About the Author

Liesl Vargas is the VP of Talent Excellence at Enverus, where she’s led the evolution of the recruiting function during a period of rapid growth. With 20+ years of experience across tech, hospitality, and healthcare, she brings a sharp focus on scalable systems, team structure, and long-term talent strategy. Enverus has partnered with ModelExpand for nearly five years—this blog offers Liesl’s firsthand account of a pivotal chapter in the company’s talent journey.

When I first stepped into my role as VP of Talent Acquisition at Enverus, the company had grown rapidly—from a few hundred employees to over 800. Like many companies in hypergrowth, we had reached an inflection point where we had outgrown the systems, processes, and team structure that once worked, and we needed to focus on the right systems to scale.

The recruiting function had been operating under immense pressure. With a lean team, heavy req loads, and shifting priorities, combined with the aforementioned systems that we had outgrown, the work had become unsustainable. By the time I joined, there had been significant turnover, and what remained was a small team of contract recruiters doing their best to keep things moving.

We had outgrown processes, had limited visibility into headcount planning, and varying levels of trust in the function. At one point, Senior Leadership did not have a positive perception of recruiting, saying:

“Our recruiting team is unable to scale, has not grown with the business and needs to be rebuilt to solve for our needs now and in the future—because they’ve never done anything for me.”

That statement made it clear: it wasn’t about blaming the past—it was about building a better future. One where recruiting could operate as a strategic, trusted partner to the business.

The Ask: Centralize, Stabilize, and Scale

The mandate from the top was clear: Pull everything together and build a scalable, strategic recruiting infrastructure that can grow as we do.

That meant centralizing processes, aligning closely with Finance, and putting safeguards in place to prevent overhiring, misaligned or unapproved roles, slow time-to-hire, and budget surprises.

First step? Education.
I spent my first 60 days listening. There was quite a bit of frustration across the org as well as rogue processes. Hiring managers were doing their own recruiting because they needed to. Recruiters weren’t seen as partners because they had too much on their plates to be strategic. And execs had wildly different understandings of what a mature Talent Acquisition function should even look like.

So we went back to the foundation.

“That meant centralizing processes, aligning closely with Finance, and putting safeguards in place to prevent overhiring, misaligned or unapproved roles, slow time-to-hire, and budget surprises.”

Building Trust, Then the Team

We needed to get back to basics and rebuild our foundation and credibility from the ground up.

That started with educating leadership on what a high-functioning Talent Acquisition org actually looks like and rebranding what people thought of as recruiting to the strategic function it needed to be:

Intake processes.
Budget and headcount accountability.
Structured hiring practices.
Recruiters with strong business acumen and functional expertise.
Strategic partners and consultative advisors

We had to match the right recruiters to the right challenges. That meant hiring for both today’s needs and tomorrow’s growth. For example, we hired someone to own sales recruiting, knowing they could eventually scale to lead the team. Today, they are our Director of Recruiting.

But it wasn’t easy. The company continually changed and evolved through organic and inorganic growth. Priorities shifted constantly as business needs changed. Pressure mounted—especially with the sales org—and we had to move fast, build trust and demonstrate success, without compromising on quality.

Creating Accountability

One of the biggest game-changers we implemented was processes such as our Recruiting Intake Form. It sounds simple, but when process is lacking, something simple can do the trick.
Before a single role gets opened, hiring managers fill out the form:

Is it a backfill or a net new role?
Is it budgeted?
What’s the title and level?

From there, the request goes through a validation process starting with me, then up to the C-suite and Finance. Every req has a financial check and balance.

Was it popular? Not at first.
We weren’t a start-up, but many of our outdated processes and approaches resembled one. Startups don’t love structure. They believe process impedes the ability to be nimble. Some disliked and didn’t understand the importance of the Finance tie-ins. But we made it clear what our process was and held leaders accountable while ensuring they saw the value it brought. Exec sponsorship helped—our President and CEO backed this from the start, which smoothed the path.

The result? We now have clarity. No surprise $30K overages. No mystery backfills. Renewed structure and most importantly—accountability. Everyone’s accountable for the roles they open and the work they do to fill them.

“Startups don’t love structure. They believe process impedes the ability to be nimble. Some disliked and didn’t understand the importance of the Finance tie-ins. But we made it clear what our process was and held leaders accountable while ensuring they saw the value it brought. Exec sponsorship helped—our President and CEO backed this from the start, which smoothed the path.”

Measuring What Matters

As we added structure, we also needed to define how we’d measure the health of the talent acquisition function. One of the most valuable indicators we use is time to fill.

Time to fill is more than a metric—it’s a conversation starter.

If we see a spike, it tells us something is off:

Is there friction between the recruiter and the hiring manager?
Has the market shifted?
Does the role need more definition?

We’ve set a target goal of 45 days for average time to fill, and the team has consistently beaten that metric. But when we don’t—like we’ve seen with our efforts in Spain this year—we take it as a signal to pause and dig deeper to find out what is going on. It's rarely just a numbers issue; it’s a chance to address underlying blockers, reset expectations, and recalibrate strategy.

We use this data to problem-solve and ensure our function is not just moving fast, but moving smart.

Tools That Helped Us Scale

We’ve recently started using BrightHire in February. BrightHire is an AI-powered interview intelligence platform that streamlines the hiring process by providing automated interview summaries, AI-driven analytics, and tools to enhance interview consistency and decision quality. It’s been a huge time saver, especially for post-interview turnaround and decision-making. We've additionally been exploring how we utilize AI to free up bandwidth for our recruiters to do what they excel at.

But the biggest lever hasn’t been just tooling. It has been mindset.

We aligned Talent Acquisition and hiring managers with clear expectations.

Yes, we built structure.

Yes, we added accountability.

But we also reminded hiring managers: You have to have skin in the game. Recruiting is a partnership, and our success will be celebrated together.

What We’ve Learned

Rebuilding Talent Acquisition at a high-growth company isn’t for the faint of heart. It requires a willingness to listen, an ability to assess what is working and not working, relationship building, and a critical eye for the building blocks of success. It takes time and took at least a year for the structure to take hold. We had to overhire at times, move fast, make mistakes, and learn from them. Some weeks felt like pressure cookers. But over time, we found our rhythm.

Now, the process is second nature to folks as it’s part of the culture. And when the next wave of urgency hits, we’re ready. We know what levers to pull. We know how to keep the noise out of the CEO’s inbox. And we’ve built a team that can scale—not just headcount, but trust.

About ModelExpand

ModelExpand is a talent advisory firm that transforms your recruiting function into a strategic advantage. We work alongside your team to design and implement scalable infrastructure to help growing companies hire better, faster, and more inclusively. Contact us to learn more.

Behind the Build: Reconstructing Recruiting to Support High-Growth Scaling