Director of Talent (Startup CPG)

About the role

• As Director of Talent, you will take command of talent operations across the Elevation portfolio.

This is NOT a traditional HR role, and ONLY candidates with a proven track record in talent leadership from high-growth companies will be considered.

This is a business-critical role reporting directly to the executive office. You'll work across leadership to enforce accountability, accelerate hiring, and install systems that scale.

This is an operational leadership role. You'll act as a force multiplier on recruitment velocity, precision, and return on talent spend. You'll build the playbook, run the machine, and lead the team that sources, closes, and onboards A-players in complex industries and high-stakes environments. You'll need to move fast, see patterns across companies, push for clarity in headcount plans, and challenge underperformance when you see it.

• Lead end-to-end recruiting across portfolio companies—from entry-level to executive, including CEO, COO, GM, and function heads.

• Operate as point-of-contact for all hiring leads; ensure timelines, deliverables, and quality benchmarks are hit without exception.

• Build and manage detailed recruiting workflows, pipelines, and tracking infrastructure in ATS and recruiting systems.

• Partner with the Chief of Staff to align hiring roadmaps with strategic and financial plans.

• Design and run a system that maps headcount needs, prioritizes business-critical hires, and enforces timelines.

• Build a data-driven recruiting engine that includes dashboards, scorecards, Gantt charts, candidate performance tracking, and post-hire feedback loops.

• Build, lead, and coach a high-output recruiting team, including internal staff and external vendors or contract recruiters.

• Implement and continuously refine recruiting tools, AI-powered sourcing platforms, interview automation, and performance analytics.

• Ensure all talent operations—from candidate sourcing to offer to onboarding—are tech-enabled and scalable.

• Push the system forward. Identify talent gaps, team performance issues, and process inefficiencies—and fix them.

• Help identify underperformance in the current recruiting org and challenge it with data, results, and better systems.

• Work in tandem with the VP of Talent to elevate the overall talent function and drive continuous improvement across systems, speed, and results.

Who You Are

• Operator First – You treat recruiting as a business function, not back-office admin. You own outcomes.

• Systems Thinker – You've built or rebuilt recruiting infrastructure. Scorecards, pipelines, and recruiting analytics are second nature.

• Talent Obsessed – You love the hunt, the close, and the craft of high-quality hiring. You think about people as levers for growth.

• Leadership Ready – You've led teams, built functions, and understand how to influence without formal authority.

• Decisive & Fast – You're clear, focused, and relentless in execution. People trust you to get it done.

• Challenger – You're not afraid to say what's broken, push back, or outperform expectations.

Qualifications

• 6–10+ years of experience in talent operations, executive recruiting, or performance hiring—specifically in high-growth or founder-led environments.

• Strong operational background—experience building recruiting processes that scale across multiple companies or business units.

• Deep familiarity with tools like LinkedIn Recruiter, Greenhouse, Ashby, Gem, and AI sourcing solutions.

• Proven experience hiring across functions: sales, ops, marketing, finance, tech, and regulated categories like wellness, cannabis, and supplements.

• Demonstrated success coaching teams and managing up, across, and through complexity.

• Comfort working directly with C-suite leadership, especially in environments with high expectations and pace.

• Tech- and data-savvy mindset—you understand metrics, optimization, and how to communicate performance through reporting.

• Global hiring experience is a plus.