Talent Acquisition Manager (Contract)

HardScope; United States; On-site; USD 61,000 - 73,000; Full time

Job summary

HardScope is seeking a hands-on recruiter to lead end-to-end hiring for our content and production teams. You’ll partner with hiring managers, source candidates directly, review portfolios, and manage the interview process through offers. This is an independent contractor role with a 6-month term and a monthly retainer.

You will coordinate onboarding, background checks, and first-week scheduling while maintaining records and providing weekly role updates. Remote US-based with core overlap hours.

Qualifications

• 5–10 years of in-house or embedded recruiting experience.
• Demonstrated production or media hiring with closed roles.
• Ability to evaluate creative work from reels and portfolios.
• Active sourcing network in production and creator media.
• Hands-on experience selecting or implementing an applicant tracking system.
• Comfort with a lean environment and direct access to executives.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end hiring for content and production roles: producers, editors, videographers, and related positions.
• Partner with hiring managers to define role profiles and compensation ranges.
• Source qualified candidates through direct outreach; review work samples.
• Pre-screen candidates, present shortlist with notes and recommendations.
• Manage interview process, gather feedback, and prepare offers.
• Stand up and maintain an applicant tracking system; send weekly updates.
• Handle 3–5 open roles at a time.
• Onboarding: issue offer letters, coordinate background checks and I-9/E-Verify, schedule first-week

Job description

Term : 6 months, renewable · Paid trial first 30 days

Compensation : $5,500–$6,500/month retainer (up to 65 hours/month)

Location : Remote (US) · 2–4 core overlap hours daily, 10am–3pm ET

Reports to : VP, Integrated Operations · Partners closely with the Chief Content Officer

About HardScope

HardScope is a full-stack content and commerce media company. We build creator-led IP and own the products, franchises, and audiences that come out of it — across original programming, network and platform partnerships, agency work, live and interactive experiences, and creator-driven commerce. We are not middlemen, not a content services vendor, and not a traditional brand-partnerships shop. We design, build, acquire, and invest in IP franchises where we hold majority ownership, and we move at startup speed across a very wide surface area: concept to creator deal to production to product to shelf.

The Role

You will lead recruiting with an initial focus on our content and production organization, and you'll also own the mechanics of onboarding the people we hire.

It's a hands-on role with a lot of ownership. You'll be our primary dedicated talent resource, which means you'll handle each search yourself from start to finish: partnering with the hiring manager to define the profile and compensation range, sourcing and reaching out to candidates directly, reviewing portfolios and demo reels to assess whether their work meets our standard, pre-screening candidates before they reach the hiring manager, managing the interview process through to a signed offer, and then coordinating the steps that get the new hire set up and ready before their first day.

Responsibilities

Recruiting - 65% of role (~10 hrs/week)

• Own end-to-end hiring for content and production roles: producers, showrunners, editors, short-form and social editors, videographers, motion and graphics designers, post supervisors, production coordinators, and studio operations
• Support hiring outside production as needed. Production and media is the primary focus but not the exclusive one — expect to pick up commercial, marketing, operations, and corporate roles across our divisions as priorities evolve
• Partner with hiring managers to define the profile for each role. At the start of every search, turn a general request into a clear, written definition: required skills and experience, the quality standard for their work samples, the compensation range, the target start date, and who interviews the candidate at each stage
• Source qualified candidates through direct outreach rather than waiting on applicants. For production roles this means reviewing actual work first — reels and credits on Vimeo and YouTube, IMDb Pro, Staff Me Up, ProductionHUB, editor and motion-design communities on Discord and Slack — alongside LinkedIn Recruiter
• Pre-screen every candidate before they reach the hiring manager. Run a first conversation covering their relevant experience, their work samples, compensation expectations, availability, and genuine interest in the role, then present a shortlist with written notes on each person and a clear recommendation
• Evaluate candidates on the quality and volume of work they've actually produced, not résumé keywords. You should be able to watch a few minutes of someone's reel or portfolio and form your own view on whether they meet our standard
• Manage the interview process: scheduling every round, collecting written feedback from interviewers, running the decision debrief, completing reference checks, and preparing the offer for approval
• Stand up and maintain an applicant tracking system.
• Send a weekly written update on each open role
• Handle 3–5 open roles at a time

Onboarding- 35% of role (~5 hrs/week)

• Handle everything between offer acceptance and the first day: issuing offer letters and contractor agreements, ordering background checks, completing I-9 and E-Verify paperwork, and building the new hire's first-week schedule
• Coordinate the internal teams that each handle part of onboarding. You won't do all of this work yourself, but you are responsible for making sure it all gets done on time:
• Help Desk — hardware, accounts, and systems provisioning. You raise the tickets, confirm timing, and verify everything is ready before Day 1
• Operations — orientation materials and the training each division wants its new hires to complete. You collect what applies to the role and schedule it into their first week
• Finance — new-hire set up in Sequoia , our HR system, along with payroll and benefits enrollment. You supply clean, complete new-hire data and confirm the record is live
• Run 30-, 60--day check-ins with each new hire, and report back what you learn
• Keep our hiring records current: the list of open roles, our job levels and titles, compensation ranges, and the onboarding checklists themselves

What Success Looks Like:

• Concurrent open reqs owned 3–5
• Production hires delivered 6–10 over the 6-month term
• Time to first qualified slate, from intake ≤ 10 business days
• Time to offer ≤ 40 days

What We're Looking For

Required

• 5–10 years of in-house or embedded recruiting experience — not agency-only
• Demonstrated production or media hiring: you can name specific producer, editor, or videographer roles you personally closed in the last 18 months, with time-to-fill
• Ability to evaluate creative work directly. You've screened reels and portfolios and formed your own judgment rather than deferring entirely to the hiring manager
• Your own active sourcing network in production and creator media
• Hands-on experience selecting or implementing an applicant tracking system, not just using one someone else configured, plus genuinely organized documentation habits
• Strong cross-functional coordination. Much of the onboarding work runs through Help Desk, Operations, and Finance, so you need to be comfortable driving other teams to a deadline without owning them
• Working familiarity with an HRIS — we use Sequoia; comparable experience with Rippling, Gusto, TriNet, or similar transfers fine
• Comfort with a lean environment: light process, direct access to executives, and willingness to do the coordinator-level work yourself
• Operating as an established independent contractor, ideally through your own LLC or S-corp, with other clients

Preferred

• Background in a digital media company, production studio, network in-house TA team, creator-economy business, or agency talent team
• Exposure to gaming, esports, or creator-led content audiences
• Experience onboarding freelance crew in addition to full-time employees
• Experience building or maintaining job architecture and comp bands

Signals we screen out

• Contingency-agency-only background with no embedded or in-house experience
• Cannot name production-specific sourcing channels beyond LinkedIn
• Unwilling to touch scheduling, provisioning, or onboarding logistics
• Looking for placement fees on top of the retainer
• Committed capacity elsewhere that makes 15 real hours a week unrealistic

Terms:

• Structure: Independent contractor engagement, retainer-based against defined deliverables. You set your own schedule within our core overlap window and keep your other clients
• Rate: $5,500–$6,500 per month commensurate with production hiring depth.
• Term: 6 months, renewable. First 30 days is a paid trial with an explicit go/no-go review
• Termination: 14 days for convenience, either party
• Required terms: Mutual NDA, candidate data-handling clause, systems access limited to what the role requires, work-for-hire IP assignment covering role definitions, templates, and candidate records, and a no-solicit of HardScope employees during the term and for 12 months after