Week of April 14th, 2025
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The Future Role in the TA/RecOps Job Family? by Jeremy Lyons
Pre-Reading: Talent Orchestration Manager by Jacob Paul, The Recruiting Engineer by Benjamin Mena, The RecOps Engineer: Taking Recruitment Operations to the Next Level by Martyn Redstone, Talent Acquisition Engineering: The Future of Recruitment? by Andrew Lewis, and Talent Conductor by Matt Staney
Oh look at TA/RecOps having something of a glow-up for people thinking of new roles in our job familia. For this short thought piece, I highly recommend checking out the articles and posts in the pre-reading since these are the inspiration for this segment.
What do all these articles have in common thematically?
GenAI and Agentic AI influence TA/Recruiting teams and the world it opens up. Right now, TA/Recruiting teams and RecTech vendors everywhere are developing more sophisticated solutions faster than ever before. As TA/RecOps teams adopt a more product management mindset and are empowered with AI, we will start to develop what Jason Miller calls it, “selfish software.” This selfish software will be what we need when we need it, rather than waiting on internal Eng teams or vendors to build it. Essentially, all the articles and posts advocate for an internal resource that sits over the top and works to keep everything aligned.
What are the pros you’ve gleaned from them?
As AI technologies increase, having this in the TA/RecOps job family gives those of us in our industry another role to grow into. Instead of trying to be the head of TA, we can stay more on the Ops side, which we love.
Having a role that acknowledges the technologists and technical skills separates the wheat from the chaff. Everyone thinks they can do TA/RecOps work, but sees it completely differently in the mud. With this kind of a role, it can demonstrate technical expertise.
Building on the technical skills, having this role would further help define the skills needed in the space to be successful. This has been a gap for those in the TA/RecOps space who often can’t get solid advice for what to learn next because their managers come from a different side of the business or a more traditional recruiting background. Nearly all push for learning more about GenAI, AGI, and upleveling technical skills like JavaScript, R, Python, etc.
For as long as I’ve known him, Mike Joyner has foretold the arrival of the Talent Architect/Conductor. This role would sit at the intersection of human-to-machine-type focused teams. The principles of that role, plus the more technical accompaniment of this role, mean a more dynamic TA department.
These all pitch a role at a time when companies are adding AI-focused roles to specific business groups. Instead of being reactive, it is moving the conversation forward so TA/Recruiting is proactive.
What from these leave you hesitant?
While it is great to be proactive, right now, this feels a little like building on sand. People are still discovering TA/RecOps as a role and having difficulty pitching it to their leadership teams. While the buzz of AI is in everyone’s ears, launching a poorly defined or highly ambiguous role could do more harm than good, similar to a poor tool implementation. It might be better to incubate it or call it a technical TA/RecOps Manager role in the same way we have technical and non-technical recruiters. Adding the additional layer wouldn’t necessarily create efficiency.
More often than not, true TA/RecOps professionals are finding sophisticated ways to use the technology available to us, so a new title wouldn’t change that. We have to be creative and use what we have available. Calling us something different wouldn’t change the level of curiosity needed in our role to be effective.
TA/RecOps roles were developed to handle the more technical elements of the job (e.g., systems configurations, API connections, systems thinking, etc) and yet many are being filled with those who don’t have technical abilities already. Part of this issue stems from the broader TA/RecOps community not coming together to define our industry standards (something I spoke about us needing to do at the RecOps Conference) and part of it stems from a “Eh you’ll figure it out” mindset.
While AI is rapidly evolving, there is still a bunch of learning that needs to be done. Most AI academic courses focus on the origins of GenAI and the information becomes outdated quickly. Yes, there are skills you can learn but one week you might need to know n8n while the next week you would need a totally new set in Cursor/Replit.
What are my thoughts?
Whatever we collectively decide to call these roles, they will have an importance in the TA/RecOps space. As agents and their uses increase, having a centralized individual who can remain focused and unbiased in their deployment will be vital. At the present moment, though, I think we need to clean up our house before we go chasing something shiny.
Weekly Survey
RecOps - The GPT
RecOps - Available in the OpenAI store and free to use.
Articles / Industry News
📖 🎧 Articles/Graphics/Podcasts/Posts On Our Radar (sorted by type - Bolded denotes individuals)
Luke Eaton’s The Data Driven Recruiter Issue 41: How to Change (article)
Will Ducey’s Job Descriptions Built for Hiring, Performance, and Business Success (article)
Kevin Wheeler’s 9 Actionable Recruitment Metrics to Drive Performance and Change (article)
Steve Levy’s The Talent Acquisition Ethicist (article)
Jim Stroud’s Hiring Managers Are the Real Reason You’re Losing Top Talent (article)
SeekOut’s AI Agents for Recruiting: A Guide for Hiring Teams (article)
Tribepad’s 51 questions to ask on your recruitment software demo (article)
Steve Levy’s Review of hireEZ’s agentic AI (video)
📰 Product News
Ashby (AiO) - New Feature: Event lifecycle management
Covey (Sourcing) - New Feature: Schedule Rejection Emails, Feature Enhancement: Candidate Profile Navigation
genAssess (AI Literacy Assessment) - Product Improvements: org-wide analytics, richer recruiter view, deeper skills framework, sharper assessment experience
GoodTime (Scheduling) - New Feature: GoodTime’s Agent
Lever (ATS) - Integrations: Cartha, Classet, and Hire2Retire by RoboMQ
Poetry (Hiring Enablement) - New Feature: Playbook Assistant
PURPL (Recruiter Enablement) - Free access plan launch
SCALIS (ATS / Job Board) - New Feature: Job Seeker Profile, Chrome Extension, Google Sign-In for Company Users and Candidates
Permanent Articles
Recruiting Operations: Dictionary & Resources
Events
Week of April 21st
JobSync’s Future Proofing Our Profession: How to Build the Talent Teams & Leaders of Tomorrow with Allison McCutchen Barcz and Katrina Collier
Greenhouse’s Get to know Greenhouse and Data-driven hiring in action
SmartRecruiters/Verified First’s Hiring Managers Are the Secret to Retention – Here’s How the Right Tools Can Help
Week of April 28th
Pinpoint’s Less Admin, More Impact: Exclusive First-Look at Pinpoint’s Workflow Automations
Recruit CRM’s Don’t panic… AI is changing hiring faster than anyone predicted, but here’s what you can do!
SourceWhale/Recruiterflow’s 3 Productivity Boosters That Can Cut Your Time to Fill by 30%
Pillar/Employ’s Hiring Smarter: The Power of Structured Interviews in Talent Selection
Week of May 12th
Week of May 19th
Week of June 2nd
Talent Collective’s Talentsphere Summit. For an additional 10% off, use the code RECOPS.
Greenhouse’s Open for Ops (SF)
Growth by Design Talent’s Becoming a Trusted Advisor Training
Week of June 9th
Greenhouse’s Open for Ops (NY)
Week of June 23rd
Week of July 21st
Week of September 29th
Week of November 3rd
Job Search
Grow Therapy - Senior Manager, Talent Acquisition Operations
LinkedIn - Operations Manager, Talent Acquisition - Innovations & Solutions
Here is the list of previously listed jobs, which may or may not be available.
Additional Resource
We consolidated this section into job search resources on our Linktree
Boolean Strings for Specific ATS Job Search
We’ve consolidated our list of Boolean search strings for RecOps professionals to make them more accessible for everyone. Check out the list here. Kaitlyn Elting also built a generator for you if you are worried about your attention to detail.
Thank you to Steve Levy for contributing so many beautiful and Gabi Preston-Phypers for QA help. Follow both of them for excellent Boolean and sourcing content.
#YourNextHire / People Looking In the RecOps Community
Are you a RecOps professional looking for work? If you have 5 minutes, take the opportunity to complete this quick questionnaire. Not only will you be featured in an upcoming Roundup, it will also help us mention your name when people ask for referrals.
Here is a Google Sheet View for a list of people who were previously featured and are still looking.
🎉 Reminders and Disclaimers 🎉
If you’d like to contribute a job, an article (one you found or wrote), or you are a company and have a product update you want featured, contact Jeremy Lyons.
Please use this form if you or someone you know would like to be featured in our #YourNextHire section. The only condition is that you are a RecOps professional.
Disclaimer #1: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and they do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company. Assumptions made in the analysis do not reflect the position of any entity other than the author. As critically thinking professionals, these views are always subject to change, revision, and rethinking at any time. They are not to be held in perpetuity.
Disclaimer #2: We are sponsor-free. No company below has paid us to advertise their products or share their open jobs. If that changes, we will deliberately call out where we stand to benefit. Additionally, sharing these opportunities and information should not be read as support for these companies or their practices. Regarding jobs, we share these opportunities with the community and only post roles from the company's website. We encourage possible candidates to research each one, as their inclusion does not mean we support the companies or their values.
Until next week, Regulators 😊