More Human, Not Less

What we talked about.

Sunny Ray sits down with John Light, president and founder of Sabertooth, for a conversation built around the thesis 'more human, not less.' John traces his path from accounting and auditing at USA Waste and Waste Management into recruiting, then into building specialized retained search practices across energy, fintech and health tech. He explains why the market between 120K and 350K base salary is underserved by both contingent and retained search firms, and how Sabertooth's retention model blends the reliability of retained search with the speed of contingent placement, achieving over 95 percent fill rates and 96 percent retention. Much of the discussion centers on why AI should free people to focus on judgment, relationships and decision making rather than replace them, using Ford's rehire of laid off engineers as evidence. John also shares the integrity, intellect and initiative framework he learned from a mentor, and reflects on personal hardship, including losing his first wife to cancer, that shaped his outlook on building Sabertooth.

A recruiting veteran explains why AI should make hiring more human, not less, and how he built a firm around that idea.

The questions, and the answers.

What is Sabertooth and what are you building?

Sabertooth serves the underserved middle of the market, people earning roughly 120K to 350K base salary, who aren't well served by big retained firms or contingent firms. We built what we call the retention model, blending the service level and success rate of retained search with the speed and cost of contingent. In three and a half years we've sustained over a 95 percent fill rate and a 96 percent stick rate.

What's the overall thesis behind 'more human, not less'?

AI is incredibly powerful but its best use isn't taking over the world, it's helping us be better at what we are as humans. AI doesn't learn the way we do; there's no negative consequence shaping its decisions like there is for a person who touches a hot pan. As AI advances, the real bottleneck won't be infrastructure, it'll be people, because people hire people and business is fundamentally relational.

Why doesn't Sabertooth run job ads?

We developed our own AI tool and dataset to find who's best aligned on hard skills, whether they're looking or not, and reach out directly for a person to person conversation, because interest drives availability. Statistically 87 percent of the time someone will pick up the phone and talk to a recruiter with a relevant opportunity. You can't get that response rate running ads or sending emails.

Take me back, what did a young John Light think he was going to be, and what pulled you toward numbers?

I wanted to understand how businesses work, and accounting is a great place to see that since you're using numbers to paint a picture of a company's results. After Texas A&M I worked on the industry side at USA Waste, which merged with Waste Management, and got to touch sales, operations and maintenance. Later I moved into audit and public accounting, which drained me because I couldn't engage with problems outside the scope of work.

How did cutting your teeth in Houston's energy sector shape how you operate today?

The energy industry, from power generation to the gas pump, is incredibly diverse and deep with technology. My first pure tech role was heading marketing analytics search for a retail power company in 2017, where I found all four finalists in Houston by pulling speaker and guest lists from Python and data science conferences rather than running ads, doing the human legwork of referrals and conversations.

Who or what shaped the way you think about people and matching, mentors or hard lessons?

A guy named Mike Sherbany, who was brilliant in retained search and could gauge someone's IQ within five points in about ten minutes. He taught me to focus on integrity, intellect and initiative. Integrity means consistency, being the same person on paper, on LinkedIn and in the interview. Intellect means intellectual curiosity, not raw IQ. Initiative means seeing a problem and acting on it regardless of title.

When did the gap in the market that led to Sabertooth first become obvious to you?

About 15 years ago. I noticed contingent recruiting only fills around 15 percent of job orders, so you're often working for free and can't invest deeply in candidates and clients. Retained search works below the C-suite but becomes prohibitively expensive and slow. I saw an underserved middle for directors, VPs and senior managers, which became the thesis behind the retention model, developed alongside major personal life changes.