Every institution that finds, develops, and places talent is being rebuilt around that shift right now. The business is built on the premise that talent mobility, at civilisational scale, needs an AI-native operating system, not a faster version of the old one. That premise applies as much to how Manifest builds its own team as it does to the students, schools, and universities it serves. A company that tells the world it is building the infrastructure for how human talent finds opportunity cannot run its own Talent function on spreadsheets and instinct, and cannot treat workforce planning as an afterthought to the business plan rather than the thing that makes the business plan achievable.

This role owns Talent at Manifest globally, in full: the hiring engine, the employee experience, the leadership bench across every business unit, the workforce plan that keeps the org ahead of the business rather than reacting to it, and the AI-powered infrastructure that ties all of it together. You translate talent into the language the executive team and the board already use for revenue and margin: capacity, capability, retention, and risk.
You own building Talent into the kind of high-performing, self-sustaining organisation Manifest expects every function to become, and proving Talent can lead by example rather than trail behind.

Most talent leadership roles inherit a function built for a single business, in a single market, with a stable headcount. This one spans five brands, multiple geographies, and a growth model built substantially through acquisition, which means the workforce plan, the leadership bench, and the AI infrastructure you build all have to absorb new companies and people on short notice, repeatedly, without losing coherence. That is a harder systems and leadership problem than most 'Head of Talent' titles are asked to solve, and it is why the Manifest ecosystem, the ability to move people, standards, and leadership talent across five connected businesses, is an advantage no standalone competitor for this hire can offer you.

Manifest is scaling its reach across more than 150 countries at a moment when the broader overseas education industry is contracting and Manifest is growing. Building the workforce plan, the leadership pipeline, and the AI-native infrastructure now, while the function is still being shaped rather than fixed in place, is a different prospect than doing it later, after the patterns have hardened.

Most people who lead Talent at this level inherit an org chart and a reporting calendar and are asked to run both well. You are being asked to decide what the org chart should be, build the workforce plan that keeps pace with a business growing across borders,



and prove that talent leadership can earn a genuine seat in the room rather than an invitation to it. Talent Acquisition and the Hiring Engine
Own hiring strategy and standard across every brand, geography, and level, from individual contributor to executive search
Talent Operations and the Employee Experience
Own the full employee lifecycle globally: onboarding, offboarding, compliance, compensation coordination, people analytics, and workplace support
Build a consistent standard of experience regardless of brand, geography, or manager
Build and coach a Business Partnering team embedded in every business unit, operating as strategic peers to the leaders they support
Set the standard for a high-performing team at Manifest, and build the manager capability that makes it repeatable
Strategic Workforce Planning and Business Alignment
Own the workforce plan that translates business goals into people requirements, the same way a financial plan translates strategy into numbers
Own Talent's presence in quarterly business reviews and board reporting, making the workforce as measurable as revenue
Talent AI and Infrastructure
Build a dedicated capability that makes Talent AI-native from the ground up: sourcing, screening, onboarding, workforce analytics, and decision support
Own the systems architecture that connects every part of Talent into one coherent function
Bring the same technical standard to Talent that Manifest brings to its own products
Executive Partnership and Talent Thought Leadership
Be the strategic talent voice at the table when the CEO, COO, and business unit leaders are shaping direction, including on acquisitions from the earliest stage
Represent Manifest's point of view on talent and AI-native people practices externally
The markers below reflect where Talent is today. In the first months, you have formed a clear point of view on how the workforce plan should connect to the business plan, where the leadership bench needs building, and what the AI-native infrastructure underneath it all needs to look like. You have earned real credibility with business unit leaders and the executive team.

By mid-period, Talent runs measurably differently: the workforce plan is a standing input to business planning, succession coverage exists for every critical role,



and the function is visibly AI-native in how it sources, hires, and supports people. Talent's reporting to the executive team and the board is as credible as finance's.

In the long term, you have built a Talent function, and a leadership bench beneath you, that other companies point to as a model, and that Manifest's own executive team points to as proof that talent strategy and business strategy are the same conversation.

You have built and led talent functions at real scale before, across more than one country and business line, because the coordination problem here is not theoretical. You think about Talent the way a strong general manager thinks about a business: as interconnected systems and bets, not a collection of HR processes running in parallel.

You are fluent in workforce planning as a genuine discipline: translating a business plan into a people plan, and making the case for headcount and investment in terms the executive team finds credible.

You are genuinely fluent in how AI changes talent work, not as a talking point but as a practitioner, and know the difference between AI bolted onto an old process and AI as the foundation a process is rebuilt around.

You have a real point of view on talent and are comfortable carrying it, inside the executive team and in how the company is known externally. Most importantly, you read the description of what Manifest is building, an AI-native operating system for global talent mobility, and your first reaction was not 'that's an ambitious mission statement,' it was 'I know exactly how to build the talent function, and the team, that proves it's true.' Manifest Global is building the infrastructure for how human talent finds opportunity across borders, an AI-native operating system that identifies talent, develops it, and places it at civilisational scale. Through Cialfo (AI-powered college counseling, 2,000+ schools), BridgeU (university guidance for international schools globally), Kaaiser (trusted study abroad counseling since 1997 across India and Southeast Asia), and Explore (AI-powered university outreach, 1,000+ university partners), Manifest connects students, schools, universities, and employers across more than 150 countries. $Manifest is backed by $91M from Tiger Global, Square Peg Capital, Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital, and others. Manifest sells the world an AI-native way of moving talent across borders. Talent, the function, is where that standard either becomes real inside the company, or stays a claim on a careers page. Manifest Global is building the infrastructure for global human capital mobility, operating across 150+ countries.

📌 Head of People & Talent Acquisition (Delhi)
🏢 Manifest Global
📍 Delhi