VP of Talent

We are hiring a VP of Talent & People for our client.

A national art education franchise with 15+ schools, six new locations signed this year, and a pipeline built for a much larger network is hiring its most senior people leader.

This is a people-strategy seat, reporting directly to the CEO, at the moment it matters most: right before scale. The fundamentals are covered, a two-person team runs payroll, onboarding, and HR administration, and will report to you. What the company doesn't have is the executive who designs everything above that: workforce planning that stays ahead of expansion instead of chasing it, the talent architecture a franchise network needs to grow without breaking, and the People function that future HR and recruiting hires will be built into.

You’ll be a thought partner to the CEO and founder, and the owner of how this company hires, develops, and keeps people at every level, in every market it enters.

• Design end-to-end recruitment playbooks for franchise schools: sourcing channels, job posting templates, structured screeners, interview guides, and audition-style teaching demos
• Advise franchise owners on hiring practices and tools (ATS platforms, assessments such as Predictive Index) - you build the system; they make the hires
• Continuously improve the playbook based on what's working across the network
• Build end-to-end recruitment playbooks franchise owners run themselves: sourcing, structured screeners, interview guides, audition-style teaching demos, and assessment tools (e.g., Predictive Index)
• Advise and enable franchisees on hiring - designing the system and guidelines while they make their own employment decisions
• Evolve the playbook into a signature strength of the franchise offering

• Create the pathway that turns high-potential part-time teachers (~250 part-timers network-wide, many promo table) into full-time leaders
• Build leadership development for school-level directors and managers
• Source, adapt, and deploy training curriculum across the network

• Lead and grow the People team - starting with two direct reports, expanding as the company scales, with future HR and recruiting hires reporting to you
• Modernize operations: automate manual processes, close ADP gaps, and build people systems that scale
• Oversee multi-state compliance, employee relations, and performance management

• Improved retention across our school teams
• Faster time-to-hire at corporate and across the franchise network
• More part-time team members promoted into full-time roles
• A talent infrastructure the company can scale on - playbooks, pathways, and processes that run without you in the room

• A proven people leader from a multi-unit, multi-location, or high-growth brand - you've lived the stage we’re entering
• A builder at heart: systems, playbooks, and programs you created are still running today
• Strategic and hands-on in equal measure - comfortable setting direction Monday and fixing an onboarding workflow Tuesday
• Extroverted and genuinely people-oriented, and rigorously analytical - you bring objective methods to a creative, artist-heavy workforce
• Energized by ambiguity, ownership, and building a function from a strong foundation rather than inheriting a finished machine
• ADP Workforce Now experience strongly preferred
• Performance bonus eligibility
• Equity participation potential for the right long-term leader (years 2-3)
• Health, dental, and vision insurance; paid time off
• Hybrid schedule: 2 days per week in our Englewood and Montclair, NJ offices (with flexibility toward 1 day per week after onboarding for candidates based farther out), plus travel to school locations a few times per month

Direct partnership with the CEO and founder at a defining moment in the company's growth