How to build a TA leadership shortlist based on outcomes

Big brand experience does not guarantee a great Head of Talent Acquisition. What predicts success is how they built, scaled, and improved hiring systems.

Most executive searches start with a pattern: identify candidates who held similar titles at recognisable companies, filter by years of experience, and build a longlist from there. This approach works for some roles. For TA leadership, it fails more often than it should.

The problem is that TA is context dependent. A leader who scaled hiring at a Series D fintech will face different challenges than someone who ran university recruiting at a multinational. When you screen for logos instead of outcomes, you end up with candidates who look right on paper but struggle in your specific environment.

Why pedigree is a weak signal

A recognisable company name tells you where someone worked. It does not tell you what they built, what constraints they operated under, or what happened after they left.

Consider two candidates. One managed a team of 30 recruiters at a well-known tech company. The other built a recruiting function from scratch at a growth-stage startup and hired their first 100 employees. The first candidate has the bigger brand. The second has more relevant proof of capability.

This matters because stage fit is one of the strongest predictors of executive success. A TA leader who thrived in a stable, well-resourced environment may not know how to operate when headcount plans shift every quarter or when the CEO is the final interviewer on every hire.

What to screen for instead

The strongest TA leaders share a set of observable outcomes. They can describe the hiring systems they built and explain why those systems worked in their context. They know their numbers: time to fill, quality of hire, offer acceptance rate, and how those metrics changed over time.

When building a shortlist, focus on questions like: What did you inherit when you started, and what did you leave behind? How did you define and measure quality of hire? What was your biggest hiring failure and what did you learn from it?

These questions reveal operational depth. They separate candidates who did the work from candidates who were present while the work happened.

How to calibrate your shortlist

Start by defining the outcomes you need in the first year. Are you building a function from nothing? Fixing a broken process? Scaling an existing team? Each requires a different profile.

Then screen against those outcomes explicitly. If you need someone to build from scratch, look for candidates who have done that before. If you need someone to improve an underperforming team, look for candidates who have turned around struggling functions. Do not assume that a candidate who succeeded in one context will succeed in a different one.

It also helps to involve key stakeholders in defining the scorecard before you start sourcing. Alignment on what success looks like prevents wasted cycles on candidates who would not survive the interview process anyway.

The bottom line

A shortlist built on pedigree gives you candidates who look qualified. A shortlist built on outcomes gives you candidates who can deliver results in your context.

If you want to hire a TA leader who will actually succeed, stop screening for brand names and start screening for proof. Ask what they built, how they measured it, and what happened when things went wrong. That is where the signal is.

FAQ

Why does pedigree not predict TA leadership success?

‍TA is highly context dependent. A leader who succeeded at a large enterprise may struggle in a growth-stage environment where process does not exist yet. Stage fit matters more than brand recognition.

What questions should I ask when screening TA leaders?

‍Focus on outcomes: What did you build? How did you measure success? What was your biggest failure and what did you learn? How did you handle stakeholder conflict?

How do I define the right profile for my TA leadership search?

‍Start by clarifying the problem you are solving. Building from scratch, scaling an existing team, and fixing a broken function require different profiles. Define year-one outcomes before you start sourcing.

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