Description
Every organization carries a backlog of searches it cannot resolve. The requisition demanding six precise capabilities in a single candidate, located in a specific geography. The role with competitive compensation that still loses out to stronger offers. The in-office mandate that eliminates the majority of interested applicants. Most firms allow the backlog to persist or attempt to solve it by adding headcount. This position was designed to eliminate it.
You will own that backlog directly. No direct reports, no established framework to follow. These searches present difficulty because the candidate pool is narrow, the work structure excludes otherwise-qualified talent, or the offer is solid but not market-leading. Your task is to identify the approach others overlooked. The majority of your stakeholders are senior leaders with firm convictions and misaligned priorities; some have abandoned confidence in skills-based hiring entirely. You maintain your position with both groups and reset expectations through documented evidence.
The second half of the role is ensuring problems do not recur. You will apply AI daily and construct your own solutions when you encounter a repeating obstacle, completing them in hours rather than submitting tickets and waiting weeks. Anything that can be generalized is passed to engineering for formalization. Few talent acquisition roles permit you to deploy fixes independently. This one requires it.
We prefer to set expectations now rather than waste your time. This role is not suitable if:
- You require a defined process before taking action.
- You prioritize being well-regarded over achieving results.
- Heavy documentation and stakeholder accountability exhaust you.
- You expect requests to arrive fully formed, with someone other than yourself tracking open items.
If that list describes your ideal work environment, continue. You will close the year having filled searches others deemed impossible, with executives requesting you specifically, and tools you built in an afternoon still operational across the portfolio.
Our application process demands meaningful effort, because the work does. If this description increased your interest, apply.
What you will be doing
- Resolving the most challenging requisitions in the portfolio: limited candidate pools, non-standard processes, previously unsuccessful searches, and stakeholders with divergent priorities.
- Bringing executive stakeholders with conflicting requirements into alignment on a single decision, and restoring confidence with those who have lost trust, calibrated through leadership input.
- Addressing the root cause of the breakdown: assessments that no longer differentiate strong from weak candidates, AI scoring logic that has degraded, or job descriptions attracting the wrong applicant profile.
- Creating targeted solutions in hours using Claude Code, Skills, Lovable, and MCPs (Model Context Protocol servers), then transferring anything reusable to engineering for formalization.
- Delivering pipeline diagnostics, compensation market data, and candidate pool sizing that executives can use immediately.
- Resolving inquiries that arrive incomplete: a partial name, no job title, a vague candidate reference. You determine the intended subject and maintain accountability for every open commitment on both sides until resolution.
What you will NOT be doing
- Conducting resume reviews or initial phone screens
- Waiting for stakeholders to initiate status check-ins
- Leading a team, conducting performance evaluations, or managing headcount allocation
- Recreating the same manual workaround for each new requisition
- Permitting hiring requests that pose compliance or policy risk to proceed without challenge
- Operating under direct oversight or following prescriptive instructions
Key responsibilities
Close the searches no one else in the organization can close.
Candidate requirements
- 8+ years in recruiting, talent acquisition, or executive search, with recent years focused on difficult-to-fill or executive-level requisitions.
- Difficult-to-fill searches have been your standard workload, managed end-to-end from intake to close, not an occasional outlier.
- Successfully closed searches another recruiter or firm had previously failed to fill, where you designed the strategy rather than executing an existing playbook.
- Worked directly with executive decision-makers as the accountable owner, and maintained a firm position with documentation when faced with disagreement.
- Built or revised a hiring assessment using outcome data, not simply administered one designed by others.
- Use AI tools daily and can identify a work product you created with them in the last three months. Building your own using Claude Code, low-code platforms, or agentic workflows is valued more highly than using a finished product.
- Produced compensation benchmarking or market-sizing analysis for an executive audience.
- Personally accountable for identifying US hiring compliance risk: pay bands, worker classification, or pay transparency rules.
- Have authored artifacts that others used: an SOP, process document, or post-mortem.
- At least 6 hours per weekday overlapping US business hours.
Nice to have
- Refined a system through multiple iterations using actual performance or retention data, not a single deployment.
- Talent acquisition or executive search within a private equity or venture-backed operator, or a multi-business holding company.
- Served as the escalation point for other recruiters when their searches stalled.
Applying for a role? Here’s what to expect.
Crossover's skill assessment process combines innovative AI power with decades of human research, to take the guesswork, human bias, and pointless filters out of recruiting high-performing teams.
Chat-style screening interview.
Cognitive aptitude test.
Prove real-world job skills.
Interview with the hiring manager.
Pass proctored test.
Accept job offer.
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