Talent Acquisition Lead

Job description

About McChrystal Group: McChrystal Group is a leadership and management consulting firm that partners with executive teams to solve their most complex performance and coordination challenges. Founded in 2011 by General (Ret.) Stanley McChrystal, we help organizations operate with the speed, alignment, and cohesion required to succeed in dynamic environments. Our work is rooted in the Team of Teams® framework—a leadership system developed from General McChrystal’s transformation of the Joint Special Operations Command. We believe that enduring performance depends not just on strategy, but on how effectively leaders, teams, and systems work together under pressure. McChrystal Group consultants work on small, high-impact teams tackling challenges that matter. The pace is demanding, the problems are complex, and the impact is tangible. People join McChrystal Group because they want to grow as leaders and do work that makes a difference. Role Overview: The Talent Acquisition Specialist will work directly with executive leadership, hiring managers, Finance, Operations, and Team People to design, build, operate, and adapt a recruiting and talent integration strategy for all practice areas that drives critical business results in support of the next phase of growth for McChrystal Group. This role requires expertise in designing and delivering highly attractive, scalable, and equitable talent acquisition processes; attention to performance metrics and market trends; and deep partnership with internal stakeholders in order to maximize outcomes for all human capital. As the talent facing representative of the McChrystal Group brand, this role must exercise an exceptional level of organizational, market, and interpersonal expertise to attract, assess, and influence skilled to executive level talent. This is a full-time, in person position and it is our commitment that as you bring your best, we will bring ours to make the most of the time you invest here. Our mission is to grow a team that reflects the diversity of our clients and embodies the characteristics that are foundational to our Team of Teams philosophy. If that sounds aligned with your goals, we want to hear from you. ### Key Responsibilities **Full-Cycle Recruiting** - Manage full-cycle recruiting for open roles across all practice areas and levels, from intake through start date. - Conduct intake meetings with hiring managers to define role requirements, evaluation criteria, interview panels, and decision timelines. - Screen, assess, and advance candidates against agreed criteria. - Manage the interview process, including scheduling, panel coordination, and debriefs. - Carry a steady-state load of 8 to 12 concurrent searches, scaling during peak hiring periods. - Extend offers and manage candidate negotiations within compensation ranges approved by the HR Director. - Manage the pre-employment process, including background checks, references, and offer contingencies. - Coordinate handoff to Team People for onboarding. - Identify and escalate stalled searches, including the underlying cause, whether related to role profile, compensation, process, or market conditions. **Job Descriptions and Market Insight** - Draft and maintain job descriptions for all open roles in partnership with hiring managers. - Maintain the firm's job description library and ensure consistency across practice areas and levels. - Provide market data and compensation recommendations to the HR Director to inform range setting. - Advise hiring managers on market conditions affecting a specific search, including salary expectations, candidate availability, and competitor hiring activity. - Flag to the HR Director when the firm's compensation ranges appear out of step with the market or when an offer presents internal equity risk. - Maintain current knowledge of talent trends in consulting and professional services. **Sourcing and Pipeline Development** - Source candidates directly using LinkedIn Recruiter, including complex Boolean and filtered search, in-platform projects, and outbound messaging. - Build and maintain pipelines for recurring and hard-to-fill roles in advance of requisition approval. - Document sourcing approaches by level and practice area. - Maintain a candidate CRM and an alumni database, and re-engage former employees and prior finalists. - Administer the employee referral program, including tracking, payout processing, and internal promotion. - Manage agency and search firm relationships, including fee terms, guarantee periods, candidate ownership terms, and vendor performance. **Hiring Plan Support and Reporting** - Report search status to hiring managers on a daily to weekly cadence. - Provide the HR Director and the management team with regular reporting on open requisitions, pipeline health, and risks to the hiring plan. - Report time-to-fill and pipeline conversion, and recommend additional recruiting metrics appropriate to the firm's size. - Support the HR Director in building and maintaining the firm's hiring plan, using inputs from Operations and Finance including utilization, bench, and sold work. - Support proposal and pursuit teams with named-personnel identification and contingent commitments as engagements require.