Head of Recruitment (HoR)

Also known as: Head of Talent Acquisition, Director of Talent Acquisition, Recruitment Director, Head of Hiring, Talent Acquisition Lead.

What does a Head of Recruitment do?

A Head of Recruitment is the leader who owns all hiring in the company: from the hiring plan to new hires passing probation. They build a system in which the team fills roles, not individual heroes, and answer for its results to the CEO or the HRD. In a growing company the expectation is that hiring becomes predictable in time, cost and quality.

• Plans hiring with leaders and turns business plans into open roles.
• Builds and grows the team of recruiters and sourcers.
• Builds the funnel and metrics: time to hire, conversion, quality of hire.
• Chooses the ATS, tools and agencies and decides what to outsource.
• Teaches Hiring Managers to run interviews and make decisions.

When does a company need a Head of Recruitment?

A company needs a Head of Recruitment when hiring becomes a constant task rather than one-off openings: several recruiters work in the company, each in their own way, Hiring Managers complain about timelines, and the CEO cannot see why one role closes in a month and another stays open for half a year. This usually happens during fast growth, when the company has to hire more people in a year than it employs now. If there are few hires and they are rare, a Head of Recruitment becomes an extra layer of management: a strong Senior Recruiter or an agency for specific roles is the better choice.

Head of Recruitment vs HRD: what's the difference?

A Head of Recruitment differs from an HRD in breadth: the HRD owns everything about people in the company, while the Head of Recruitment owns hiring only, but in more depth. A Head of Recruitment often reports to the HRD, but in fast-growing companies may report directly to the CEO. A Senior Recruiter differs in that a Head of Recruitment builds the system in which the team fills roles rather than filling them personally.

Head of Recruitment vs related roles: comparison

Why is it hard to hire a Head of Recruitment?

A Head of Recruitment is hard to hire because a strong recruiter and a strong hiring leader are different professions, and a CV barely tells them apart.

• Many candidates grew out of top recruiters and keep filling roles themselves instead of building a system.
• Hiring experience depends heavily on the market: someone who did volume hiring in retail and someone who hired Senior Engineers work differently.
• Hiring metrics in a CV are hard to verify: timelines and conversion depend on the company and on how they were counted.
• Good hiring leaders are usually busy with a growth plan at their current company and leave once it is delivered.

What to decide before hiring a Head of Recruitment?

• How many hires are ahead this year, and for which roles? Hiring twenty engineers and two hundred support staff needs different experience.
• Build hiring from scratch or fix what exists? A builder and someone who brings order need different skills.
• Which recruiters are already on the team, and which agencies do you use? This decides whether you need a player-coach or a pure manager.
• How will the result be measured? Without agreed metrics, in six months everyone will judge the work in their own way.

Where to find a Head of Recruitment?

Heads of Recruitment most often come from tech product companies where they have already built hiring during fast growth: Heads of Talent Acquisition, Recruitment Leads and Senior Recruiters with experience leading a team. A strong profile signal is a hiring system that kept working after the person left, and experience hiring in several countries. NEWHR knows this market from the inside: we are recruiters ourselves and run a professional community for HR and recruiters.

How to assess a Head of Recruitment in an interview?

A Head of Recruitment is assessed through a walkthrough of a hiring system the candidate built and a case on the company's real hiring plan. In the case the candidate explains how they would deliver the plan, with which team and budget. On the company side the HRD or the CEO and the two Hiring Managers the Head of Recruitment will work with most take part.

Strong signals:

• names the metrics of their funnel and explains how they were counted;
• describes how they changed the process when Hiring Managers were unhappy;
• shows how they calculated recruiter workload and planned the team around it.

Red flags:

• talks only about the people they found personally;
• cannot explain why hiring was slow at their previous company;
• solves every problem by adding recruiters.

How long does it take to hire a Head of Recruitment?

We present the first candidates for the Head of Recruitment role within 5–7 days of the brief. The whole search usually takes one to six months.

Related roles

• HRD — owns everything about people, and the Head of Recruitment often reports to them.
• COO — owns operations and plans team growth with the Head of Recruitment.
• CEO — in small companies runs hiring personally until there is a Head of Recruitment.