Senior Talent Manager

Koto • Los Angeles, CA

12d • Hybrid

About The Position

You’re an experienced talent professional who knows the creative industry, has a strong instinct for identifying exceptional talent, and can build trust quickly with candidates and senior leaders alike. You’re proactive, thoughtful, highly organized, and comfortable owning recruitment independently while bringing ideas and perspective to how we build great teams. In Koto’s LA studio, you’ll own recruitment across a range of disciplines, partnering closely with studio leadership and hiring managers to understand what they need, identify and engage the right people, and keep hiring moving with pace and diligence. Reporting to our Talent Director, North America, you’ll have significant autonomy in LA recruitment while working with the team to continually strengthen how we hire, build our networks, and create a thoughtful and distinctly Koto candidate experience.

Requirements

• Experienced talent professional
• Knowledge of the creative industry
• Strong instinct for identifying exceptional talent
• Ability to build trust quickly with candidates and senior leaders
• Proactive, thoughtful, and highly organized
• Comfortable owning recruitment independently
• Ability to bring ideas and perspective to team building

Responsibilities

• Own full-cycle recruitment for our LA studio, from shaping the initial brief and sourcing strategy through screening, interviews, offers, and close. You’ll independently manage multiple searches while keeping momentum with both candidates and hiring teams.
• Build strong, trusted relationships with studio leadership and hiring managers. You listen closely, ask good questions, understand the nuances of different teams and disciplines, and develop a clear understanding of what the team really needs.
• Develop a deep understanding of Koto — our work, culture, ambitions, and what makes someone successful here. You use that context and judgment to assess candidates beyond their portfolios or resumes and to authentically communicate the Koto opportunity.
• Proactively source and build relationships with exceptional talent across brand, digital, strategy, Client Services, motion, and operations. You stay close to the creative talent market and build pipelines ahead of immediate hiring needs.
• Create an excellent candidate experience from first conversation through offer. You’re warm, communicative, honest, and thoughtful, understanding that every interaction is an opportunity to represent Koto and build a relationship — whether someone joins the team now, later, or not at all.
• Bring market knowledge and candidate insights into hiring conversations to help us understand talent availability, compensation expectations, and trends across the wider creative industry.
• Partner closely with the Talent Director, North America on recruitment priorities and opportunities to continually improve how we hire. You bring ideas, identify ways to streamline our approach, and help create consistent and effective recruitment practices across our North American studios.
• Own the organization and health of our recruitment pipelines through our ATS platform, keeping candidate information, feedback, and hiring activity current and using those insights to identify bottlenecks or opportunities to improve our process.

Benefits

• Meaningful and regular access to your manager for personal development and career trajectory support
• Performance-based rewards including promotions and pay increases
• Discretionary annual bonus of up to 10% of salary
• Equal environment for all employees
• Support for family leave
• Significant paid maternity and paternity leave
• 25 vacation days per year
• US national holidays
• Studio closure between Christmas and New Year
• 401(k) with company match up to 4%
• Monthly employee wellness benefits package via Juno ($105 per month)
• YCN access
• Funding for relevant training opportunities
• Five-year service reward ($5,000 and five days' holiday)
• Ten-year service reward ($10,000 and four weeks' holiday)
• Ability to work from any of the five Koto studios globally (with planning and application)

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed