Role overview:- You will lead Talent at Dispatch - bring recruiting in-house and scale the high-bar hiring model that built this company, without lowering the bar.
- Own the work Dispatch cares most about. Hiring exceptional people is the highest-priority activity at the company, not a support function, and the founding team treats it that way.
- Today the founding team defines what great looks like, targets exceptional candidates, assesses them rigorously, and personally closes them - with external recruiters executing much of that work. You turn that founder-led model into a world-class internal function.
- This is a player-coach role. You personally lead the most important searches while building the team, systems, and referral engine around you.
- Partner directly with the founding team and every hiring manager at Dispatch.
What you'll own:- In-House Recruiting Function - Build the internal team, systems, and operating cadence that execute Dispatch's hiring model at scale. Source, hire, and manage a small team of exceptional recruiters who operate with high judgment, urgency, and ownership.
- Hiring Manager Partnership - Define what exceptional looks like for each role, sharpen search strategy, and hold a consistently high bar. Make our leaders measurably better at hiring - how they scope roles, interview, assess, reference, sell, and close.
- Critical Searches - Personally source, engage, assess, reference, and close senior and hard-to-fill candidates.
- A Referral Culture - Build a systematic motion for activating the networks of our employees, investors, customers, advisors, and broader community - and make bringing in great people something everyone at Dispatch understands as part of their job, not a bonus program.
- Long-Term Talent Relationships - Find the best people in our markets whether or not a role is open, develop them as candidates over months and years, and create a place for them at Dispatch when they're ready.
- External Search Partners - Work with best-in-class search firms on select executive and specialized searches where they bring differentiated access or expertise.
Experience & Background:- 10+ years in recruiting, including senior leadership as a VP of Talent, Head of Talent, or equivalent at a high-growth B2B SaaS or technology company.
- 5+ years personally sourcing, assessing, and closing executive and hard-to-find talent as an individual contributor
- 4+ years building and managing teams of recruiters
- Experience at an early-stage startup - ideally Series B or earlier, or fewer than 100 people at time of joining.
- Track record building or materially scaling an internal recruiting function through a period of significant company growth, including hiring and developing the recruiters who did the work.
- Background in executive search, agency recruiting, or another external search environment, with deep proactive sourcing and candidate development skills.
- Experience partnering directly with founders and executives on high-stakes searches, and building referral programs and other network-driven sources of talent.
Characteristics:- Judgment Over Process - You assess people accurately and fast, and you ask the question that reveals whether someone is actually exceptional. You have the credibility to challenge senior leaders when needed, and the business judgment to know when it's worth it.
- Closer's Urgency - You move on great candidates in days, not weeks. You go after the person who isn't looking, and you don't lose someone you should have won.
- Recruiter at Heart - You love recruiting as a craft, not as a stepping stone to a broader people role. You're still sourcing, still on the phone, still in the details of a pipeline review.
- Player-Coach - You take the hardest searches yourself so your team can focus, and you own the outcomes either way. Your recruiters get real ownership of their own searches.
- Builds the Machine - You document thoroughly, keep the pipeline honest, and turn open loops into closed ones. The function runs better every quarter - without process becoming overhead.
- Low Ego, High Trust - You're direct, kind, and easy to tell the truth to. Hiring managers bring you their hardest problems because you make them better rather than making them wrong.
You'll stand out if you have:- Experience recruiting enterprise go-to-market and engineering roles at the same time
- Experience hiring in financial services or another regulated market
- Comfort using AI tools to accelerate sourcing, screening, and market research
- Experience standing up an ATS, scorecards, and recruiting analytics from scratch
How We Hire:At Dispatch, we hire people who are
smart, exceptional at their craft, highly driven, able to get things done, and good humans to work with. Hiring is the highest-priority work at the company. We expect hiring managers to be deeply involved in building their teams, and the best recruiting happens when Talent and business leaders operate as true partners. The
VP of Talent's job is to scale that model - better market intelligence, stronger pipelines, better systems, and more leverage - while preserving the judgment and high standards that define how Dispatch hires today.
What we offer:- Competitive salary and equity options
- High-quality benefits package including 100% company-paid insurance premiums for family coverage (medical, vision, dental).
- 401K, HSA & FSA plans
- OneMedical, HealthAdvocate, TalkSpace, and Teladoc memberships
- Technology stipend
- Unlimited PTO
- Paid parental leave
- Office space in San Francisco and New York for in-person working
