👋 Hi, I’m David Oliver! I live in Washington DC. I stopped doing traditional placements about eight months ago and transitioned to a fractional consulting model, working with startups and growth-stage companies on strategic talent acquisition. Right now I’m focused on quality partnerships over volume, and this time next year I want to be working with 8-10 retained fractional clients consistently. My biggest challenge with starting or scaling my recruiting business is breaking through the noise to connect with founders who genuinely value human-centered recruiting - leaders who understand that hiring isn’t just about filling seats, but about building culture and sustainable growth. For fun I like to play bass guitar across R&B, funk, rock, jazz, and gospel - I bring a “listen first, play second” philosophy to both music and recruiting. Something I’m currently obsessed with is the intersection of AI and recruiting, specifically how we can use automation to handle the repetitive stuff while making the human elements of talent work even stronger. I write about this regularly on my Substack and LinkedIn.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​