Director of Recruiting & People Strategy

🚨 Urgent Hiring — Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. The selection process may take up to 4 weeks, but early applicants are strongly encouraged. Ready to Empower a Growing Team and Shape Our Future? At Hadley Designs, we believe that learning should be enjoyable, engaging, and screen-free. Millions of parents and teachers trust our beautifully designed, developmentally aligned educational tools to help children grow and thrive. As a fast-growing brand, we are on a mission to make learning meaningful for families around the world. We are seeking a Director of Recruiting & People Strategy to join our team and build the systems that will drive our next phase of growth. If you are passionate about creating scalable people systems, empowering teams, and cultivating a culture that supports both personal and professional growth, this role offers a unique opportunity to make a significant impact. About Hadley Designs Hadley Designs is redefining early education with creativity and purpose. Every product we create is hand-drawn and teacher-designed, crafted with care to build confidence and connection. Our screen-free tools help families and teachers make learning fun and meaningful, nurturing curiosity and creativity in children. Our Mission: We design screen-free products that parents can trust to help their children learn, grow, and reach their full potential. We create beautifully designed, developmentally sound tools that replace noise and distraction with connection, curiosity, and real learning. Our Vision: We aim to build the most trusted children’s brand in the world, present in millions of homes, reshaping how families learn, connect, and grow. Our products will be so widely used and passed down that generations of children will grow up learning from them and choose them again for their own families. Role Overview As the Director of Recruiting & People Strategy , you will own how Hadley Designs sources, vets, and closes top global talent, and you will own the broader people system that talent steps into. You will partner with leadership to design the recruiting engine that consistently delivers strong top-of-funnel for every open role, and you will scale the people systems that hold a remote, contractor-centric organization together as it grows toward $100M and beyond. This is a leadership-tier role with 1 direct report (the People Operations Specialist) and end-to-end ownership of the talent and people functions. Your weeks will be heavier on recruiting in the near term, live pipelines, structured interviews, test projects, employer brand, and steady on People Operations throughout (onboarding, performance frameworks, contractor renewal, leadership enablement). Key Responsibilities Talent Acquisition (the #1 outcome of this role): • Recruiting Pipeline Management: Source candidates across LinkedIn, job boards, freelancer platforms, and referrals; filter applicants for red flags, competency match, and scorecard alignment. • Test Project & Interview Operations: Run test projects, review submissions, conduct first-round group interviews, and manage candidate experience end-to-end. • Sourcing Channel Optimization: Manage and optimize sourcing channels based on performance; build "always hiring" shortlists for recurring high-leverage roles. • Employer Brand & Glassdoor Defense: Monitor and manage Glassdoor reviews, organize team review drives, ask for feedback, flag issues, protect brand rating. • Hiring Metrics & Funnel Reporting: Deliver weekly hiring pipeline reports broken down by channel and role; track funnel performance against KPIs. People Operations: • People Systems Leadership: Design and implement systems for engaging, onboarding, and retaining talent, align ed with the company's growth objectives. • Organizational Design and Capacity Planning: Collaborate with leadership to ensure that the organizational structure and workforce planning meet the evolving needs of the business. • Performance and Development Frameworks: Establish performance expectations, evaluation frameworks, and development pathways that drive accountability and growth across the organization. • Talent Experience and Retention: Build a consistent and professional experience for talent that reinforces employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention. • Workforce Insights and Reporting: Provide insights and data-driven recommendations to leadership to guide decision-making and improve workforce effectiveness. • External Partnerships: Partner with external service providers to enhance and support people operations as necessary. How Success Is Measured (two bold sub-headers, each with bullets): Talent Acquisition KPIs: • Average time to fill open roles: under 45 days. • Weekly applicant volume per active role: 250+ qualified applicants. • Weekly hiring pipeline report by sourcing channel: 100% completion, on time. • Completed candidate case studies available for review per role per week: 15+. • Glassdoor company rating: maintain 4.5+ average across the year. People Operations KPIs: • Successful implementation of people systems that directly support the business's ability to scale. • Strong employee retention rates, with high performance and engagement. • Improved leadership confidence in people systems, talent readiness, and organizational alignment. • Predictable, scalable people operations that contribute to the company's growth and success. Who You Are You are a recruiting-strong, systems-oriented leader. You have personally closed difficult hires, not just managed a team that did. You move fast in a sourcing pipeline, you can run a structured interview that lands the right read on a candidate in 30 minutes, and you are equally comfortable defending the company on Glassdoor as you are building a 90-day onboarding plan. You thrive in a fast-paced, remote-first, contractor-centric environment and have a track record of both filling open roles ahead of timeline and scaling the people systems t…