s easy — the impact.
The impact is huge. For job seekers, applying becomes a simple conversational experience. For customers, it means hiring faster. And for the recruitment market overall, this is a real shift.
Solving Real Problems, Not Just Adding Featurese
How do you and your team help bring this product to life for our prospects and customers, and what impact do you see?
Ghislain Fouche, Team Lead, Solutions Consulting: This is something I do day to day — presenting the platform.
Right now, the goal is to position Winston in front of the real challenges our clients face. That’s where they see the value. Recruiting is hard, especially in today’s world, so being able to save time at every stage — from candidate application, through selection, all the way to hiring — is huge.
Winston Companion really changes things. It’s transforming the way we think about recruiting.
Going Beyond Limits: The Tech Behind Winston Companion
As Engineering Manager, was there a moment during this project where you or your team had to dig deep or go beyond your usual responsibilities? What did that look like in practice?
Matteo Sumberaz, Engineering Manager: There were several moments where we had to dig deep and keep going through many unknowns and unforeseen challenges. That was probably one of the most defining aspects of this project.
Building a recruiter-facing chat was completely new for the team. We couldn’t rely on our typical roles and processes — we had to figure out how our existing skills and ways of working could adapt to something we hadn’t taken on before. It really forced us to ask, “What are we missing, and how can we close those gaps quickly?”
In practice, this involved a lot of cross-functional support. Backend engineers had to understand conversation design. Other groups supported us within their domains. Companion spans across so many areas of the product that we weren’t familiar with.
Even as managers, we sometimes contributed directly to the work to help where the pressure was highest. It was all hands on deck, and everyone wore different hats depending on what was needed.
A great example of this was the Companion demo we prepared for the go-to-market teams. The timeline was tight, expectations were high, and we had to refine the experience quickly. I want to give a special shout-out to Deepak and Victor, who really went above and beyond to help us with that.
It was a tough journey. Aligning on the right experience wasn’t easy. We had unexpected engineering issues just a few hours before the deadline. But everybody stepped up, we closed gaps quickly, and we managed to deliver on time.
This effort showed us we can really push beyond our limits when we care about what we’re building. It was a true team effort — everyone rallied around the project and worked together even when the path wasn’t clear. That was one of the most rewarding parts of it all.
What Winston Taught Us About Smartian Spirit
What did this teach you about our company culture?
Ghislain Fouche, Team Lead, Solutions Consulting: To me, it shows that SmartRecruiters is once again ahead of the competition — always trying to set new standards.
The leadership team is always focused on what’s best for our clients and prospects. It’s not about adding features just to check a box — it’s about truly changing the way people recruit.
That’s completely in line with the recognition we’ve received from analysts who call us “visionary.” I think that’s the perfect word: visionary.
We’re not focused on yesterday — we’re building what it will mean to recruit tomorrow.
From Uncharted Territory to New Skills: Team Growth
How did this project help you or your team grow professionally?
Matteo Sumberaz, Engineering Manager: This project has been an incredible growth experience, not just for me but for the entire team.
Building Companion pushed us way outside our comfort zone — probably by a mile. We had to navigate completely uncharted territory. Machine learning engineers and backend engineers had to build narrow, conversation-driven systems — something we hadn’t done before. Designers had to rethink how to build an experience through conversation instead of UI elements. Product managers had to imagine how recruiters and hiring managers would adopt and use something so new.
We didn’t have many references in the industry. Everything was new, and we had to learn fast — and I think we did.
Over the last eight months, everyone on the team built new skills and worked with technologies we hadn’t used before — from multi-turn conversation machines and prompt engineering to scalable chat interfaces and new ways of thinking about user interaction. We really expanded our toolbox.
What’s most exciting is how this new knowledge blends with what we already had in AI systems and domain expertise. It reinforces our strengths. And with the new skills we’ve picked up, this forms a really powerful foundation for future innovation.
This set of experiences enabled us to build Winston Companion — and it’s going to fuel the next wave of innovation this team takes on.
From Forms to Conversation: The Design Challenge We Loved
From a design perspective, what was the biggest problem you were solving with this product, and how did your team approach it?
Victor Montalvao, Senior Group Design Manager: I wouldn’t call it a problem — more of a challenge. A big one, but a really good one.
We had to rethink the traditional full-form job application process and transform it into a conversational experience — one that felt human, helpful, and simple.
To make sure we were solving the right problems in the right way, we stayed close to our customers. We learned about their candidates, we designed solutions with them, and we tested with real users to make sure every step felt intuitive and humanized.
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