Every organization has a hiring backlog that never clears. The role requiring six narrow skills in one candidate, in one geography. The search with competitive pay, but not the highest offer available. The onsite mandate that eliminates most interested applicants. Most firms let the backlog grow or assign more recruiters. We created this position to solve it.<br><br>You will own that backlog directly. No direct reports, no established playbook. These searches are difficult because the candidate pool is small, the work structure excludes otherwise-interested talent, or the compensation is competitive but not exceptional. Your responsibility is to identify the approach others missed. Most stakeholders are executives with firm opinions and incompatible priorities; some have abandoned confidence in skills-based hiring entirely. You maintain firm boundaries with both and substantiate decisions with documentation.<br><br>The remainder of the role involves ensuring problems do not recur. You will apply AI daily and develop your own solutions when you encounter a repeated issue, in hours rather than waiting weeks for a support ticket. Whatever can be generalized is transferred to engineering for production hardening. Few talent acquisition positions allow you to deploy solutions directly. This one requires it.<br><br>We would rather be direct now than waste your time. This position is not suitable if:<br><br><ul><li>You require established processes before taking action.</li><li>You prioritize being liked over being effective.</li><li>Documentation-intensive stakeholder management exhausts you.</li><li>You need requests to arrive fully formed, and rely on external systems rather than yourself to track open commitments.<br><br></li></ul>If that list describes your ideal work environment, continue. You will conclude the year having closed searches others considered impossible, with executives requesting you by name, and tools you built in hours still operating across the portfolio.<br><br>Our application process demands real effort, because the role does. If this increased your interest in the position, apply.<br><br><strong>What You Will Be Doing<br><br></strong><ul><li>Closing the most difficult requisitions in the portfolio: limited talent pools, process exceptions, previously unsuccessful searches, and stakeholders with divergent objectives.</li><li>Aligning executive stakeholders who have conflicting criteria toward a unified decision, and restoring confidence with those who have lost trust, calibrated through leadership.</li><li>Correcting the underlying system failure: assessments that no longer differentiate strong candidates from weak ones, AI grading rules that have degraded, or job postings attracting the wrong audience.</li><li>Creating targeted solutions in hours using Claude Code, Skills, Lovable, and MCPs (Model Context Protocol servers), then transferring anything generalizable to engineering for hardening.</li><li>Delivering pipeline diagnostics, compensation benchmarking, and market-sizing analyses that an executive can act on immediately.</li><li>Resolving questions that arrive incomplete: a first name, no role title, a partial candidate memory. You determine who they mean, and you maintain every open commitment on both sides until closure.<br><br></li></ul><strong>What You Won’t Be Doing<br><br></strong><ul><li>Reviewing resumes or conducting first-round screening interviews</li><li>Waiting for stakeholders to request status updates</li><li>Managing a team, conducting performance reviews, or owning headcount</li><li>Reconstructing the same workaround for each new requisition</li><li>Permitting non-compliant or risky hiring requests to proceed unchallenged</li><li>Operating in an environment with close supervision or detailed instructions<br><br></li></ul><strong>VP Of People Operations Key Responsibilities<br><br></strong>Close the searches no one else in the organization can close.<br><br><strong>Basic Requirements<br><br></strong><ul><li>8+ years in recruiting, talent acquisition, or executive search, with recent years focused on hard-to-fill or executive-level searches.</li><li>Hard-to-fill searches have been your standard workload, end-to-end from intake through close, not the occasional exception.</li><li>Closed searches another recruiter or firm had already failed to fill, where you developed the approach rather than executing an existing playbook.</li><li>Worked directly with executive decision-makers as the accountable owner, and maintained a firm position with documentation when one disagreed.</li><li>Built or revised a hiring assessment using outcome data, not just administered one somebody else designed.</li><li>Use AI tools daily and can name a work product you made with them in the last three months. Building your own with Claude Code, low-code platforms, or agentic workflows counts for more than using a finished product.</li><li>Produced compensation benchmarking or market-sizing analysis for an executive audience.</li><li>Personally responsible for spotting US hiring compliance risk: pay bands, worker classification, or pay transparency rules.</li><li>Have written artifacts that others used: an SOP, process document, or post-mortem.</li><li>At least 6 hours per weekday overlapping US business hours.<br><br></li></ul><strong>Nice-to-have Requirements<br><br></strong><ul><li>Iterated a system through several rounds against real performance or retention data, not a single build and ship.</li><li>Talent acquisition or executive search inside a private equity or venture-backed operator, or a multi-business holding company.</li><li>Been the person other recruiters escalated their stuck searches to.<br><br></li></ul><strong>About Crossover<br><br></strong>Crossover has been a pioneer of the remote work model since our inception in 2014 - helping thousands of people advance their careers. We specialize in full-time, long-term remote jobs - not short-term "gigs" or part-time freelancing side ventures. Our platform provides businesses with the fairest hiring on earth by basing 90% of the decisions on objective assessments of a candidate's skills and abilities to perform Real Work. Since we are 100% remote, people can work from anywhere and earn standardized and competitive compensation, regardless of where they choose to live.<br><br>There is so much to cover for this exciting role, and space here is limited. Hit the Apply button if you found this interesting and want to learn more. We look forward to meeting you!<br><br><strong>Working with Crossover<br><br></strong>This is a full-time (40 hours per week), long-term position. The position is immediately available and requires entering into an independent contractor agreement with Crossover. The compensation level for this role is $100 USD/hour, which equates to $200,000 USD/year assuming 40 hours per week and 50 weeks per year. The payment period is weekly. Consult for more details on this topic.<br><br>Crossover Job Code: LJ-4435-US-Houston-VPofPeopleOper.002<br><br>