Talent Acquisition Specialist

About EF Entrepreneurs First invests in exceptional individuals to build startups from scratch. We bring together talented outliers to develop their most ambitious ideas and raise money from the world’s best investors. Since pioneering Talent Investing in 2014, we have learned to recognise individuals with extraordinary futures before anyone else, embedding them in a community of ambitious peers and giving them the tools they need to succeed fast. Our portfolio is now worth over $17 billion and includes companies such as Cleo, Aztec, Gensyn, and PolyAI.

Role Overview: We are hiring a Talent Acquisition Specialist to lead sourcing and pipeline building for Talent Investor hires in the UK and Europe. The role has three primary threads: building a long‑term community of candidates, running proactive sourcing and a tight hiring process when roles open, and apprenticing on what 'great' looks like from existing successful hires.

Qualifications:

• 4‑7 years of experience hiring into Talent Investor‑adjacent roles.
• Practised at hiring without a playbook; able to assess signals, traits, judgment, and patterns in experience and behaviour.
• Long‑game relationship builder with a track record of maintaining talent communities and professional networks over years.
• Developed views on talent with an apprentice mindset, confident to defend a thesis on 'great' in investor/founder‑facing roles.
• Outbound craft – write messages that earn replies and turn cold contacts into conversations and hires.
• Operationally excellent – run multiple pipelines in parallel without dropping candidates.
• Commercially literate and curious – able to engage investors, founders, and operators while learning the emerging Talent Investing model.
• Thrives in ambiguity – energized to help formalise the uncodified aspects of the role.

Responsibilities:

• Build a long‑term community of Talent Investor candidates.
• Develop a deep understanding of where the strongest candidates sit; map the market and identify key individuals.
• Maintain long‑term relationships with candidates, acting as a thought partner and sounding board.
• Run a small number of high‑signal events and gatherings to position EF as the most credible place to discuss Talent Investing.
• Build the case for Talent Investing as a career and communicate it via content, online channels, talks, and partnerships.
• Feed market intelligence back to the team, sharing insights on what attracts or deters candidates across markets and levels.
• Run proactive sourcing for live hires and translate community to pipeline; conduct targeted outbound outreach.
• Build and own the systems that scale sourcing: a CRM of warm candidates, structured re‑engagement, and clear visibility of the long list.
• Run a tight hiring process from end to end, including first‑round screens and calibrated evaluation.
• Manage candidate pipelines for London and Paris‑based Talent Investors, expanding to India and US roles over time.
• Hold the team accountable to a clean process and a high‑quality candidate experience.
• Help evolve hiring processes, exploring AI to supercharge activities.
• Apprentice on taste and refine mental models; use each interview as a feedback loop to sharpen benchmarks.
• Codify what 'great' looks like and share it to evaluate candidates faster and more consistently as we scale.

Role Details:

• Location: London‑based; expected to be in office at least 3‑4 days per week.
• Travel: Required within the UK and Europe.
• Compensation: £95,000‑£105,000, plus annual performance bonus up to £15,000.
• Equity: Opportunity to subscribe to equity units covering portfolio companies.