VP of Talent and Culture

Location: Chicago, IL (Hybrid) - Consistent presence at our John Hancock location with occasional travel to Michigan
Compensation: $120,000 - $150,000 Base Salary + Performance Bonus
Reports To: Chief Integration Officer, CEO

The Vice President of Talent and Culture will be one of the firm's most influential executives. This is not a traditional HR-administration role. It is a recruiting-led, relationship-driven position for someone who can find extraordinary people, earn their trust over long periods, sell a compelling future honestly, build practical training systems, and hold leaders accountable for developing the people they manage.

What you will own

RECRUIT

• Own recruiting across the enterprise-from partner-level Wealth Managers, enterprise builders, attorneys, CPAs, and Financial Advisors to Account Managers, administrative professionals, reception, and interns.
• Build confidential pipelines of passive candidates before positions become urgent. A true Wealth Manager or firm-leader recruit may require 12-18 months of patient, thoughtful pursuit.
• Run direct outreach, referrals, research, networking, assessment, references, closing, and integration. This work is closer to executive search and business development than to posting jobs and processing applicants.
• Create a candidate experience that reflects Vertis: ambitious, direct, organized, warm, discreet, and honest.
• Partner with the CEO and CIO to identify, assess, and close the most consequential candidates.

TRAIN

• Build role-specific onboarding and 30/60/90-day development plans for critical positions.
• Translate the practices of Vertis's best performers into repeatable training, manager tools, and a usable knowledge library.
• Create career paths for high-performing advisors, Account Managers, professional staff, reception talent, and interns.
• Ensure training changes performance. A completed course is not the same as demonstrated readiness.
• Equip managers to coach effectively, then verify that the coaching and development actually occur.

RETAIN

• Lead quarterly talent reviews, succession planning, high-potential development, and early identification of retention risk.
• Help leaders maintain a high-performance, high-character culture where people work hard, tell the truth, keep commitments, serve clients and community, and support one another.
• Hold department leaders-including Wealth Managers-accountable for nurturing and developing their teams.
• Identify weak management or toxic behavior early and escalate it with evidence and judgment.
• Give exceptional employees a credible reason to build their careers at Vertis.

Vertis Partner Holdings and enterprise growth

You will learn Vertis Partner Holdings (VPH) intimately. VPH is our strategy for building relationships with independent advisory-firm principals and aligning firms and professionals with the Vertis platform and long-term enterprise vision. You will help map and recruit potential principals and market leaders, assess their leadership benches, and build the talent-integration plan for affiliated teams.

This requires commercial sophistication. You must be able to understand a complex affiliation proposition, discuss it persuasively within approved boundaries, and know when the CEO and CIO must lead the conversation.

How the role works

• The CIO is your direct manager and operating partner.
• The CEO is your strategic recruiting partner and will help close partner-level and enterprise-building candidates.
• The Controller partners on headcount budgets, compensation controls, benefits, and accurate administration.
• Functional leaders define business needs and manage employees daily; you ensure the people system works across every department.
• You will have broad access and influence, with a corresponding expectation of discretion, candor, and mature judgment.

What success looks like

First 30

days

Learn the business and VPH; meet leaders and employees; audit recruiting, onboarding, training, talent reviews, succession, and retention risks; agree on immediate priorities.

First 90 days

Launch a disciplined recruiting operating system; establish candidate scorecards and target maps; improve onboarding; run the first enterprise talent review; deliver a 12-month roadmap.

First 12 months

Build a credible 100-150-person Wealth Manager market map and 20-30 meaningful senior-candidate relationships; improve core-role hiring, onboarding, manager execution, talent visibility, and career development.

18-24 months

Produce at least one legitimate partner-level Wealth Manager hire or equivalent strategic talent outcome, subject to market conditions and approved priorities, while creating a stronger bench and a durable talent system.

The person we are looking for

You are more relationship-builder and commercial talent strategist than HR administrator. You can comfortably speak with a senior producer, improve an intern program, challenge a manager who is not developing people, and build systems without creating bureaucracy.

• Approximately 8+ years of progressive talent acquisition, executive recruiting, professional-services recruiting, or closely related business-development experience. Outcomes matter more than title.
• A documented record of recruiting difficult, passive, relationship-driven professionals such as advisors, attorneys, CPAs, senior sales leaders, operators, or firm principals.
• Experience in wealth management, financial services, insurance/IMO, executive search, legal, accounting, consulting, or another high-trust professional-services environment is strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to conduct direct outreach, manage a long-cycle recruiting funnel, assess character and capability, and close without relying on inbound applicants.
• Experience creating onboarding, training, manager tools, talent reviews, career paths, or performance-development systems.
• Executive presence, commercial curiosity, discretion, resilience, organization, warmth, candor, and excellent follow-through.
• Comfort working with a demanding, vision-driven CEO and a collaborative, operationally focused CIO.
• Bachelor's degree welcome but not required. Judgment, results, work ethic, and relationship-building ability matter more than credentials alone.

This is a full-time hybrid role based in Chicago, with regular presence at the John Hancock office and periodic travel to Michigan and other firm-related locations. This is not a remote executive-search position; influence requires real participation in the business and culture. This role will have a full benefits package including paid vacation, 401k with matching and health insurance.

This role is not

• A payroll, benefits, policy, or handbook-administration job.
• A passive recruiting-coordinator role built around ads, inbound resumes, and scheduling.
• A reception supervisor or daily manager for every employee you recruit.
• A role where you personally deliver every training session or rescue managers who refuse to manage.
• A promise of automatic equity or a guarantee that any one strategic hire will close on a fixed timeline.