Talent Acquisition Leader

## Description

**ABOUT THE ROLE**

We are a growing independent insurance agency currently at 90 employees, with a clear plan to reach 120 within the next two years. This growth will come through a mix of organic expansion, new producer hires, and potential M&A integration. We're looking for a Talent Acquisition Leader who can build the hiring engine to support that growth — not just fill open roles, but create a repeatable, scalable recruiting function that keeps pace with an aggressive but disciplined growth plan.

This is a high-visibility role reporting directly to the COO, with regular exposure to executive leadership and agency principals. The right person will treat talent acquisition as a strategic growth lever, not an administrative function.

**WHAT YOU'LL OWN**

**Strategic Workforce Planning**

• Partner with the COO and department leaders to build a 24-month hiring roadmap aligned to the 90-to-120 growth target, broken down by role, department, and timing.
• Forecast hiring needs quarter by quarter, accounting for seasonality in the insurance business cycle and known attrition patterns.
• Build headcount and cost-of-hire models that tie into budget planning.

**Full-Cycle Recruiting**

• Own end-to-end recruiting for all roles: producers/agents, account managers, underwriters, customer service reps, and corporate/operations positions.
• Build and manage a sourcing pipeline specifically for licensed insurance talent (P&C, L&H) along with support roles typically found in a large agency within a competitive DFW market.
• Design and run an interview and assessment process that's consistent, fast, and candidate-friendly, while protecting hiring quality.

**Employer Brand & Sourcing Strategy**

• Build the agency's employer brand — presence on LinkedIn, job boards, and industry-specific channels — to compete for talent against larger carriers and agencies.
• Develop a pipeline strategy for hard-to-fill roles (licensed producers, experienced AE’s) including relationships with partners and universities.
• Stand up an employee referral program with a real incentive structure.

**Process & Systems**

• Utilize an applicant tracking system (ATS) appropriate for a company this size.
• Build standardized job descriptions, interview scorecards, and offer approval workflows.
• Create reporting/dashboards leadership can use to track time-to-fill, cost-per-hire, source of hire, and pipeline health.
• **Onboarding Handoff & Retention Signal**
• Partner with HR/operations to ensure a clean handoff from recruiting to onboarding.
• Track early-tenure attrition and feed insights back into the sourcing and interview process.
• Support M&A integration hiring/retention planning if acquisitions occur during the growth window.

## Qualifications
**WHAT YOU BRING**
**Required**

• 5+ years of full-cycle recruiting experience, with at least 2 years in a leadership or sole-owner-of-function capacity.
• Demonstrated experience recruiting in insurance, financial services, or another licensed/regulated industry (or a track record of quickly learning a niche talent market).
• Experience building a recruiting function/process from a lean or informal state — you've done this before, not just inherited a mature team.
• Strong command of sourcing tools (LinkedIn Recruiter, job boards, Boolean search) and ATS platforms.
• Comfortable operating with real autonomy and reporting directly to an executive; able to translate business growth targets into a hiring plan without heavy oversight.

**Strongly Preferred**

• Experience recruiting licensed insurance producers or underwriters specifically.
• Familiarity with the DFW insurance/financial services labor market.
• Experience supporting M&A-related hiring or workforce integration.
• Some background in HRIS/ATS implementation or selection.

**Success Looks Like**

• A documented, repeatable hiring roadmap tied to the 90 to 120 growth plan within the first 90 days.
• Time-to-fill and cost-per-hire metrics that improve quarter over quarter.
• A pipeline of pre-qualified candidates for hard-to-fill licensed roles, reducing reliance on reactive, urgent hiring.
• Hiring managers who trust the process and treat TA as a strategic partner, not a request queue.