Talent Acquisition Specialist

Hiring is broken at both ends: hiring managers brief agencies with a checklist, and candidates get assessed by someone who barely read the JD. Profound exists because the quality of signal on both sides of a hire determines whether the right person gets the right role.

That belief produced two products: an AI-powered intake call that extracts everything a hiring manager actually needs, and an AI Rep call that assesses and represents candidates against that exact brief.

Profound is Seed-funded, backed by founders who scaled Swiggy, Zomato, and Delhivery, and is already running live mandates from companies like Rippling and Deserve.

As the Talent Acquisition Specialist at Profound, you will own end-to-end sourcing and screening across four to five active mandates from high-growth startups at any given time.

You will map talent against each mandate, run outbound sourcing using Boolean search and AI tools, screen candidates, and bring them into the Profound assessment call. The role asks for deep Bengaluru startup ecosystem knowledge, strong tech stack literacy, and the ability to pitch both the hiring company and Profound credibly to every candidate you speak with.

You will work directly with the founding team and report to the CEO.

End-to-end sourcing across mandates. Run outbound search on four to five active roles simultaneously, using Boolean and AI sourcing tools.

Candidate screening and qualification. Evaluate profiles against each mandate at a technical level and move the right candidates into the Profound assessment call.

The Profound pitch. Articulate why a candidate should take the Profound call: what makes the assessment different and why it represents them better.

Company-specific pitches. Build a credible story for each client company fast, covering what they build, who backs them, and why the role matters.

Scheduling and handoff. Manage coordination between screened candidates and hiring managers where the mandate requires it.

Pipeline reporting. Keep the founding team informed on sourcing progress, blockers, and conversion across all active roles.

Sourced for product and tech roles hands-on. You have owned a sourcing desk for engineering and product mandates, without leaning on agencies to fill the funnel.

Operated at a seed or Series A startup. You have recruited in an environment where inbound was thin and every hire required outbound hustle.

Carry the Bengaluru startup ecosystem in your head. You know which companies are hiring, where strong PMs and engineers tend to work, and how the landscape is shifting right now.

Read a JD and a profile at a technical level. You can look at a tech stack, map it to a candidate's background, and call the fit without needing a hiring manager to walk you through it.

Sold a company, not just a job. You have pitched a startup's story to a skeptical candidate and moved them from cold to interested.

Used AI sourcing tools in your workflow. You have experimented with tools like Juicebox or similar, and you stay current on what is new in the hiring tech space.

Operated independently and flagged blockers early. You have managed your own desk without daily check-ins and brought problems to the surface before they became delays.

Own your desk completely. You set your own sourcing motion and move without being asked; the founding team is a resource, not a manager.

Flag blockers the moment they appear. Sitting on a problem for two days is the one thing that slows everything down; surface it early and it gets solved fast.

Use every tool available. Boolean, AI sourcing platforms, generative AI on a live call: reach for whatever gets the answer fastest.

Build context fast and pitch with confidence. You will be selling a different company every week; get sharp on each one quickly and hold the conversation credibly.

Keep the founding team informed. Decisions about your schedule, availability, or capacity land with the CEO before they happen, not after.

Match the energy of the room. The pace here is real; people who bring the same agency and follow-through make the whole team move faster.

Cash compensation of ₹11.3L to ₹15L a year. You report directly to the CEO and own the sourcing function as an individual contributor. The role puts you at the center of building a product that changes how professionals get hired.