Hawkwood are currently partnering with one of Europe’s top-performing venture capital firms to hire a Head of Portfolio Talent.
The firm is an early-stage investor operating across London and Paris, with a strong track record backing high-quality European technology companies. You will be working as part of a lean investment team, with direct exposure to the founding partners, in a high-ownership, high-performing environment. The role offers the opportunity to work closely with some of the most ambitious technology founders in Europe, and to shape and define the portfolio talent function with a high degree of autonomy and responsibility.
The Head of Portfolio Talent will act as a strategic talent advisor to founders and CEOs across the portfolio. The mandate is to create portfolio-level leverage by improving how companies attract, assess, and retain top-tier talent, rather than embedding as a recruiter within a small number of businesses.
You will be trusted to build and run the portfolio talent function, shaping the operating model, setting priorities, and bringing structure, discipline, and momentum to a role with genuine visibility and influence.
What you’ll do
* Partner with founders and leadership teams on talent strategy, organisational design, and hiring execution
* Support critical, trajectory-altering hires, including senior leadership and highly specialised technical roles
* Build scalable hiring playbooks, interview architectures, and assessment frameworks that portfolio companies can adopt
* Design and deliver portfolio-wide programming, including workshops, networking events, and founder sessions
* Support the investment team during due diligence, assessing leadership and talent capability in prospective investments
* Establish a proactive operating rhythm so the strongest companies engage early, not only when issues arise
* Maintain strong data discipline, tracking funnel performance and talent outcomes to demonstrate portfolio impact
* Act as a trusted representative of the fund, elevating talent to a strategic, board-level conversation with founders
About you
* You have led Talent/TA in a high-quality, venture back tech company
* You bring strong commercial credibility and are confident influencing founders, CEOs, and senior leadership teams
* You are a programmatic thinker, able to design systems and approaches that scale beyond one-to-one support
* You are autonomous and entrepreneurial, but also highly disciplined in execution and reporting
* You have sufficient technical fluency to engage credibly with engineering and product-led teams
* You are comfortable operating across multiple companies, geographies, and stakeholder styles
We recognise how challenging this current job market is for candidates, and Hawkwood are therefore striving to provide the best candidate experience we can.
If you are interested in this opportunity, we kindly request that you apply via this LinkedIn advert, as opposed to sending us an email or LinkedIn direct message. We are eager to ensure that each candidate application is considered fairly, and receives a consistent experience.
Unfortunately, we cannot ensure this standard if you inquire about a role via email or LinkedIn message, as it falls outside of our established process.
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