Talent Acquisition Lead

Position Summary:

The TA Lead will be responsible for defining and executing the talent acquisition strategy to support the rapid growth of Costcos India GCC. This is a hybrid leadership role that requires both operational excellence in managing an ecosystem of external recruitment partners and hands-on leadership to build and scale an internal TA team. The successful candidate will ensure that hiring processes remain agile, data-driven, and aligned with Costcos quality standards as we scale from our current operations.

Job Duties/Essential Functions:

Vendor Ecosystem Management:

• Manage and hold external recruitment partners accountable for performance, quality of pipeline and SLA adherence.
• Conduct regular connections with vendors to calibrate candidate quality, review funnel and adjust sourcing strategies.
• Integrate external partners into the Costco hiring workflow, ensuring their processes are synchronized with internal intake and assessment frameworks.

Internal Team Leadership & Scaling:

• Build, mentor, and lead the internal TA team. Define hiring standards, interview practices and candidate engagement workflows to ensure consistent, high-bar hiring experience.
• Implement selection day models and boot-camp style hiring initiatives to manage high-volume, phased demand surges.
• Foster a culture of data-backed decision-making, ensuring the team uses metrics to identify bottlenecks in real-time.

Hiring Manager Alignment & Role Closure:

• Serve as the strategic bridge between Hiring Managers (HMs) and the recruitment delivery team.
• Drive accountability for the hiring funnel; coach HMs on screening SLAs (48-hour response times), interview slot availability and feedback consistency.
• Proactively manage roadblocks (e.g., aging profiles, slow feedback loops) to ensure roles move from requisition to offer in line with the projected roadmap.
• Establish structured post-offer engagement programs to improve joining ratios and reduce drop-outs.

Operational Strategy & Reporting:

• Maintain the "single source of truth" for hiring status, ensuring all internal trackers are accurate and updated.
• Provide leadership with visibility into hiring health, including funnel conversion ratios, diversity metrics, offer acceptance rates, and joiner projections.
• Lead weekly recruitment cadence meetings with leadership to surface issues, discuss hiring priorities and pivot sourcing strategies based on business needs.
• Own workforce planning and hiring forecasts, including headcount demand management and requisition intake governance against the 2030 roadmap.
• Own the TA budget, including agency spend, tooling, assessment platforms and cost-per-hire tracking.
• Partner with Marketing & Branding to support employer brand activation across candidate touchpoints.
• Define and drive the campus hiring and early-careers strategy with target institutions.
• Own diversity hiring strategy and targets, in addition to reporting diversity metrics.

Compensation, Governance & Compliance:

• Support compensation and benefits structure design and governance for hiring, including offer construction and salary-band adherence.
• Establish interview governance, including panel training, certification and calibration standards.
• Ensure hiring practices comply with Indian employment law and non-discrimination requirements.
• Define background verification (BGV) standards for hiring and coordinate the handoff with the HR team at offer stage.1

Non-Essential Functions

• Responsible for continued personal growth in the areas of technology, business knowledge and company policies and platforms.
• Assist in other areas of the department as necessary.
• Proficient in Google Workspace applications, including Sheets, Docs, Slides, and Gmail.

Qualifications & Skills:

• GCC Experience: 10+ years of experience in talent acquisition within a fast growing environment, preferably scaling from 0 to ++.
• Vendor Management: Demonstrated success managing high-performing external search firms and specialist staffing agencies.
• Process Engineering: Experience in defining end-to-end recruitment workflows, from demand intake and AI-based screening to offer negotiation and onboarding.
• Data Fluency: Advanced ability to analyze recruitment funnels, forecast hiring timelines, and translate data into actionable insights for business leaders.
• Workforce Planning: Experience owning workforce planning, headcount forecasting and TA budget management.
• Stakeholder Management: Ability to influence and manage expectations with senior hiring managers and executives in a matrixed organization.