Recruitment Specialist

Leadership Hiring Partner – Founders Office

Location: Gurgaon / Jaipur / Remote

Work Model: Remote or Hybrid

Employment Type: Full-time

Reporting To: Founders

About Thrillophilia

Thrillophilia is one of Indias leading experiential travel platforms, helping millions of travellers discover and book curated holidays and experiences across India and international destinations.

We are building a large, profitable, technology-led travel company with ambitious plans across consumer travel, artificial intelligence, brand, international expansion, partnerships, and new business lines.

The next phase of Thrillophilias growth will depend heavily on the quality of leaders we bring into the organisation.

We are therefore looking for a Leadership Hiring Partner who will work directly with the founders to identify, engage, assess, and close senior leaders across the company.

• This is not a conventional recruitment role. It is a strategic talent mandate focused on building the leadership bench that will shape Thrillophilias next phase of growth.
• About the Role
• The Leadership Hiring Partner will own senior and critical hiring mandates across functions such as:

• Business and P&L leadership
• Sales
• Marketing and Growth
• Brand and Content
• Product
• Technology and Artificial Intelligence
• Operations and Customer Experience
• Finance
• Human Resources
• Partnerships and New Business

You will hire for roles including:

• Leadership-team members
• Business Heads
• Functional Heads
• Vice Presidents
• Directors
• General Managers
• Senior specialists working directly with the founders
• High-potential leaders capable of building new functions or business lines

You will work closely with the founders to understand the business context behind every mandate, define the right leadership profile, map relevant talent pools, approach high-quality passive candidates, and drive the process through evaluation and closure.

• The role requires a combination of executive search, business understanding, judgement, influence, and relentless execution.
• What You Will Own
• 1. Leadership Hiring Strategy

• Partner directly with the founders to understand the companys leadership gaps, future organisational needs, and critical hiring priorities.
• Translate broad business objectives into clear and realistic leadership mandates.
• Help define the role, reporting structure, success outcomes, candidate profile, compensation range, and sourcing strategy for every senior position.
• Challenge unclear or unrealistic hiring assumptions before a search begins.
• Build a forward-looking leadership hiring plan rather than operating only on open requisitions.

2. Market Mapping and Executive Search

• Build detailed talent maps across relevant industries, companies, functions, and geographies.
• Identify strong candidates beyond active job seekers and conventional job portals.
• Conduct direct headhunting through professional networks, referrals, research, industry communities, and personalised outreach.
• Develop pipelines for recurring leadership needs across Product, Technology, Marketing, Sales, Operations, Finance, HR, and Business functions.
• Track high-potential leaders even when there is no immediate open role.
• Build a proprietary leadership talent network for Thrillophilia.

3. Senior Candidate Assessment

• Conduct detailed initial conversations with senior candidates to assess:
• Career trajectory
• Functional depth
• Leadership capability
• Team-building ability
• Business ownership
• Decision-making quality
• Execution orientation
• Cultural adaptability
• Motivation for change
• Compensation expectations
• Relocation or work-model feasibility
• Go beyond keyword and résumé matching to understand the actual scale, complexity, and impact of a candidates work.
• Identify gaps between how candidates present themselves and what they have genuinely owned.
• Prepare structured candidate assessments and recommendations for the founders.
• Help design interview scorecards, assignments, reference checks, and evaluation processes for leadership roles.

4. Founder and Stakeholder Partnership

• Operate as a trusted talent advisor to the founders rather than as a recruitment coordinator.
• Provide honest feedback on candidate quality, market availability, compensation expectations, and search feasibility.
• Push back when a candidate is weak, even when stakeholders are enthusiastic.
• Maintain speed and discipline in scheduling, feedback collection, evaluation, and decision-making.
• Ensure every senior candidate receives a thoughtful, professional, and high-quality experience.
• Keep all stakeholders aligned throughout the hiring process.

5. Candidate Engagement and Closure

• Build credible relationships with senior candidates over multiple conversations.
• Communicate Thrillophilias business story, ambition, culture, scale, challenges, and opportunity in a compelling but honest manner.
• Understand candidate motivations and address concerns around role scope, reporting, compensation, location, stability, and career progression.
• Manage offer discussions and negotiations with maturity and commercial judgement.
• Maintain candidate engagement during notice periods and support successful joining.
• Reduce senior-level offer drop-offs through stronger evaluation and relationship management.

6. Search Execution and Process Ownership

• Own the complete lifecycle of every leadership mandate, from role definition to joining.
• Build and maintain structured search trackers, candidate pipelines, interview notes, and closure plans.
• Define weekly search goals and provide clear progress updates to the founders.
• Identify search bottlenecks early and propose solutions rather than allowing roles to remain open indefinitely.
• Coordinate with internal HR, hiring managers, and external search partners where necessary.
• Use agencies selectively, but retain direct ownership of candidate quality and closure.

7. Employer Positioning for Senior Talent

• Help shape the companys leadership talent narrative.
• Develop compelling role briefs and outreach messages for senior candidates.
• Position opportunities based on actual ownership, business impact, and growth potential rather than generic employer-brand language.
• Build long-term relationships with senior operators, founders, industry leaders, and functional specialists.
• Represent Thrillophilia professionally in the leadership talent market.

What We Are Looking For

• 6–12 years of experience in executive search, leadership hiring, senior talent acquisition, or a related field.
• Strong experience hiring for Heads, Directors, Vice Presidents, General Managers, CXO-minus-one, or leadership-team roles.
• Demonstrated ability to directly source and close passive senior candidates.
• Experience working closely with founders, CEOs, business heads, or senior leadership teams.
• Strong business understanding and the ability to comprehend unfamiliar functions quickly.
• Ability to evaluate senior candidates beyond titles, company brands, and compensation levels.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong judgement, discretion, and ability to handle confidential searches.
• High ownership and comfort working independently with limited structure.
• Strong negotiation and candidate-influencing skills.
• Ability to manage multiple complex searches without compromising quality.
• Comfort operating in a fast-moving, high-expectation, founder-led environment.

Preferred Background

We are open to candidates from:

• Executive search firms
• Leadership hiring teams within high-growth technology or consumer companies
• Founders Office talent roles
• Venture capital or private-equity talent teams
• Recruitment firms specialising in senior and niche hiring
• High-growth startups where the individual directly owned leadership recruitment

• Experience hiring across more than one function will be valuable.
• A strong network is useful, but the ability to build a new network through disciplined research and outreach is more important.
• What Will Not Work in This Role
• This role will not suit someone whose experience is primarily limited to:

• Posting jobs and screening inbound applications
• Coordinating interviews
• Managing recruitment agencies without direct sourcing
• High-volume junior or mid-level hiring
• Matching résumés only against job-description keywords
• Depending heavily on LinkedIn responses without deeper market mapping
• Waiting for hiring managers to define every aspect of a search
• Avoiding difficult conversations with founders or senior candidates

We are looking for a search partner, not a process administrator.

Why Join Thrillophilia

• Work directly with the founders on some of the companys most important decisions
• .Build the leadership team of a large and rapidly scaling consumer travel business
• .Gain exposure across business, technology, AI, growth, brand, operations, finance, and new ventures
• .Own high-impact mandates instead of operating as one part of a large recruitment process
• .Build a leadership hiring function and talent network from the ground up
• .See the long-term impact of the leaders you help bring into the organisation
• .Work with significant autonomy, access, and responsibility