Leadership
I Turn Broken Hiring Into Competitive Advantage
7-day faster hiring. 15% higher candidate satisfaction. Results that show up in the business — not just the recruiting dashboard.
"If your TA function is underperforming, misaligned, or simply built for a company you used to be — let's talk."
Background
Most companies don't have a hiring problem. They have a strategy problem — and it's costing them millions in mis-hires, agency fees, and lost talent to competitors who figured it out first.
Dan has spent his career solving exactly this. As a Talent Acquisition Leader, he builds recruitment functions that actually work — not just for today's headcount plan, but for where the business is going. He's led high-performing teams across competitive disciplines: software engineering, data analytics, digital transformation, management consulting, and corporate functions.
His edge: combining the operational rigor of someone who owns budgets, vendor relationships, and compliance — with the human instinct to know what great talent looks like before it walks out the door.
Career History
Manager, Talent Acquisition Strategy
- Redesigned the full recruitment lifecycle from requisition to start date, cutting time-to-start by 25%.
- Launched an employee referral program integrated into SuccessFactors, increasing referral submissions by 35%.
- Built executive-facing Power BI dashboards enabling faster, data-backed workforce decisions.
- Renegotiated background check vendor packages, cutting turnaround by 50% and eliminating a key delay to start dates.
Director, Talent Acquisition Operations
- Scaled CapTech's workforce from 325 to 1,100 employees — nearly tripling headcount while sustaining hiring quality.
- Built a national sourcing team from the ground up, hiring, training, and mentoring recruiters across multiple markets.
- Reduced time-to-hire by 4–7 days by overhauling the interview process and launching an interviewer training program.
- Owned the SmartRecruiters ATS, driving adoption, data integrity, and system alignment with evolving business needs.
Senior Full Lifecycle Technology Recruiter
- Managed 25–30 concurrent requisitions, consistently delivering qualified candidates from intake to offer.
- Deployed a multi-channel sourcing strategy — reducing reliance on inbound applications and surfacing stronger passive talent.
- Improved offer acceptance rates by leading candidate-side compensation negotiations and aligning expectations early.
Partner, Technology Recruiting
- Built and scaled a full-service recruiting firm from the ground up, owning business development, full-lifecycle recruiting, compliance, payroll, and P&L.
- Grew the client base through targeted marketing campaigns, cold and warm outreach, and in-person presentations.
- Maintained a proactive talent pipeline, ensuring qualified candidates were ready before requisitions opened.
Areas of Expertise
- TA function design & fractional leadership
- Hiring process audit & optimization
- ATS selection, configuration & adoption
- Recruiter coaching & team capability building
- Structured interviewing & hiring manager enablement
- AI readiness assessment & tool evaluation
- Executive & technical recruiting strategy
- Workforce planning & headcount forecasting
- Offer strategy & compensation benchmarking
- DEI hiring practices & inclusive process design
- Power BI & TA analytics dashboards
- Vendor negotiation & background check optimization
Industry experience spans: Technology, SaaS, management consulting, financial services, energy & utilities, and professional services — with particular depth in high-growth and scaling environments.
Education & Credentials
Philosophy
Recruitment teams are often under-resourced, misaligned with the business, and drowning in process debt. Hiring managers lose confidence. Candidates ghost. Top talent accepts competing offers while requisitions sit open for 90+ days.
Dan partners directly with senior stakeholders to turn vague hiring needs into sharp talent strategies. That means being honest about what's working and what isn't, pushing back when a client's instinct is wrong, and measuring success by outcomes — time-to-fill, quality-of-hire, offer acceptance rate, and hiring manager satisfaction.
The mandate has to be real and the impact measurable. That's the only kind of engagement TAO takes on.