Business head, talent

Professional networking has not meaningfully changed in over two decades. LinkedIn brought resumes online and let networks form on top of that, but the promise of introductions that actually matter never arrived. Profound exists because the infrastructure for meaningful professional connection was never built, and voice AI and large language models are now capable enough to change that.

The product gives every professional an AI representative that learns their work at depth, finds the right people, and makes introductions with context. The platform serves both professionals seeking opportunities and founders seeking the right talent.

Profound is Seed-stage, backed by investors who have seen the talent marketplace problem from the inside, and built by operators who have run product, growth, and revenue at Swiggy, Cleartrip, and Jupiter.

As Business Head, Talent at Profound, you will build the talent marketplace function from the ground up, owning both sides of the match.

You will define the strategy, run the operations, close placements, hold the 90-day retention promise, and sit with the product team to sharpen the match brief surface with what you learn in the room. The mandate is global, starting from Bengaluru.

You will report directly to the founder and be the sole owner of this function while you build the team around you.

The two-sided marketplace. Get the right startup roles in and get the right professionals matched to them, end to end.

The revenue line. Own the number on every placement close, from first brief to signed offer.

The 90-day retention promise. Hold the post-placement relationship and the quality bar that makes it stick.

The go-to-market strategy. Define which micro-markets Profound enters next, with the cost structure and revenue model to back it.

The operations and funnel. Run time-to-hire, cost-to-hire, and quality-of-hire numbers daily; build the process that does not scale headcount with volume.

The product feedback loop. Sit with the product team and translate what you learn in the room into sharper match briefs and better AI outputs.

Run senior hiring mandates end to end. You have closed roles at the leadership level and can name the two or three signals that decide fit before the first interview.

Owned both sides of the table. You have worked agency and in-house, and you know where the math breaks at scale on each side.

Built a repeatable process from scratch. You shipped a hiring system that did not grow headcount linearly with volume, and you can show how it held up.

Lived in funnel numbers. Time-to-hire, cost-to-hire, conversion at each stage: these are the numbers you check first, not last.

Operated in consumer or internet-first environments. You have run talent in a company that had to earn users, not just fill seats, and that context shapes how you think about candidate experience.

AI-first in how you work. You reach for AI tools before manual process, and you have a point of view on where human judgment still has to make the call.

Held the line with founders. You can sit with a hiring manager whose brief is drifting and bring them back to what they actually need, with evidence.

Take full ownership from day one. See a problem, bring a point of view, move on it. You are not waiting to be tasked.

Communicate forward. Send the five-minute version in Slack. Catch someone between meetings. Flag blockers early rather than managing up.

Make it tangible. Every update lands with a number, a decision, or a next step. Vague progress reports do not move the team.

Use AI tools as a first instinct. The product is AI-native; so is the way the team works. Reach for the tool before the manual step.

Hold a high bar on craft. Attention to detail is not a value here, it is a visible standard. Sloppy outputs do not ship.

Earn trust through expertise and humility. Come with a strong point of view and stay genuinely open to being wrong. Both matter.

Cash compensation of ₹30L to ₹50L a year, with a founding team seat and meaningful ESOPs that reflect the seniority and conviction you bring. You report directly to the founder and own the talent marketplace function for Profound globally. The role gives you the chance to build an AI-native talent business at the category's earliest stage.