Talent Lead

ABOUT APPLY

APPLY is the Agentic Customer Experience (ACx) partner for the world's most ambitious consumer and entertainment brands. We bring together deep domain expertise across Retail, CPG, Sports, and Media with AI-native delivery capability, designing and delivering agentic solutions that turn CX vision into commercial reality. We are the partner of choice for brands like Arc'teryx, NFL, Lululemon, and Kraft Heinz. For more information, visit

APPLY is hybrid/remote friendly. The preferred candidate should be based in Canada, working in hours that align to ET (Eastern Timezone) or PT (Pacific Timezone).

The Talent Lead owns our global recruitment function—setting direction, developing the team, and partnering with business leaders on hiring strategy—while staying deeply embedded in the work itself. You'll carry your own requisitions, run searches end-to-end, and deliver hiring outcomes alongside the recruiters you lead. Leadership here means raising the bar on execution, not stepping back from it.

You’ll lead high-impact, strategic searches across senior and executive levels—including searches managed directly with the CEO—while supporting the broader team across all levels and regions as needed. Staying close to the business is part of the job: you'll show up to resourcing meetings, maintain a regular pulse on what's coming, and build pipelines ahead of need rather than reacting to them.

Alongside the Chief People Officer (CPO), you'll help shape a talent strategy that reflects where the company is headed—not just where it is today.

You’ll champion how the team works, helping to drive smarter processes, embedding AI tools into day-to-day recruiting, and ensuring every candidate interaction reflects who we are as an employer. If you thrive when you're both leading and doing, this is the role for you.

Please note this is a 1-year contract opportunity.

• Lead full-cycle recruitment across all levels and regions—sourcing, interviewing, selection, and onboarding as an active contributor alongside the team, not solely in a supervisory capacity.
• Oversee global talent operations and maintain regular communication with regional leaders to ensure alignment on hiring priorities, team capacity, and delivery across all markets.
• Develop and execute proactive sourcing strategies—anticipating future talent needs before they become urgent—and maintain robust pipelines across disciplines and seniority levels.
• Regularly check in with the talent team to ensure clarity on priorities, workload distribution, and performance, fostering a well-directed and collaborative team environment.
• Attend casting meetings consistently to stay current on active and upcoming hiring priorities and new business needs, ensuring the talent function is always positioned to respond with speed and precision.
• Manage executive-level hiring end-to-end, including regular follow-up with the CEO and executive leaders to align on search progress, candidate evaluation, and hiring decisions; support interview scheduling and candidate review coordination as required.
• Collaborate with People Operations and the Executive Assistant to facilitate in-person interview logistics for executive candidates, as needed.
• Maintain regular communication with the CPO to keep a pulse on the organization's broader hiring landscape and ensure talent strategy reflects the company's big-picture direction.
• Partner closely with hiring managers to align recruitment with business goals and evolving team priorities.
• Champion employer branding, candidate engagement, and diversity initiatives across all hiring activity.
• Track and report on key recruitment metrics—time-to-fill, source effectiveness, cost-per-hire—and use data to continuously…