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Seeing 𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥-𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 drives me, and I thrive on leading teams to make it happen—for patients who need it most.

𝐏𝐡𝐃-𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 20+ 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞, I accelerated my career quickly, building and leading international teams within just 2.5 years of starting in the corporate world. I’ve managed complex clinical and commercial projects, 𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐬-𝐟𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬, 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐲 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥, and ultimately served on the Board of Directors of a global organisation.

I thrive at the 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞, 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧—aligning people, simplifying complexity, and driving teams to 𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐬 that improve patient outcomes.

Ei-Ling Tan, Ph.D.

I build, lead, and fix Talent Acquisition functions when hiring becomes business critical and leadership needs certainty, not noise.

Over 25 years, I’ve scaled and stabilised TA teams across agency, RPO, and in house environments, from seed stage startups to MNC's, with full accountability for delivery, capability, and outcomes.

My work sits at the intersection of hiring strategy, team leadership, and execution discipline: ensuring organisations hire the right talent, at the right time, without sacrificing quality, credibility, or trust with the business.

I’ve built and led high-performing recruitment teams and leaders across 44 countries, managing delivery, performance, stakeholder trust, and succession within TA functions operating at scale. 

I'm comfortable operating hands on when required, but my focus has always been building systems, leaders, and operating models that allow TA to scale beyond any single individual.

Throughout my career, I’ve partnered closely with CEOs, CHROs, and senior business leaders to translate growth plans into executable hiring strategies, aligning workforce planning, delivery capacity, and hiring priorities with commercial and operational realities.

My approach to Talent Acquisition is pragmatic and business led. I prioritise clarity, accountability, and decision quality over process theatre, and I am known for bringing structure and calm into fast-moving, high-pressure hiring environments.

I’m particularly effective in organisations where TA needs to mature, moving from reactive delivery to a trusted operating function that supports growth, performance, and long-term capability.

I’m open to conversations with organisations looking for senior TA leadership, whether to build, scale, or stabilise a Talent Acquisition function at a critical point of growth or change.

Scott Harrison

Twenty five years ago I walked out of a meeting convinced I’d just been undermined.

There was no drama or raised voices. Just a senior manager challenging my thinking in front of my teammates.

I felt it straight away. Tightness in my chest. The urge to explain myself, justify my logic, make sure everyone in the room knew I wasn’t wrong.

If I’m honest, it wasn’t anger.

It was defensiveness.

At the time, the story I told myself was that I was protecting standards. Protecting quality. Not lowering the bar.

Looking back, it was my ego.

Nothing that was said in that room was personal. But I made it personal.

I realised something then that’s stayed with me ever since.

Perception feels like fact. But it isn’t.

It’s a story our brain writes in real time. And if we don’t slow it down, we’ll defend that story as if it’s objective truth.

That meeting didn’t change the outcome of the project.

It changed how I handle pressure.

Now when I feel that flicker of defensiveness, I pause and ask myself:

What else could be driving this?
What pressure are they under?
What am I not seeing?

That shift has saved me more damage over the years than any negotiation tactic ever has.

Most of the damage we do in conflict isn’t because we’re wrong.
It’s because we’re certain.

Scott Harrison  

Talent Acquisition Leader | Startup & Scale-Up Hiring | Built Teams Across 44 Countries | Former Chief People Officer | Recruitment Business Leader

Founders often think the first 90 days of a TA Director’s role are about proving value fast.

Filling roles.
Clearing backlogs.
Showing momentum.

This mindset is where long term hiring problems begin.

Mistakenly thinking they need to look busy in the first 90 days.

When instead it should look deliberate, and sometimes uncomfortable. 

Strong TA leadership resists the urge to perform through activity.

- So don’t rush to open every role.
- Accept vague definitions of “urgent.”
- Or optimise process before understanding how decisions are actually made.

Instead, slow the system, just enough to see it clearly.

 -Listen for where decisions stall.
- Surface trade offs leaders avoid.
- Watch who gets pulled into hiring conversations and why.
 - Learn where judgment lives, not just where tasks sit.

That’s system design, not inactivity.

Weak first 90 days create the illusion of speed.

Strong first 90 days create leverage.

One scales chaos.

The other removes it before it compounds.

This is why great TA leadership can ‘feel underwhelming’ at first.

- Less noise.
- Fewer heroics.
- More clarity.

But when volume arises, the system holds.

If you judge a TA Director’s first 90 days by how many roles they close, you’ll get motion.

If you judge them by how much clearer hiring decisions become, you’ll get scale.

That distinction is where companies either compound advantage, or just repeat the same problems with a new title.

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AI hasn’t broken hiring.
It’s exposed how fragile most hiring systems already were.

If hiring has felt faster recently, yet less reliable, you’re not imagining it.

Give a weak process more speed and automation, and you don’t fix the system.
You just scale the flaws.

That’s exactly what we’re seeing now.

Candidates are using AI tools to mass apply and generate CVs.
Companies respond with more AI filters, assessments and automated screening.

Recruiters didn’t create this arms race.
They’re just trying to survive inside it.

So everybody moves faster, but confidence in the system drops.

Recruiters see more applications but less real quality.
Hiring managers receive shortlists they don’t fully trust.

Candidates feel like they’re interacting with a machine instead of a human, so they lose confidence and faith in the process.

AI is powerful in hiring.
But only in very specific places.

It becomes dangerous when companies start using it in place of judgement.

Screening applications is the obvious example.

AI screening tools still work by matching patterns.

They look for keywords, job titles, and similarity to past hires.

They’re fast, but not curious.

If I advertise a Product Manager role and a senior software engineer applies, I’ll call and speak to them.

Their CV won’t match the job description.

But in my experience, their technical depth and systems thinking usually make them great product managers.

A screening model trained to find “PM shaped” CVs will reject that candidate before a human ever sees them.

That’s a real risk.

AI scales pattern recognition.

But good hiring has always relied on curiosity.

The ability to look at a profile and ask: “Could this person become excellent here?”

When we automate away that question we don’t reduce risk.

We remove the judgement and curiosity that good hiring depends on.

AI shouldn’t be hired as your Head of Judgement. 
It should be your Chief of Staff.

Relentless on process.
Humble on decisions.

“AI-enabled recruiter” might be the most overused phrase in talent acquisition right now.

Just last week I looked at a shortlist generated through an “AI-driven workflow” and had the same reaction I’ve had many times recently: something about it didn’t feel right.

Because most of what sits behind this is surface level.

- AI writing outreach messages.
- AI screening candidates.
- AI replying to applicants.

That might sound efficient, but in reality it just moves recruiters further away from the parts of the job that really determine hiring outcomes.

If you’ve ever looked at a shortlist and thought, “something about this doesn’t feel right,” you’re probably seeing this effect already.

Judgement. Curiosity. Understanding what a hiring manager really needs. Building trust with candidates.

None of that scales through automation.

What AI does scale extremely well is mechanical work.

Search. Data gathering. Pattern analysis. Mapping markets. Summarising large volumes of information.

The tasks that eats up 60–70% of a recruiter’s time.

When those are handled well, the recruiter then has time to do the real job properly.

Thinking about trade-offs. spotting potential that doesn’t perfectly match the job description, having proper conversations with candidates, and helping hiring managers make better decisions.

That’s where the real advantage appears.

Not when AI replaces the recruiter, instead it removes the busywork that was preventing good recruiters from doing their job properly in the first place.

AI shouldn’t be replacing judgement in hiring!

Good recruiters were never limited by judgement.

They were limited by time.

AI should solve that problem.

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Ei-Ling Tan, Ph.D.

Scott Harrison

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The Battle

Ei-Ling Tan, Ph.D.

Scott Harrison

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