OFFICE OF THE FOUNDER
Founder's Associate, Hiring and Talent
Owns the candidate pipeline and talent training.
$3,500 to $6,500/mo
Willingness to relocate to the United States must be there.
This is the hardest role on this page and the expectations are high. It is not a traditional HR seat. You will own the pipeline, run the process, and be judged on who you bring in and who you miss. Most people should not apply for this one. If you read that as a challenge rather than a warning, apply.
01 · What you own
- The candidate pipeline and talent training as the team scales toward 28 people.
- Vetting: every application read, every answer written, every reason real.
- Talent training: the ramp a new hire runs from day one to productive.
- Hiring metrics: time to decision, quality of pipeline, offer acceptance.
02 · Your first 30/60/90 days
Take over the live application queue completely: clear the review backlog, send the pending written answers yourself, and deliver a pipeline report naming the three strongest candidates and why.
03 · What we look for
- You have hired inside a growing company, not just recruited CVs.
- You write rejection and feedback a candidate would thank you for.
- You can show a hiring process you built that outlasted you.
- You hold a bar under pressure to fill seats.
04 · What this is not
- Not agency recruiting. No commission-per-head thinking.
- Not HR administration. The pipeline and the bar are the job.
05 · Where this leads
Head of Talent as the team scales, owning the department you build under this seat.
You will not stay an associate.
A Founder's Associate is not an assistant seat. You are given a domain, trained directly by the founder, and expected to own it. As the company grows, the domain becomes a department and you lead it. We are hiring several, each against a different domain.
Not an open position. Where the seat leads.
Not an open position. Where the seat leads.
Not an open position. Where the seat leads.
Not an open position. Where the seat leads.
Not an open position. Where the seat leads.
Not an open position. Where the seat leads.
We are aiming for 28 people by mid-2027. The people who join now are the ones who will be running those teams.
06 · Leadership Is Earned, Not Assigned
Leadership at Black Swan Ventures Group is not a function of tenure, title, or sales performance. It is evaluated separately, continuously, and much more strictly than the job itself.
Being excellent at your job does not entitle you to lead people. A closer who breaks every record in the company has no more claim to a Head of Sales seat than someone who has never made a cold call, because the two jobs measure different things. One measures output. The other measures judgment, composure under pressure, and the ability to make other people better. An entry-level hire with strong emotional intelligence and zero sales experience has a real path to leadership. A top performer with poor judgment does not, no matter how much revenue they close.
If you're good at your job, you stay good at your job, and you get paid more for it. That is a complete outcome here, not a consolation prize.
Every employee has the right to choose who they report to, and the right to raise a dispute about leadership they believe is toxic or unfit. We do not tolerate toxic leadership in any form. If someone is highly skilled but cannot work productively under the standing leadership structure, they report directly to the founder until a fit is found, not to someone they cannot work with.
Leadership roles are held under more scrutiny than any other position in the company, not less. They can be lost. They are not permanent once granted.
07 · Who We Hire
We hire for skill and judgment, not background, age, gender, or neurotype. We are actively friendly to hiring people who are neurodivergent, including ADHD, autism, and other learning or attention differences, and to candidates who don't present as conventionally social in an interview. None of that is a disqualifier here, and in several of our functions it's a genuine advantage. Diverse teams across age, gender, background, and cognitive style build better companies. We built this hiring process to actually reflect that.
06 · Logistics
You are in UTC. This role runs 13:00-21:00 CET. You overlap by 8 hours: 11:00 to 19:00 your time.
Strong overlap
Think this is you?
One form. No cover letter, no recruiter.
Apply for Founder's Associate, Hiring and Talent