Director, Talent Acquisition

The Director, Talent Acquisition sets the strategic direction for recruiting at SEI and serves as a trusted talent advisor for senior leaders. The role leads all U.S. recruiting spanning high volume adjunct and hourly hiring, faculty, corporate and specialized professional roles in the US, and executive leadership globally.

The Director is expected to anticipate talent risk before it becomes urgent, understand the business and labor market well enough to challenge how a role is scoped, and make the commercial and operational case for how SEI invests in talent acquisition. Beyond leading the recruiting team and personally leading priority searches, the Director owns the function’s technology roadmap, the internal talent marketplace process and policy design, vendor relationships, and recruiting metrics and forecasting.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Talent Acquisition Strategy, Talent Assessment and Quality

• Set and continuously evolve the Talent Acquisition strategy, operating model, service standards across hiring segments, aligned with broader HR and business strategies.
• Build deep understanding of SEI’s business model, academic calendar and operating cycles, financial priorities, growth plans and talent needs – using that knowledge to build an advisory function that operates in front of being a fulfillment function.
• Establish consistent intake, assessment, selection, offer and closing practice that raises hiring quality while maintaining or improving speed and predictability.
• Partner with HR colleagues – especially Learning & Development— on how to integrate talent management practices into talent acquisition, with particular focus on candidate evaluation and assessment methodology, structured interview tools, and calibration guides.
• Position Talent Acquisition as a talent advisor — exercising meaningful influence over hiring decisions and sourcing strategy,
• Proactively identify opportunities for improvement, secure stakeholder buy-in, and implement enhancements that raise quality of hire and increase efficiency; develop perspectives on how to measure quality of hire.
• Design strategies for building candidate pipelines for distinct segments of (1) high volume hourly roles, (2) faculty, (3) corporate or specialized-knowledge roles including management, and (4) executives. This involves building the approach ahead of anticipated demand through targeted sourcing channels and specialized programs, including a mechanism to expand and track networks, contacts, and prospective candidates.
• Develop strategy and advocate effectively for TA funding and expenditure, along with monitoring ROI on spend.
• Proactively identify opportunities and gaps in the recruiting lifecycle, with a specific focus on what is impacting candidate pool depth, offer acceptance rate, and first year turnover.
• Develop and advance SEI’s approach to defining and measuring quality of hire.
• Define and monitor candidate and hiring manager experience standards, addressing recurring friction points and ensuring communication is timely, respectful and transparent.

Recruiting Technology and Future Capability

• Serve as business product owner for Workday recruiting, defining system priorities, process requirements, governance standards, adoption expectations, data-quality controls and reporting needs.
• Maintain working knowledge of the applicant tracking system external landscape, with deep proficiency in current technology solutions and possibilities in Workday Recruiting.
• Partner with HR Technology on integrations, enhancements, vendor decisions, testing, and implementation while retaining ownership of the recruiting experience and roadmap.
• Serve as a leading voice on applying AI to recruiting, with emphasis on candidate pool efficiency, screening quality, and risk mitigation, in particular practical safeguards against candidate authenticity and identity risk.
• Leverage third-party recruiting platforms — particularly LinkedIn and Indeed — for pipeline building, passive search, and job advertising.
• Develop strong external lens on emerging practices and disruptive technology opportunities to re-shape the approach for TA at SEI.

Executive Hiring and Executive Counsel

• Partner with senior leaders on the recruitment of executive and other strategic hires and leverage SEI’s Frontier Expander leadership model in this process.
• Advise and influence senior leaders on search approach based on the specialized needs of each role.
• Engage the CEO, CHRO, and other senior executives on executive search — leading assigned searches, consulting on approach, and recommending compensation strategy.
• Develop and maintain a network of executive search firms across relevant specializations, and manage those relationships including scope, fees, and performance.

Team Leadership and Development

• Manage a team of recruiters; coach and mentor their development, create opportunities to build skills, and deliver regular performance feedback.
• Coach recruiters to operate as talent advisors, with strong sourcing, assessment, stakeholder management, market intelligence and consultative skills.
• Engage and manage contract recruiters to supplement capacity during periods of high demand, ensuring balanced workloads and consistent service delivery.
• Integrate the team into the broader HR function, developing thinking that extends beyond a recruiting-only lens, and ensure that the TA agenda and priorities are understood across HR leadership.
• Ensure the TA agenda and priorities are understood across HR leadership.
• Partner closely with Compensation, HR Technology and HR Business Partners on offers, leveling, and workforce planning—and ensure all team members are able to effectively do so as well.

Recruiting Operations, Measurement, and Forecasting

• Monitor recruiting workflow and set priorities across the requisition load to meet service level expectations.
• Ensure requisition distribution, workload management and capacity planning are managed effectively.
• Establish policies, design new initiatives, benchmark best practices, and define what success looks like for the function.
• Continually refine how to most effective manage internal hires and ensure an equitable and positive experience for all internal applicants.
• Own and refine recruiting metrics and reporting — including time to fill, cost per hire, source effectiveness, and hiring forecasts — and improve the dashboards used to communicate them.
• Manage recruiting agencies (retained, contingent, temporary placement), vendors and the background check and reference check processes.
• Establish safeguards to detect and address fraudulent candidate activity and related hiring risk.
• Capitalize on system capabilities to streamline work and drive efficiency across the function.

Job Skills

• Advanced business acumen, with the ability to translate organizational strategy into talent, engagement, and organizational development strategies.
• Proven ability to operate as a talent advisor, proactively influencing, advising, and coaching senior leaders, including consulting with executives on recruiting.
• Evidence of building recruiting strategy and operating models, not only managing delivery.
• Ability to build and defend a business case for talent investment, including expected cost, benefit, risk and operational impact.
• Mature leadership presence, seasoned judgment, and high integrity, with the ability to quickly gain credibility and learn a complex organization.
• Demonstrated track record of managing and developing recruiting staff.
• Strong customer service orientation — resolves problems responsively and creatively by detecting underlying issues in complex situations and recognizing patterns and trends.
• Skill in setting and adjusting multiple priorities and allocating resources across individual and team projects.
• Experience leading change management and organization design initiatives.
• Proficiency using Workday as an applicant tracking system.
• In-depth experience with 3rd party solutions, such as LinkedIn Recruiter, Indeed, Glassdoor and HireVue.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Work Experience

• 8+ years of progressive talent acquisition experience, including direct leadership of a complex TA portfolio.
• Minimum 3 years of people leadership experience, including setting direction, hiring and coaching experienced recruiters, managing performance and leading through change.
• Demonstrated experience effectively partnering with senior executive leaders.
• Meaningful executive search experience. Retained executive search firm background, or leading complex in-house executive searches is preferred.
• Experience evolving or implementing recruiting technology, AI-enabled tools, sourcing platforms, assessment solutions or workflow automation. with talent acquisition technologies, applicant tracking systems, and third-party sourcing and interviewing platforms as well as assessment tools. Workday experience strongly preferred.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree required.
• Master’s degree or professional certification preferred.

Other

• Must be able to travel occasionally should a business need arise. For most roles travel would not be common. Travel may involve plane, car or metro. In accordance with ADA policies, reasonable accommodations regarding travel limitations can be provided. Travel will be more common for roles such as Account Executives (25 - 50%), senior leaders (10 – 20%) or Capella Core Faculty (5 – 10%).
• Ability to work onsite in Corporate or Campus location (in a typical office environment) may be required based on role. If so, this would include being mobile within the office, including movement from floor-to-floor using elevators or stairs.

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• If offsite or hybrid role, must have access to work in setting which enables meeting all requirements of the role (including privacy, reliable internet access, phone, ability to video conference, etc.) at a remote location.
• Faculty and Federal Work Study roles require access to work in setting which enables meeting all requirements of the role (including computer, privacy, reliable internet access, phone, ability to video conference, etc.) at a remote location.
• This role may require lifting, however reasonable accommodations will be provided in accordance with our ADA policies.
• Must be able to meet critical thinking and problem solving aspects aligned to job duties, as well as effectively communicating with co-workers.
• Must be able to work more than 40 hours per week when business needs warrant. Accommodations related to schedule may be considered.
• Able to access information using a computer.
• Other essential functions and marginal job functions are subject to modification.

SEI offers a comprehensive package of benefits to employees scheduled 30 hours or more per week. In addition to medical, dental, vision, life and disability plans, SEI employees may take advantage of well-being incentives, parental leave, paid time off, certain paid holidays, tax saving accounts (FSA, HSA), 401(k) retirement benefit, Employee Stock Purchase Plan, tuition assistance as well as entertainment and retail discounts. Non-exempt employees are eligible for overtime pay, if applicable.

Careers - Our Benefits, Strategic Education, Inc

SEI is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering an inclusive and collaborative culture where individuals can grow their careers and contribute fully. We strive to attract talent with broad experiences, skills and perspectives. We welcome applications from all. While it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top end of the pay range at SEI, we offer a competitive salary. The actual base pay offered to the successful candidate may vary depending on multiple factors including, but not limited to, job-related knowledge/skills, experience, business needs, geographical location, and internal pay equity. Our Talent Acquisition Team is ready to discuss your interest in joining SEI. The expected salary range for this position is below.

$133,600.00 - $200,400.00 - Salary

If you require reasonable accommodations to complete our application process, please contact our Human Resources Department at Careers@strategiced.com .