Senior Recruiter (Pasadena)

Ascend; Pasadena (CA); Hybrid; USD 70,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

Ascend is looking for a Recruiter in Pasadena, California, to lead the full-cycle recruitment process for CPAs and accounting professionals. The ideal candidate will have over 5 years of experience and be skilled in engaging passive talent. Responsibilities include managing high-volume requisitions, creating outreach strategies, and ensuring a positive candidate experience. Ascend offers competitive working conditions and values diversity and inclusion in its hiring processes.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of full-cycle, experienced-hire recruiting.
• Advanced sourcing expertise focused on passive candidates.
• Ability to function as a strategic talent advisor.

Responsibilities

• Manage 20+ full-cycle requisitions across various accounting functions.
• Build and maintain a talent pipeline for high-demand roles.
• Deliver exceptional candidate experience with high NPS.
• Utilize ATS effectively to capture data and report progress.

Skills

Full-cycle recruiting experience

Sourcing expertise

Excellent communication skills

Power user of ATS

Relationship-building

Education

Bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university

Tools

Greenhouse

Job description

About Ascend

Ascend empowers entrepreneurial CPAs to reach their goals with an innovative growth model that brings their firms into the new age. Backed by private equity from people‑focused Alpine Investors, Ascend is building a modern platform for regional accounting firms that enables them to stay independent while accessing the resources of a large CPA firm to help them grow. Ascend provides access to growth capital, robust talent acquisition, best‑of‑breed technology, a catalytic leadership system, shared back‑office services, and modernized equity incentives so that firms can surmount today’s industry challenges and reach their full potential. Founded in January 2023, the company attained revenues sufficient to qualify it as a Top 100 U.S. accounting firm within six months of operation.

About Alpine Investors

Alpine Investors is a people‑driven private equity firm that is committed to building great companies by working with, learning from, and developing exceptional people. Alpine prides itself on fostering cultures where people value empowerment, diversity, fairness, integrity, and intellectual honesty. Founded in 2001, Alpine specializes in investments in companies in the software and services industries. Alpine has over $15 billion in AUM and has offices in San Francisco, New York, and Salt Lake City.

Position Summary

Reporting to the Director of Partner Firm Recruiting, the Recruiter will be responsible for full‑lifecycle recruitment of CPAs, accounting professionals and other firm leadership roles. Employing storytelling, analytical rigor, and problem‑solving skills, this individual will devise and implement talent strategies to identify, engage, and close top talent while providing red‑carpet candidate experiences. You will have the opportunity to establish and improve Talent Acquisition (TA) systems and processes, optimizing our hiring practices and improving key TA performance indicators over time.

In This Role, You Will

• Own and manage a high‑volume workload of 20+ concurrent full‑cycle requisitions across Tax, Audit & Assurance, Fund Accounting, M&A, Business Management, Bookkeeping, and CAAS functions, prioritizing searches by business urgency and talent availability.
• Build and maintain a passive talent pipeline targeting professionals from Top 100 accounting firms, PE‑backed organizations, recently merged firms, and culturally disrupted competitors throughout the Los Angeles market.
• Fully own the candidate experience throughout the hiring process, delivering a high NPS, red‑carpet experience.
• Create effective, efficient outbound outreach methods to attract candidates through email, LinkedIn and other job posting sites.
• Evaluate talent via screening interviews; demonstrate excellent interview skills that lead to effective top‑of‑funnel selection.
• Become a power user of our ATS, running reports to check progress against goals, and ensuring all data is effectively captured.
• Monitor talent pipeline analytics, taking action against poor conversion rates and opportunities to improve funnel throughput.
• Effectively present, negotiate, and execute offer letters in partnership with HR.
• Cultivate connections with other recruiters and keep a pulse on what’s happening in the industry and at different companies to get ahead of key strategic and/or competitive opportunities.
• Foster long‑term relationships with high‑performing talent at competitive firms and know who may be looking for opportunities.
• Manage and administer candidate experience surveys to gather feedback; ensure candidate NPS of 90+ regardless of hiring status.
• Help establish new partnership and relationships with universities or other institutions to provide a new influx of talent.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of full‑cycle, experienced‑hire recruiting experience with advanced sourcing expertise focused on identifying, engaging, and converting passive candidates with highly relevant backgrounds.
• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university.
• Strong ability to market the company and increase candidate engagement through targeted outreach and relationship-building.
• Ability to function as a strategic talent advisor to business leaders by utilising hiring data, market insights, and recruiting analytics to influence hiring decisions and search strategy.
• Excellent communication and consultative partnership skills with the ability to influence senior leadership, manage high‑volume recruiting and deliver an exceptional candidate experience.
• Power user of an ATS – Greenhouse is a plus!

What You Can Count On

We live by our values:

• Own it. We seize growth opportunities with the passion, speed, and accountability of an entrepreneur.
• Serve whole‑heartedly. We love our people and serve them with positivity and kindness.
• Be excellent. We set a high bar because our mission matters.
• Win together. We stay in sync, achieve as a team, and celebrate each other.
• Bring the sunshine. We have fun and bring enthusiasm to make the journey joyful.

At Ascend, we provide a fair and equal employment opportunity for all candidates regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, age, marital status, disability, or any other legally protected characteristic. Ascend hires and promotes individuals solely based on qualifications for the position to be filled and business needs.