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Talent Acquisition Lead
Remote (India) | Full-time
Also searched as: Talent Acquisition Manager, Senior Talent Acquisition Partner, Lead - Talent Acquisition, Assistant Manager - Talent Acquisition
Could you find the candidates India's job boards never show, and close them for a team still taking shape?
On a typical day you might pull a stalled search off Naukri in the morning, spend lunch asking a former colleague for an introduction, and tell the hiring lead what changed before they think to ask.
About Contour
Today we operate across three brands with more than 10,000 students and about 500 team members across Australia and India. The India team, which falls under the Global Enablement and Support pillar, is the global capability centre (GCC) Contour is building: it runs delivery, automation, people, and operations for the whole organisation.
The GCC is being built now, seat by seat. This one decides how the rest get filled.
About This Role
You lead talent acquisition for Contour's India platform: the hunt, the screen and the close for the openings the business fills in India.
Two things separate a strong hire from a competent one here.
First, a rough brief becomes a real job. The strong recruiter settles the level, writes the skills the way Indian applicants describe them, and sets a package this market will accept, before any outreach.
Second, you close the search the usual routes cannot. The strongest profiles are rarely on job boards, and when direct approaches fail too, the next move is yours: a referral chain, the community where they talk, a fresh pitch to someone who turned us down last month, an agency for one narrow slice. The strong ones choose that route themselves and can name where it worked.
There is no central recruiting desk. You deal directly with the pod leads, the managers who run the squads. This is not a back-office function in a silo: you and the HR Business Partner operate as one, with direction from People and Culture in Australia. The VP of Global Enablement and Support signs off pay and level for every new joiner, and the People team takes over onboarding after the start date. Everything up to and including the handoff is yours.
You lead the recruiters already in place. We want a player-coach who leads by example, not someone who only directs. You can do whatever you delegate, and you will do parts of it yourself, more in some weeks than others, whether that's sourcing, screening or the toughest negotiation. Contour is scaling and hires for the long term: the scope of this seat grows with the platform, and what you deliver decides how fast.
You are Contour's first dedicated TA lead in India, and you get to write the playbook.
What You Will Do
Plan the route for each opening: Agree the quarter's vacancies with pod leads and the VP in advance, then choose the channels, their order, and where a direct approach beats waiting on applications.
Grow the pipeline: Headhunt passive candidates on Naukri and LinkedIn Recruiter, build talent pools, and open campus drives from a low base in year one.
Hold the bar: Keep one scorecard for all hiring: the same bar in India as everywhere else in Contour.
Shape how India sees Contour: Write the careers page, run recruitment marketing, and look after AmbitionBox and Glassdoor.
Keep the numbers visible: Look after the ATS and report funnel and diversity data.
Manage outside agencies: Decide where one is worth using, agree the terms, and track what each delivers for its fee.
Own the process from screening to day one: Set up the screening form, VideoAsk and assessment stages, coach pod leads to interview consistently and fairly, and manage background checks. See every offer through within the agreed band, keep new joiners warm through their notice period, and brief the People team so day one starts with context.
Add support as demand grows: Decide when the workload justifies another person, what that addition should be, and hire for it.
Coach your recruiters directly: Hold structured 1:1s and performance conversations, and make sure each one knows the bar and why it matters.
If a better channel or tool exists for something you do by hand, make the case and we will back it.
What You Need
We weigh what you have built and run more than the years on your CV. You should be able to point to:
Recruiting that was yours: the strategy, the channel and tool choices, and the results, as a lead, a company's sole recruiter, or the person trusted to work from no plan at all.
Positions filled across more than one function, with senior hires among them.
A vague requirement you took all the way to a signed offer, with the level, titles, skills and package right.
Talent pools built from passive profiles, beyond inbound applications.
An assessment process you designed, and a shortlist you defended, including a "not this one" that held.
A hiring experience applicants spoke well of, or an employer brand you built that brought good profiles to you.
Someone you managed directly, such as a recruiter, coordinator or sourcer, with the coaching record to show for it.
Your written English lands with an applicant or a pod lead exactly as intended.
If you have delivered these, or can show us how you would here, apply. If you enjoy doing the work yourself, this seat will suit you; if your recent years have mostly been signing off other people's work, it may feel small.
Nice to Have
EdTech, education or a student-facing background.
Experience filling creative, content, operations or automation roles.
Zoho Recruit, or a similar ATS.
Vendor management.
The Kind of People Who Thrive Here
Contour started in 2020 as one classroom in a university library. In 2022 three full-time team members ran the business on Monday.com. Today we are about 500 people across Australia and India, and much of what we run was built by someone who noticed it was missing.
The work matters. More than 10,000 students rely on what we build, from the booklets they study from to the systems their families pay through. The people who do well here care about that and want to know their work made a difference to those students.
They own their work end to end, start things without being asked, and finish what they commit to. They tell the truth early, including when something is off and what they have already tried, and write decisions down so the next person can pick them up. They give direct feedback and ask for it back.
The pace is fast. Small problems are fixed the same week, bigger ones within the six-week cycle, and whoever spots the problem usually gets to lead the fix. We keep refining how we work, and you are expected to improve the processes you own.
We hire on what you have built and run yourself, and growth works the same way. Time with us counts, but scope, title and pay move with what you deliver and how much you raise the bar on what you own.
What Good Looks Like
Warmer every time: the candidates you reach out to have heard of Contour before you call, because of work you did.
Visible, not silent: anyone can see where an opening is up to without asking you.
A playbook that compounds: the sources and pitches that worked are written down, so a new vacancy starts from them rather than from zero.
Fully remote, anywhere in India, and comfortable working across the India and Australia time difference. Compensation is competitive and benchmarked to the role and your experience; we discuss it openly early in the process.
Ready to close the searches the job boards cannot? Apply.