Senior Manager, Talent
Location: Boston, MA
Type: Full-time
Reports To: Chris Fahey, SVP, Talent & Human Resources
ABOUT VOLITION CAPITAL
Volition Capital is a Boston-based growth equity firm with more than $2.5 billion in assets under management. The firm leads minority capital raises, typically at Series A and B, investing $15–70M in founder-owned, capital-efficient B2B technology companies with $5M+ in revenue. Because Volition invests minority capital, founders retain majority ownership and control — the firm's role is to be a genuinely useful partner, not a typical control investor. About half of the portfolio is bootstrapped founders, which means the team spends significant time earning trust well before any capital event ever happens.
ROLE OVERVIEW
Volition's talent function supports executive hiring across roughly 40 portfolio companies, in addition to internal hiring for the firm itself. This role exists to give Chris real leverage within that function: someone who can take on meaningful pieces of the work, under his direct guidance, rather than leaving him to coordinate everything alone.
The person in this seat supports portfolio company executive searches — VP and C-suite roles — from initial scoping conversations with a CEO/Founder through offer. That means helping build the scorecard, structuring the interview process, developing candidate-specific questions, and staying close enough to the search that the quality of the hire reflects well on Volition, with Chris reviewing and coaching along the way.
This role reports directly to Chris Fahey, SVP of Talent & Human Resources. It carries a great deal of autonomy day to day — real ownership of searches and decisions — while also benefiting from Chris's close support and guidance, giving this person the latitude to run with the work alongside the coaching to keep getting better at it. This person will also work in close, daily partnership with Volition's recruiter who reports separately to Chris but collaborates intimately with this role on every active search.
Beyond portfolio company searches, this person supports Chris directly on internal Volition hiring, HR program development, and the operational execution that keeps the talent function running — the kind of work a strong right hand takes on rather than a narrowly scoped individual contributor role.
The person who succeeds here is best understood as a junior version of Chris: building toward the same range and judgment, comfortable with structured hiring work and with the HR and operational work that surrounds it, and genuinely energized by learning through close partnership rather than being handed a fully independent mandate on day one. They bring real presence even while building experience — comfortable sitting in on a conversation with a CEO, curious enough to ask why a founder is cautious about a particular hire, and structured enough to work within a repeatable process rather than improvise one every time.
ABOUT THE ROLE
Executive Search Support & Execution
● Run portfolio company executive searches — VP and C-suite roles — from JD and scorecard through offer, with Chris's direct coaching and review at each stage.
● Help design interview structures and candidate-specific question guides calibrated to each role and each interviewer's evaluation zone.
● Support a portfolio of concurrent searches across multiple companies at varying stages, prioritizing based on urgency and partner visibility.
● Help run reference checks and close out searches with a clear, documented rationale for the final hire.
Portfolio & Investment Fluency
● Develop working fluency in Volition's minority growth equity model and how it shapes a founder's hiring calculus.
● Translate diligence context — board notes, growth trajectory, team gaps — into a hiring strategy a CEO/Founder will actually trust.
● Build credibility directly with portfolio company CEOs and boards as a talent advisor, not an intake coordinator.
Internal Talent, HR & Operational Support
● Support Chris directly on internal Volition hiring — the firm's own searches, not just portfolio company roles.
● Help develop and improve HR programs and infrastructure for Volition itself, under Chris's direction.
● Take on operational execution that keeps the talent function running smoothly — the administrative and process work that sits behind every search and program.
● Act as a genuine right hand to Chris, picking up whatever the function needs rather than staying inside a fixed lane.
Team Partnership & Process
● Partner daily with Volition's Recruiter, Talent on sourcing and early-stage screening across active searches, coordinating their day-to-day work on a search-by-search basis even though they report separately to Chris.
● Help maintain and improve Volition's structured hiring methodology — scorecards, interview design, reference frameworks — under Chris's guidance.
● Support consistent search velocity and quality as the number of concurrent searches scales.
Stakeholder Support
● Serve as a day-to-day point of contact for CEOs and Managing Partners on active searches, with Chris involved on anything high-stakes or ambiguous.
● Report search status, market intelligence, and candidate pipeline health to Chris and Volition leadership.
● Represent Volition's talent brand externally with candidates, search partners, and the broader market.
Pace, Metrics & Communication
● Operates with real urgency in a fast-paced, results-first environment — Volition wants people who compete to win every day, not just show up.
● Owns the numbers: searches completed per quarter, new-hire targets hit without lowering the quality bar, and post-hire retention as the clearest signal of recruiting performance.
● Proactively keeps every stakeholder — portfolio company leadership and internal Volition staff — current on search status without waiting to be asked.
ABOUT YOU
● 4+ years in talent or HR, with real time inside a growth-stage, VC-, or PE-backed company — not agency-only.
● Has supported or run VP-level searches end-to-end, with specific outcomes you can point to.
● Operates with real ownership — makes sound calls independently, and sharpens fast with senior input.
● Thrives in a fast-paced, metrics-driven environment; treats searches-per-quarter and hire quality as a personal scoreboard.
● Proactively updates stakeholders — CEOs, board members, internal Volition staff — without being chased for status.
● Working fluency in growth equity or venture dynamics, or the speed to pick it up fast.
● Systems thinker: has used a scorecard, interview structure, or reference framework and trusts process over instinct.
● Communication that flexes by audience, from a Managing Partner brief to a candidate outreach note.
WHY JOIN VOLITION CAPITAL
● Direct, close mentorship — this role is built as a genuine apprenticeship into senior talent and HR leadership, not a solo mandate.
● Exposure to Volition's investment team and portfolio company CEOs early in your career, with support close at hand.
● Breadth beyond search: real exposure to HR program development and operational execution alongside portfolio company hiring.
● A firm with genuine scale and a differentiated model: $2.5B+ AUM, minority growth capital, and a portfolio spanning roughly 40 companies.
● A small, tight-knit talent team where your growth is a priority, not an afterthought.
