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Business Development Lead - Talent Pathways
Humans of Purpose
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What if your knack for building relationships, closing deals, and testing ideas could unlock long-term employment for women rebuilding their lives?
Why us?
Help us drive impact in:
The opportunity:
Why you might love this opp:
Humans of Purpose is a hybrid digital agency and BCorp working at the intersection of impact, workforce, and commercial growth. Through its Academy, HoP supports women - many with lived experience of domestic and family violence - to build digital skills, confidence, and readiness for sustainable employment. The talent is strong. The outcomes are real. Now it’s time to scale what happens next.
🌍 This is what business looks like when they grow up: You’ll join a digital and social media agency that believes strong strategy, great creative, and social impact belong in the same brief. Humans of Purpose helps purpose-driven brands win online - and channels that success into paid, meaningful digital careers for our Academy Heroes: women rebuilding after domestic and family violence. It’s commercial, values-led, and quietly radical.
⚡ Impact in action: Backed by the Paul Ramsay Foundation, Snow Foundation, NSW government + more, we’ve worked with purpose-driven brands including UTS Impact Studios, Today Design and the Impact Investment Summit Asia Pacific. Our top-ranked podcast has profiled 300+ changemakers, and our Academy has helped 400+ women - launch digital careers that give them flexibility and stability when they need it most.
🥜 In a nutshell: You’ll build the bridge between our Academy Members and the job market owning the go-to-market for a new commercial talent pathway. From defining the right employers and shaping the value proposition to pitching the model, and closing paid placements. You’ll stay close to outcomes, turn early wins into repeatable momentum, and make sure placements stick. with employers who value both performance and purpose.
📅 What your week might look like: One day you’re meeting with an employer exploring socially-aligned hiring; the next you’re refining pricing, pressure-testing messaging, and providing feedback to candidates after an interview. You’ll move between strategy and execution comfortably - building the engine while it’s running, and designing the systems that let it scale.
🕶 Your style: You’re commercially confident, relational by default, and calm in ambiguity. You like being close to the deal - shaping the conversation, testing what lands, and moving things forward. You don’t wait for perfect clarity; you learn by doing and adjust fast. You can hold a warm conversation and ask for the fee without flinching. And you care deeply about what happens next - making sure employers see real value and candidates step into roles where they can thrive.
💬 Inside Humans of Purpose: We’re a women-led, values-driven team building something that matters. We move with focus and intent - commercially sharp, creatively strong, and serious about delivery. Collaboration, autonomy, and accountability shape how work gets done here. We’re here to build a business that performs - and transforms - and we hold ourselves to both.
🧭 Flexible by design: This is a part-time role (0.6FTE), typically spread across the week to maintain momentum across pipeline and partnerships. We’re remote-first, with a strong preference for Syd or Melb to support in-person relationship building. Interstate travel across major Australian cities will be required on a regular basis to build employer demand and nurture key relationships. Salary is $120,000 base pro-rata + super, with an incentive structure tied to placements and revenue outcomes.
🌟 Bonus: We know great commercial builders come from all kinds of backgrounds. You might have built a recruitment vertical from scratch, launched a new talent offering inside a startup, or driven new business inside a recruitment agency. What matters most is that you’ve opened doors, carried a number, shaped an offer, and seen a deal through. If you’re ready to use that experience to back brilliant women into meaningful digital careers - we’d love to hear from you.
What's involved:
The balance will evolve, but to start:
〰️ 60% Business Development & Employer Partnerships
Own the full BD cycle - from first outreach to signed agreement. You’ll identify the right employers, open conversations, pitch the talent pathway, negotiate terms, and close paid placements. Some weeks that’s mapping target sectors and booking meetings; others it’s refining pricing, following up after interviews, or pushing a deal across the line before month-end. You’ll build pipeline with intent, keep momentum high, and turn early wins into repeatable revenue.
〰️ 25% Go-to-Market & Offering Development
Design and drive the go-to-market for this new pathway. Define target sectors, refine the value proposition, set pricing guardrails, and build the outreach approach. Test messaging in live conversations and turn case studies into sharp proof points. Document what works, cut what doesn’t, and build the playbooks that make the pathway commercially scalable.
〰️ 15% Systems, Retention & Revenue Visibility
Stay close to placements. You’ll monitor fit, spot retention risks early, and step in when something needs recalibrating. Keep revenue visible and pipeline forecastable. Build the reporting rhythms, feedback loops, and simple frameworks that make this pathway easier to run, protect margin, and scale with confidence.
Key criteria:
The kind of experience and instincts you’ll bring:
🚀 0→1 Builder: You’ve launched or grown an offering in an environment where things weren’t fully defined. You’re comfortable shaping the product while selling it - and you know momentum beats perfection.
🎯 Performance-Driven: You’ve carried a target before - and delivered against it. You’ve tracked pipeline, handled stalled deals, followed up when others wouldn’t, and adjusted when something wasn’t converting. Rejection hasn’t rattled you; it’s sharpened you. You understand that consistency, not hype, builds results.
💡 Digital Marketing-Savvy: You understand digital marketing well enough to speak credibly about it. You know how content, social, and performance roles drive commercial outcomes, and you can hold your own with hiring managers on what good looks like.
🧠 Deeply Human Operator: You bring emotional intelligence to commercial work. You listen deeply, read nuance, and understand that for some candidates, a job isn’t just a job - it changes what’s possible.
🧩 Scalable Operator: You’ve built or improved sales and delivery systems before - whether that meant setting up a CRM, tightening reporting rhythms, or creating simple playbooks that made it easier to repeat wins. You’re comfortable working inside tools like HubSpot and know how to keep pipeline visible, revenue forecastable, and processes clean.
🌱 Impact aligned: You’re passionate about social change and impact, with a strong interest in Humans of Purpose’s mission and model. You’re motivated by the idea that every placement helps create real economic independence for our Academy Heroes - and that building a strong, sustainable revenue stream is what makes that possible.
How to apply:
If any of the above resonated with you but you don’t tick every box:
👒 🧢 🎩 You should throw your hat in the ring, whatever those years of experience look like in your personal impact journey. We’d love to hear from you!
Interested?
1. Create a profile (or complete yours if you already have one) on Ripple Opportunities.
2. Submit an application by clicking on the job listing and ‘apply’.
3. Please submit your resume and a cover letter (ideally PDF) that briefly outlines what is motivating you to apply for the role and how your experience could be applied in this context. We’re reviewing applications on a rolling basis, so we encourage you to apply early.
A detailed position description is available for download on the listing page (once logged in).
Your written application (max 1,000 words) should include:
- What’s motivating you to apply for this role?
- A brief overview of your previous experience and how it applies in this context.
- A specific experience you’ve had that’s directly related to this role (e.g. driving sales or launching a talent offering). What was the objective, what strategy and tactics did you implement, what results did you achieve and what did you learn from this?
- What’s something we don’t know about you that could help you thrive in this role?
Oh look! A legend is here reading some fine print! At Ripple our mission is to democratise access to purpose-driven opportunities. As a small team that curates hundreds of opportunities each week we do our best to share all the key information and juicy details. We often link out to the original listing and can't guarantee all details are included on our page, or the full accuracy as application windows and role descriptions may be changed by companies with short notice. If you're unsure of any details or closing dates, it's best to reach out to the organisation directly.