Founding Talent & People Builder

Edoofa; Gurugram District; On-site; INR 4,000,000 - 7,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Edoofa in Gurugram is seeking its first HR hire to build the talent engine from scratch and own end-to-end hiring across leadership, mid-level and entry-level roles.

You will create sourcing strategies across campuses, referrals and lateral markets, and design hiring playbooks that prioritize ownership, grit and judgment in candidates. This founder-backed role demands hands-on execution and a track record of closing hard roles.

Qualifications

• 4–5 years of experience in talent acquisition.
• Proven track record of closing hard roles, not just scheduling interviews.
• Ability to build pipeline and partner with founders on senior hires.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end hiring across leadership, mid-level and entry-level roles.
• Build sourcing strategies across campuses, referrals and lateral markets.
• Create hiring playbooks that emphasize ownership, grit and judgment.
• Map the market for senior roles and run processes that respect candidates’ time.
• Own payroll, onboarding and compliance considerations as the scale grows.

Skills

Talent acquisition

Closing hard roles

Sourcing

Interviews coordination

Job description

Founding Talent & People Builder | On site, Gurugram | Reports to the founders

Edoofa’s next phase will not be constrained by demand. Demand is not the problem. It will be constrained by talent quality.

We are moving from a tightly knit group of early Dukaandaars to a scaled organisation operating across sales, admissions, employability, student success and university partnerships. The difference between a ₹10 crore company and a ₹500 crore institution is who gets hired, who stays, and who grows.

Today, the founders lead recruiting—from sourcing and screening to first conversations and closing. That is not a scalable use of their time, and it caps how quickly we can build. This role exists to take that work over.

You will not inherit an HR department. You will build Edoofa’s talent engine from scratch.

The mandate

The first twelve months will be busy. Here’s what the hiring plan looks like:

• Senior leadership: 3–4 roles
• Sales and Revenue Head, Marketing and Branding Head, and Tech Head. These are hires that can change the company’s trajectory. You won’t close them alone: you’ll build the pipeline, run the search and process, and bring the founders into conversations with the right candidates at the right time.
• Mid-level: 8–10 roles
• Team Leads across sales and admissions, experienced Academic Consultants, Career Development Cell, HR, and Executive Assistant roles.
• Entry level: 15+ roles
• Admission Mentors, Launchpad Coaches, DSA mentors, and marketing and sales roles. This is a monthly hiring engine that accounts for attrition; it doesn’t have an end date.
• HR operations: fully owned
• Onboarding, documentation, payroll, EPF, ESIC, compliance and contracts—all of it off the founders’ desks.

The real test is simpler than these numbers: when a founder wants to speak with a great candidate for any role, there should already be a pipeline.

What you will own

-Talent acquisition as a competitive advantage

-Lead end-to-end hiring across leadership, mid-level and entry-level roles. Build sourcing strategies across campuses, referrals and lateral markets. Create hiring playbooks that look for ownership, grit and judgment ahead of pedigree. As we scale, you’ll help raise the bar.

• Hiring quality is the biggest lever you control.

-Senior search partnership with the founders

• Senior hiring is a different craft from volume hiring. You’ll map the market, build target lists, and write outreach that a Sales Head at a ₹200 crore company will actually respond to. You’ll run a process that respects a senior candidate’s time. You’ll make sure the founders spend time only with candidates worth meeting.

-Founder-aligned hiring and culture design

• Translate the founders’ expectations into hiring signals and filters that interviewers can apply consistently. Help ensure that only true Dukaandaars enter the system. Protect the standard and be willing to say no under growth pressure, including to a founder. You are a gatekeeper of trust.

-Performance, growth and retention systems

• Build performance frameworks that measure outcomes rather than activity. Create growth paths that reward ownership, not just tenure. Identify high-potential Dukaandaars early and help accelerate their growth. Reduce regretted attrition through clarity, feedback and fairness. People stay where growth is real. People operations built for scale

-Own payroll, compliance, EPF, ESIC, contracts, onboarding and HR hygiene. Build clean, simple systems without unnecessary bureaucracy. Hire and manage operations support when the scale of the work calls for it.

• Operations should enable builders, not slow them down.
• Coach managers on hiring, feedback and people decisions. Be a sounding board for difficult calls. Help the company mature without losing its edge.This is quiet, high-leverage work.

How this role actually works

Read this part carefully. It’s where many candidates self-select out.

This is a founding role, and it starts as a deeply hands‑on individual contributor job. You’ll personally write job descriptions, source candidates, screen resumes, run first conversations, chase interview schedules and close offers. There is no team beneath you at the start. Your leverage comes from your judgment, taste and execution—not headcount.

You’ll also do the unglamorous work: onboarding paperwork, payroll cycles and compliance filings. A founding people function includes all of it, and the person in this role needs to take pride in doing it well rather than waiting for someone junior to arrive.

You’ll build systems and hire support as the company grows. The sequence is building first, delegating later.

This is a role for a builder of talent engines. It’s not a role for a manager of HR processes.

Who we are looking for

You have 4–5 years of experience in talent acquisition and a real record of closing roles. You’ve filled hard roles, not just scheduled interviews.

Two profiles could be a fit:

• You’ve been the second or third person in a talent team at a fast‑scaling company and have seen what hiring looks like when an organisation doubles.
• You’re a sharp, polished recruiter at a large brand, strong at the craft, and ready for more decision‑making responsibility. If you’re tired of running someone else’s process, this role gives you the opportunity to own the whole function.

Either way, you’re intrapreneurial and comfortable working on the ground. You don’t wait for a requisition to arrive before building a pipeline. You have opinions about people, and you can defend them.

This may not be the right role for you if you want to step into an established HR function, lead a team from day one, or focus more on process than outcomes.

What makes this role extraordinary

This is Edoofa’s first HR hire.

You’ll join a company that has already cracked zero to one: 7,000+ students, 200+ university partners, 65% of enrolments coming through referrals, and a profitable, bootstrapped business. The systems work. Now we’re switching on the one‑to‑ten flywheels, and the journey to ₹500 crore will be shaped more by who we hire than by anything else we decide.

You’ll report to the founders and sit close to every decision that matters. You’ll help choose the leadership team that runs this company for the next decade. Very few people get to do that four years into a career.

You won’t just support the growth. You’ll help determine who gets to build it.