Talent Acquisition Intern

Hiring is broken in a specific way: companies know what they need, candidates know what they've done, and the gap between those two things costs everyone time. Profound exists because that gap is a matching problem, and matching problems are solvable.

The product is an AI rep that gets on a call with a hiring manager, scopes the role, and builds a rubric. Candidates then take their own call with the AI, which probes their experience and generates a match brief that represents them accurately to the company. The result is a two-sided picture built from real conversation, not a resume scan.

Profound is Seed-stage, a small founding team operating out of Bengaluru.

As Talent Acquisition Intern at Profound, you will source candidates across active client roles and bring them into the Profound matching funnel.

You will run Boolean and AI-powered sourcing across four simultaneous roles, qualify candidates, and pitch Profound's value clearly so candidates understand how the platform represents them. The role asks for sourcing discipline, startup market knowledge, and the ability to sell a product that most candidates have never heard of.

You will work directly with Saadat, Head of Talent Ops, on-site in Bengaluru five days a week.

• Active sourcing across four roles. Run Boolean search, LinkedIn Recruiter, and AI sourcing tools simultaneously across the open client portfolio.
• The Profound candidate pitch. Explain what Profound is, how the AI rep works, and why the match brief represents candidates better than a standard screen.
• Candidate pipeline and scheduling. Qualify sourced candidates, manage outreach, and get confirmed candidates scheduled with hiring managers.
• Bangalore startup landscape research. Track which startups are hiring, who has raised recently, and who the competitors are for each active role.
• Calendar and funnel discipline. Own your own schedule across four concurrent funnels without dropping threads.

• Sourced candidates using Boolean search. You know how to construct a LinkedIn search string and have used at least one AI sourcing tool in a real role.
• Worked TA at an early-stage startup. At least six months of internship experience across two startup TA roles, in companies under 100 people.
• Operated in AI, B2B SaaS, or consumer tech. Your startup experience is in tech; you understand how these companies hire and what candidates from these environments expect.
• Know the Bengaluru startup ecosystem. You can name which companies are growing, who has raised recently, and who competes with whom.
• Sold something to a skeptical audience. You have pitched a product, a role, or an idea to someone who had no prior context and brought them along.
• Managed multiple workstreams without dropping threads. You have juggled concurrent priorities and kept each one moving independently.

• Pick up the context, then move. Research the role, the company, and the candidate before the first outreach; show up already knowing the landscape.
• Run four funnels like one. Manage simultaneous pipelines with the same discipline you'd give a single role; calendar ownership is what keeps this from breaking.
• Pitch with specificity. Generic descriptions of Profound do not land; know the product well enough to explain exactly how it works and why it matters to this candidate.
• Figure it out first, then escalate. Try the obvious answer before asking; Manager is available, but the expectation is independent problem-solving first.
• Work in the room. The team is on-site in Bengaluru five days a week; collaboration happens in person.

Stipend of ₹3L per year, with room for exceptional candidates with three or more strong startup internships. You work directly with the Head of Talent Ops and own sourcing and candidate management across Profound's live client roles. The role puts you inside an early AI recruiting product at the moment it is being built.