Director Human Resources

Hickory; New York (NY); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Management training

AI education

Promotion from within

Career growth culture

Job summary

Hickory is seeking a People Director in New York to lead recruiting, onboarding, HR operations, and benefits. You will scale our people processes, design a strong employee experience, and partner with leaders to drive retention and development across the growing Hickory platform.

You’ll build and refine the foundations that keep our culture high, including reviews, ladders, coaching, and recognition, while leveraging AI education and management training to elevate the team.

Qualifications

• Experience building scalable people systems and processes.
• Proven ability to recruit and onboard at scale across multiple entities.
• Strong governance of HR operations, benefits, and payroll.
• Leadership with a focus on culture, retention, and performance.

Responsibilities

• Lead recruiting, onboarding, HR operations, and benefits for Hickory.
• Build and maintain scalable people systems and processes.
• Partner with leadership to drive retention, performance, and employee development.

Skills

Recruiting

Onboarding

HR operations

Benefits

Leadership

People systems

Tools

ATS

HRIS

Payroll systems

AI tooling

Job description

Hickory partners with the industry's leading home service operators and transforms them with Hickory OS, our proprietary AI operating system. That combination has grown revenue more than 11x since 2017, making Hickory one of the largest regional home service operators in the country. And we're just getting started.

Hickory is not private equity. We don't buy to flip, and we don't manage for the exit. We are owner-operators creating an enduring company designed to last for generations, one that invests deeply in people, operational excellence, and technology to strengthen the businesses and communities we serve.

We named the company deliberately. The hickory is among the strongest trees in nature: resistant to decay, built to outlast. And a hickory is both one tree and a grove, the same way Hickory is many brands with a single purpose: to build an enduring company where employees set a new standard of excellence in the trades.

AI is the leverage; people are the moat. Roughly 350 strong, the Hickory family brings together top performers from every discipline: AI engineers, entrepreneurs, transformation leaders, operators, and masters of their trades. We invest in our people the way we invest in the business: deliberately. Management training and AI education run at every level of the organization, because everything here compounds, including your career.

Five values are the standard we hold each other to. They aren't words on a wall; they shape every decision we make, from who we hire to who we promote:

• Put Employees First: By appreciating and recognizing our colleagues, we create a platform for people to do the most satisfying work of their careers. We judge ourselves on the health, development, and quality of our teams. We work hard, but we believe the best work happens when we are staying safe and having fun.
• Treat Everyone with Respect: We respect each other by building strong, constructive, and honest relationships. We lead by example, provide context, share experience, and operate with integrity. We own our mistakes and focus on collaborative solutions, not blame.
• Delight Customers: Our clients support us to build up our company, our careers, and our families. We honor that by radiating empathy and premium service in every interaction to create lifelong relationships.
• Raise the Bar: We pursue long-term excellence, knowing it must always be earned by taking calculated risks, finding our gaps, elevating our peers, staying frugal and scrappy, learning continuously, and rejecting complacency. We are building a team of top performers who constantly raise the bar.
• Get Sh*t Done (GSD): We set high standards for ourselves and get things done by being motivated, focused, present, and detail-oriented. We don't like "mostly done" or "I told someone." We "read the flipping manual" (RTFM) over easy answers. We take on ambitious goals and deliver extraordinary results.

About the Role

People is the department every other part of Hickory leans on. As People Director you'll be its second-in-command, running the engine day to day: recruiting, onboarding, HR operations, benefits, and the people side of every acquisition we close. When a new company joins the platform, your team is the one that turns forty strangers into forty teammates in their first month.

Culture this good doesn't happen by accident; it runs on systems, and you'll build and run them. Reviews people trust, career ladders worth climbing, coaching that sticks, recognition that means something: all of it written into our Foundations system and running on Hickory OS. You'll bring the discipline that keeps it honest, with clear structure, real accountability, well-defined projects, sharp prioritization, and weekly Ten Star meetings that actually earn the name.

Our culture is measurable, and we intend to keep it that way as we double. Employee NPS sits at 44 against an industry average of 14, and field tenure runs twice the industry norm. Protecting those numbers at twice the headcount is the challenge; the department you help build is the answer. As we grow, so does the seat.

Who We're Looking For

Notice what's missing: no "10+ years of X," no required degrees, no keyword bingo. We think that's nonsense. We hire for who you are and what you can do. Failed founders and people who've tried something hard and come up short are welcome here; so are leaders who never had the title. If you recognize yourself below, we want to hear from you.

• Raw talent and grit: You're the one who figures it out, and you don't stop when it gets hard.
• 0-to-1 ability: You've built something from nothing: a company, a team, a system. Success optional; scar tissue valued.
• Quiet confidence, no ego: Secure enough to be wrong, humble enough to do the unglamorous work.
• Leadership, formal or informal: You've gotten people to want to do what must be done through trust and influence, not org-chart authority.
• Emotional intelligence and empathy: You read people well and they trust you fast.
• Excellent communication: Clear when you write, clear when you speak, and you listen more than you talk.
• Fast learner who changes their mind: You seek facts, listen hard, and update your position when the evidence says so.
• Fast with attention to detail and follow-through: Conscientious to the core; "mostly done" isn't done. Fast does not mean you missed the key detail.
• Willing to disagree: You push back when it matters, even when it's uncomfortable.
• Steady under pressure: Even-keeled when things break; you calm rooms rather than heat them up.
• See what we see in the trades: An essential, AI-resilient industry full of skilled people and untapped potential. You get why we're here.

For the People Director role:

• You've built people systems that scale. Onboarding, reviews, payroll, benefits, compliance: you've run the machinery for hundreds of employees across multiple entities, and it held up.
• You've recruited in volume while increasing the bar. From field technicians to senior leaders, you know how to build a pipeline, sell a vision, and close the right person.
• You build systems that keep score. Retention, eNPS, time-to-fill: you stand up the tracking that shows how the company's people are really doing, and you act on what it tells you.

Why Join Hickory

Hickory runs on a simple model: Partner, Integrate, Transform, Endure. It's working, and when you join us you'll help run it, sharpen it, and grow with it.

• Master the best transformation practice in the trades. We bring new businesses onto the platform in under 30 days, then lift them with a proven system (Vision Blueprint, Living Playbook, Performance, Leadership, Drive) that has driven ~70% organic gross-profit growth across our portfolio.
• Use AI leverage most operators only talk about. Our AI does work that once took consulting teams: integrating acquisitions in days, coaching calls as they happen, turning company data into each day's priorities.
• Level up, and level others up. Coaching, training, and promote-from-within aren't perks here; they're how we run. People stay and grow because of it: field tenure runs twice the industry average, with near-zero regretted attrition.
• Culture you feel the moment you walk in. Our Employee NPS is 44 against an industry average of 14, roughly 3x. We care about our people.
• Grow with the business. We push decisions down, not up. You'll own real calls from day one, backed by management training and AI education at every level. As the company compounds, so does your career.

We invest in our people