Description
Every organization that hires has a backlog it cannot resolve. The position requiring six distinct capabilities in a single individual, located in a remote market. The opportunity with competitive compensation, but not the top-tier offer candidates are weighing. The in-office mandate that eliminates the majority of interested applicants. Most firms allow the backlog to accumulate or assign additional recruiters. We created this position to eliminate it.
You will own that backlog directly. No subordinates reporting to you, no established framework to follow. These requisitions prove difficult because the candidate pool is minimal, the work arrangement excludes individuals who would otherwise accept, or the package is solid, but not exceptional. Your responsibility is to identify the approach others overlooked. The majority of your stakeholders are senior leaders with firm viewpoints and incompatible requirements; some have abandoned confidence in competency-based hiring entirely. You maintain your position with both groups and set the record straight with evidence.
The remainder of the role involves ensuring problems do not recur. You will apply AI daily and create your own solutions when encountering a repeated obstacle, in hours, rather than waiting weeks for support. Anything that scales moves to engineering for productionization. Few talent acquisition positions allow you to deploy the solution yourself. This one requires it.
We prefer to stop you now rather than waste your time. This is not the position for you if:
- You require a framework before taking action.
- You prioritize being well-regarded over being impactful.
- Documentation-intensive stakeholder engagement exhausts you.
- You require requests to arrive fully formed, and rely on something external to track open items.
If that list describes your ideal workweek, continue reading. You will close the year with requisitions others considered impossible, senior leaders who request you specifically, and solutions you created in an afternoon still operating across the organization.
Our application process demands genuine effort, because the role does. If this increased your interest in the position, apply.
What you will be doing
- Resolving the most challenging requisitions in the organization: limited candidate markets, non-standard processes, previously unsuccessful searches, and stakeholders with divergent expectations.
- Bringing executive stakeholders with incompatible criteria to a unified decision, and restoring confidence with those who have lost it, coordinated with leadership.
- Correcting the underlying cause of failure: assessments that no longer differentiate capable candidates from unsuitable ones, AI scoring logic that has degraded, or position descriptions attracting the incorrect audience.
- Creating targeted solutions in hours using Claude Code, Skills, Lovable, and MCPs (Model Context Protocol servers), then transferring anything that scales to engineering for hardening.
- Delivering pipeline diagnostics, compensation market data, and talent pool sizing that an executive can use immediately.
- Resolving inquiries that arrive incomplete: a given name only, no title, a vaguely recalled candidate. You determine who is being referenced, and you maintain every outstanding commitment on both sides until resolution.
What you will NOT be doing
- Screening resumes or conducting initial candidate interviews
- Waiting for stakeholders to request progress reports
- Leading a team, conducting performance evaluations, or controlling budget allocation
- Recreating the same temporary fix for each new requisition
- Permitting non-compliant or high-risk hiring requests to proceed without challenge
- Operating in a setting with direct oversight or detailed procedural guidance
Key responsibilities
Close the requisitions 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 requisitions have constituted your standard workload, end-to-end from intake through close, not the rare exception.
- Closed requisitions another recruiter or firm had previously failed to fill, where you developed the strategy rather than executing an existing playbook.
- Worked directly with executive decision-makers as the responsible owner, and maintained a firm position with documentation when one disagreed.
- Built or revised a hiring assessment using outcome data, not simply administered one someone else designed.
- Use AI tools daily and can name a work product you created with them in the last three months. Building your own with Claude Code, low-code platforms, or agentic workflows counts for more 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 written artifacts that others used: an SOP, process document, or post-mortem.
- At least 6 hours per weekday overlapping US business hours.
Nice to have
- Iterated a system through several rounds against real performance or retention data, not a single build and ship.
- Talent acquisition or executive search inside a private equity or venture-backed operator, or a multi-business holding company.
- Been the person other recruiters escalated their stuck searches to.
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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