The posting
About Arthan
Better leaders. Bolder missions. Bigger change.
Arthan exists to unlock the potential of those who advance the world. We partner with social-impact organisations to build the leadership, structures, and ecosystems that turn ambition into outcomes — across education, climate, health, and beyond.
Our work spans strategy, talent, and ecosystems: helping mission-driven organisations attract, hire, and develop the leaders who will define the next decade and designing the systems and culture that let them scale without losing what makes them work. Ours is not transactional recruitment; it is long-term partnership with organisations navigating growth, transition, and complexity.
Over the last 10 years and 3,000+ placements, we have become a trusted partner to some of the most serious organisations in the world: INGOs, foundations, social enterprises, climate organisations, and government-adjacent institutions, on the decisions they can least afford to get wrong: who leads their work.
The Mandate
This is not a senior recruiter with a title, and it is not a delivery manager who supervises a process. It is the operating leadership of a growing people consulting business unit with Arthan, for someone who can take what 10 years of founder-led effort has built and scale it into an institution that does not depend on any one person to run it.
You will lead a team of 3 managers and 12 recruiters to deliver 240 roles per annum in the impact sector, a run-rate of roughly 20 placements a month, while owning client relationships at the most senior level and building the systems that let quality scale faster than headcount.
Three non-negotiable objectives for the first 18 months:
- Deliver the number: build the team rhythm, pipeline discipline, and quality bar that gets 12 recruiters to 240 closed roles a year, sustainably.
- Build a serious executive search practice: move average revenue per role upward across the three verticals and set the quality standard for CXO and senior leadership mandates.
- Integrate AI into delivery workflows: reducing grunt work, cutting cost per closure, and freeing the team's best energy for the work only humans can do.
What You Own
Delivery and targets
- End-to-end ownership of the 240-role annual delivery target: monthly targets owned, tracked, and delivered.
- Pipeline discipline across intake, sourcing, shortlisting, closure, and post-placement follow-up.
- Pricing architecture, mandate strategy, and deal discipline: knowing which mandates to take and which to walk away from.
Team leadership
- Direct leadership of 3 managers and 12 recruiters across the International, Urban NGO, and Private / CSR / Social Enterprise verticals.
- Functional oversight of researchers and account managers supporting the delivery engine.
- Performance management, coaching, and accountability, including making hard calls on underperformance.
- Hiring and onboarding to keep the team at strength as the business grows.
Client relationships and executive search
- Own client relationships at the most senior level, as a peer, not a service provider.
- Lead pitches, escalations, and key accounts alongside the delivery mandate.
- Design and lead the executive search offering, from intake to closure, and build Arthan's positioning with global impact institutions.
AI and workflow integration
- Map current delivery workflows and identify automation opportunities.
- Pilot and implement AI tools across sourcing, screening, ATS hygiene, and reporting.
- Build a leaner operating model, fewer people doing higher-value work.
Founder partnership
- Act as the Founder's operating partner as he transitions to a larger institutional mandate.
- Absorb commercial and execution load, no escalation that should have been owned.
- Represent Arthan externally at the level the Founder previously occupied.
Who We Are Looking For
Experience
- Minimum 12 years of experience in talent acquisition, executive search, or leadership advisory, with at least 5 years leading delivery teams.
- Has sat inside an executive search firm or leadership advisory practice, understands retained search, not just recruitment.
- Has worked in or closely with the impact sector, not a career pivot.
- Has carried and delivered against revenue or placement targets, and led a team through them.
- Has made hard calls, including exiting underperformers and walking away from clients.
Soft skills
- Executive presence, credible in the room with CXOs, board members, and founders of global impact institutions.
- Commercial judgment, instinct for pricing, deal discipline, and which mandates build the franchise.
- Coaching and performance leadership, raises the bar for 12 people without burning them out.
- Decisiveness, comfortable making calls with incomplete information and owning the outcome.
- Structured communication, crisp written and verbal communication with clients, candidates, and the team.
- Resilience and rhythm, sustains a 20-placements-a-month operating cadence without letting quality slip.
- Integrity and discretion, handles candidate, client, and compensation information with complete confidentiality.
Software and tools
- Applicant tracking systems, hands-on fluency with at least one modern ATS (e.g., Manatal, Zoho Recruit or similar) including pipeline hygiene and reporting.
- Sourcing platforms, advanced use of LinkedIn Recruiter and Boolean / X-ray search techniques.
- AI tools, meaningful exposure to AI-assisted sourcing, screening, and workflow automation (LLM tools, and automation platforms such as Zapier or Make) beyond casual Claude Pro use.
- Spreadsheets and dashboards, strong Google Sheets / Excel skills for target tracking, capacity planning, and revenue dashboards; familiarity with a BI tool (e.g., Looker Studio) is a plus.
- CRM and collaboration, comfortable with a sales/client CRM and the Google Workspace suite.
