Talent Acquisition Manager - Power & Utilities

Location: Somerset, NJ
Job Type: Full-time
Schedule: Monday through Friday; hybrid, with three days per week on-site in Somerset
Experience Level: 8+ years
Travel: Occasional travel for recruiting events, company events, industry events, and other business needs

Position Overview

CARIAN is seeking a highly hands-on Talent Acquisition Manager to lead and strengthen the company's recruiting team while personally recruiting for priority and hard-to-fill positions.

This is a player-coach role. Approximately 75% of the role will remain directly focused on recruiting and sourcing, including personally owning CARIAN's most difficult technical, professional, and leadership searches.

The remaining focus will be on directly managing and developing the Talent Acquisition team, reviewing pipelines, improving sourcing and candidate quality, strengthening hiring-manager partnership, maintaining recruiting discipline and accountability, and ensuring recruiting activity translates into hires.

This is not a role for someone looking to move away from recruiting. The successful candidate will be equally comfortable sourcing a difficult candidate personally, reviewing a recruiter's pipeline, challenging an unrealistic requirement, advising leadership on compensation and market conditions, and closing a high-value candidate.

Key Responsibilities

Hands-On Recruiting

• Personally own priority, difficult, technical, leadership, and confidential searches from intake through accepted offer
• Proactively source passive candidates through LinkedIn Recruiter, industry networks, referrals, databases, direct outreach, and other channels
• Develop targeted sourcing strategies for specialized power, utility, engineering, construction, project management, project controls, field services, consulting, digital, and business-development positions
• Conduct recruiter screens and independently assess candidate qualifications, relevance, motivation, compensation expectations, and fit
• Present qualified candidates to hiring leaders with clear recommendations and relevant market context
• Build and maintain pipelines for recurring and strategically important positions
• Manage candidate engagement, interviews, compensation discussions, offers, counteroffer risk, and closing
• Personally intervene when difficult or stalled searches require additional sourcing or recruiting support

Team Leadership & Performance

• Directly manage, coach, and develop Talent Acquisition team members
• Conduct regular pipeline and requisition reviews
• Establish clear expectations for candidate quality, sourcing activity, responsiveness, ownership, and follow-through
• Review candidate submissions and help calibrate recruiter judgment when needed
• Improve recruiter sourcing strategies, screening quality, hiring-manager communication, and candidate closing
• Identify searches that are not progressing and require corrective action
• Hold the recruiting team accountable for maintaining active pipelines and moving searches forward
• Maintain ATS discipline and recruiting data quality across the team
• Own and regularly review recruiting metrics, including pipeline health, requisition aging, time to fill, and offer acceptance, and report results to leadership

Hiring Manager Partnership

• Lead effective intake discussions with hiring leaders
• Clarify required qualifications, candidate profiles, compensation parameters, geography, and sourcing strategy before searches begin
• Challenge unclear, unrealistic, or unnecessarily restrictive requirements when market evidence supports a different approach
• Advise leadership regarding candidate availability, compensation, competitive market conditions, and sourcing strategy
• Establish clear expectations and accountability between Talent Acquisition and hiring managers
• Escalate stalled decisions, compensation issues, and other hiring risks when appropriate

Qualifications

• 8+ years of progressive experience in talent acquisition, corporate recruiting, technical recruiting, executive search, staffing, or a related field
• Demonstrated success personally sourcing and closing difficult professional and technical positions
• Experience recruiting professional and technical talent within AEC, engineering, utilities, energy, infrastructure, construction, management consulting, technical professional services, or a specialized staffing/search firm serving these markets required
• Demonstrated experience directly managing or formally leading recruiters, including responsibility for pipeline review, coaching, performance, and accountability
• Strong passive-candidate sourcing capability and demonstrated proficiency with LinkedIn Recruiter or similar platforms
• Demonstrated success recruiting engineering, project/program management, project controls, construction and field services, technical consulting, business development, or comparable specialized talent
• Strong candidate-assessment and interviewing judgment
• Demonstrated ability to advise and constructively challenge hiring managers
• Strong understanding of compensation discussions, candidate motivation, offer management, counteroffers, and closing
• Experience using applicant tracking and recruiting systems
• Strong analytical, organizational, communication, judgment, and follow-through skills
• Ability and willingness to remain personally involved in day-to-day sourcing and recruiting
• Bachelor's degree preferred; equivalent relevant experience will be considered
• Ability to work on-site at CARIAN's Somerset, NJ office three days per week

Preferred Experience

• Direct recruiting experience within electric or gas utilities, power delivery, transmission and distribution, energy, or infrastructure
• Experience recruiting within an engineering, AEC, technical consulting, management consulting, or specialized search environment
• Experience recruiting both specialized individual contributors and senior leadership positions
• Experience with Ashby or another modern applicant tracking system
• Experience using AI-enabled sourcing, research, recruiting, and productivity tools effectively
• Experience improving recruiter performance through direct coaching, pipeline review, sourcing calibration, and accountability

Compensation

The base salary range for this role is $85,000 - $115,000 annually. This range represents a good-faith estimate at the time of posting; actual compensation will depend on experience, qualifications, technical recruiting background, sourcing capability, leadership experience, demonstrated recruiting results, and business needs. CARIAN offers a competitive benefits package, including medical, dental, and vision coverage, paid time off, holidays, and 401(k) participation with company match. This position may also be eligible for discretionary bonus incentives or other compensation programs based on company and individual performance.