Founder and CEO, SmartHire
Sergey Kalnish is the founder and CEO of SmartHire; a talent acquisition technology company focused on disrupting the recruitment industry by building a fair, transparent, and efficient job market.
Born in Russia in 1984, Sergey developed a love for innovation and entrepreneurship from a very young age. As a teenager spending time with his father, himself an entrepreneur for more than 30 years, he learned that the world around him can be changed and he can use his imagination to create new products and services, a realization that would shape his life and career.
Sergey graduated Summa Cum Laude from Northwood University in 2007 and embarked on a career in Sales and Marketing. His career would not follow a traditional trajectory and only 6 months into his first job at the Birch Run Expo Centre, Sergey saw an opportunity and started his first company, High Impact Marketing focused on creating, promoting and managing events culminating in the 2008 Sports & Fitness Expo, a 3 day festival attended by over 5,000 people and featuring over 65 vendors and various demonstrations from skydiving to bodybuilding, breakdancing and scuba-diving.
After his first startup venture, Sergey went on to gain valuable experience by working in companies like; Cydcor, Sun Art Design, Unifirst and Pointstreak Sports Technologies. In 2013, he came in contact with the technology recruitment industry in Toronto and spent the next three and a half years learning the fundamental challenges that both employees and employers were facing throughout the hiring process. In 2016, Sergey left the corporate recruiting world and started SmartHire with the intention of removing inefficiencies in the hiring process and making it easier for great companies and candidates to find each other.
Today, SmartHire is working with leading recruitment agencies in Canada to build and deliver disruptive talent acquisition products and services leveraging cutting edge technologies like Machine Learning and progressive Canadian immigration policies like the Global Talent Stream.
Sergey has been actively involved in the entrepreneurship and innovation community in Toronto, serving as Co-Director, Startup Coach and Mentor for Founder Institute, the world’s largest pre-seed startup accelerator. Some of his accomplishments include being a finalist in the Tech Den Startup competition at the 2017 HR Tech Summit as well as being a guest speaker at the DisruptHR talks in Toronto, Canada.
Away from work, Sergey enjoys spending time with his wife Tina, their family and friends, as well as coaching youth basketball with the Scarborough Basketball Association and Canadian Basketball Academy.
