Lead Recruiter, Production

Divergent is seeking a Lead Recruiter, Production to serve as a player-coach for our Production Recruiting team. This role combines hands-on recruiting with day-to-day leadership of the recruiters responsible for hiring the skilled talent that supports our production operations.

The Lead Recruiter will personally own and fill production requisitions while helping the team prioritize hiring needs, build strong talent pipelines, remove recruiting roadblocks, and deliver against aggressive hiring goals. This person will partner closely with Production leadership and hiring managers to ensure recruiting resources are aligned with the most critical operational needs.

This is a hands-on leadership role for an experienced production recruiter who enjoys recruiting, developing others, and operating in a fast-paced advanced manufacturing environment.

• Own full-cycle recruiting for a portfolio of production positions from intake through offer and close.
• Recruit across roles such as CNC Machinists, Production Technicians, Manufacturing Technicians, Quality Inspectors, Metrology Technicians, Maintenance Technicians, Material Handlers, Production Supervisors, and other skilled production positions.
• Develop targeted sourcing strategies for high-volume, difficult-to-fill, and specialized production talent.
• Proactively source candidates through LinkedIn, recruiting platforms, referrals, trade and technical schools, workforce programs, career fairs, community partnerships, and other relevant channels.
• Conduct recruiter screens to assess relevant experience, technical qualifications, schedule availability, compensation expectations, work authorization requirements, and overall alignment with the role.
• Build and maintain talent pipelines for recurring and anticipated production hiring needs.
• Partner with hiring managers to establish clear requirements, candidate profiles, interview processes, and recruiting timelines.
• Manage candidates throughout the recruiting process and provide a high-quality candidate experience through offer acceptance.

• Provide day-to-day leadership, coaching, and direction to the Production Recruiting team while maintaining an individual requisition load.
• Help recruiters prioritize workloads based on business-critical hiring needs, hiring timelines, and available recruiting capacity.
• Coach recruiters on sourcing strategy, candidate assessment, hiring manager partnership, pipeline management, and candidate closing.
• Regularly review recruiter pipelines and activity to identify gaps, aging requisitions, stalled candidates, and searches requiring additional support.
• Jump into sourcing, screening, candidate management, or hiring manager discussions when additional support is needed to move critical searches forward.
• Establish consistent recruiting practices, expectations, and service levels across the Production Recruiting team.
• Support the onboarding, training, and development of recruiters and recruiting team members.
• Create a collaborative team environment where recruiters share talent, sourcing strategies, market intelligence, and best practices.

• Serve as a key recruiting partner to Production leadership and front-line hiring managers.
• Lead and support recruiting intake meetings to ensure clear alignment on candidate requirements, technical qualifications, interview processes, and hiring urgency.
• Establish regular recruiting cadence meetings with key Production leaders to review priorities, pipelines, aging requisitions, upcoming hiring needs, and roadblocks.
• Provide hiring managers with visibility into talent availability, candidate pipelines, recruiting activity, and market challenges.
• Coach hiring managers on effective candidate evaluation, interviewing, timely feedback, and recruiting best practices.
• Escalate hiring risks, capacity constraints, and process bottlenecks when appropriate.
• Adjust recruiting resources and sourcing strategies as production hiring priorities change.

• Use recruiting data to evaluate team performance and identify opportunities to improve recruiting speed and effectiveness.
• Monitor metrics such as time to fill, time in stage, pipeline health, sourcing activity, offer acceptance, aging requisitions, and progress against hiring plans.
• Ensure candidate and requisition activity is accurately and consistently maintained in Greenhouse.
• Partner with Recruiting leadership on recruiting capacity, prioritization, workforce planning, and process improvements.
• Identify opportunities to improve production recruiting through technology, automation, AI, sourcing tools, events, partnerships, and more efficient workflows.
• Maintain consistent candidate assessment and recruiting standards across Production hiring.

• Ability to lawfully access information and technology that is subject to US export controls 
• 6+ years of full-cycle recruiting experience, with significant experience supporting production, manufacturing operations, skilled trades, or technician hiring.
• Demonstrated experience recruiting for positions such as CNC Machinists, Production or Manufacturing Technicians, Quality Inspectors, Metrology Technicians, Maintenance Technicians, Production Supervisors, or similar roles.
• Experience leading, mentoring, or providing day-to-day direction to recruiters.
• Strong sourcing skills with the ability to personally identify and engage both active and passive candidates.
• Experience managing high-volume hiring alongside difficult-to-fill skilled production searches.
• Strong hiring manager partnership and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience using an applicant tracking system such as Greenhouse.
• Ability to use recruiting data and pipeline metrics to identify problems and drive action.
• Strong communication, organization, judgment, and follow-through.

• Experience recruiting in advanced manufacturing, aerospace, automotive, defense, industrial technology, or hardware environments.
• Experience recruiting in a high-growth or rapidly scaling production environment.
• Experience recruiting skilled production talent in Southern California or another highly competitive manufacturing market.
• Experience building recruiting partnerships with trade schools, technical programs, workforce organizations, military/veteran programs, and community organizations.
• Experience with production hiring events, career fairs, high-volume sourcing campaigns, or other scalable recruiting strategies.
• Previous experience as a Lead Recruiter, Recruiting Lead, or similar player-coach role.