Raj Kawa, Talent Acquisition and People Leader
I build better ways for growing companies to work.
People first. AI where it helps. Built to keep working without me.
I lead talent and people at Orium, a consultancy with teams across Canada, the US, Mexico, and Latin America. Since 2021 I've helped lead Talent and Culture as the company grew from about 60 to more than 300 people at its peak, partnering with executives on hiring, people strategy, organizational change, and operations. What I enjoy most is finding what's really getting in the way, then fixing it with the people who live with it.
- Orium's growth, 2021 to its peak, while I helped lead Talent and Culture
- 60 to 300+
- Offer acceptance at Orium
- 95%
- Saved by consolidating systems after the acquisition
- $200K a year
Problems I've helped solve.
Four stories about leading through growth, improving how work runs, and making decisions that hold up as a company changes.
The flagship story
Helping Talent and Culture keep pace with fivefold growth
Orium grew from about 60 to more than 300 people at its peak. Hiring, onboarding, culture, and operations all had to mature at the same time, without slowing the business down.
- 95% offer acceptance
- 100+ hires onboarded in 2022
- $300K vendor savings
- $200K a year in systems savings
- 1Foundation 2021
- Recruiting for every function
- Culture carried into remote-first
- A weekly company Lightning Talk
- 2Growth 2022
- A Talent and Culture team of up to five
- Structured hiring for every search
- Leaders planning hiring earlier
- 3Integration 2024
- One hiring system across two companies
- Local ownership in both countries
- Systems reviewed and consolidated
- 4Lasting capability 2025 to now
- Onboarding that hears hire and manager
- A recruiting toolkit others run
- AI with a person owning decisions
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Building a recruiting operation that scales
Every new role, region, and hiring manager added another variation.
Turned scattered recruiting into one way of hiring.
25% faster time-to-fill and 40% more recruiter output.
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Bringing teams together after an acquisition
Two companies, two countries, three ways of working.
Led the talent integration, then the listening and local ownership that make it feel like one company.
The first function fully integrated across both companies.
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Finding onboarding problems before they grow
New hires sometimes started before their manager or project was ready.
Made every hire owned before day one, with check-ins that hear the hire and the manager.
Problems surface in the first month, while there is still time to fix them.
See all case studies, including how I brought AI into recruiting without handing it the decisions
How I approach the work.
I started as a recruiter and grew into leading talent and people across the Americas. Three things that taught me:
Diagnose before you design.
Understand the actual problem before proposing a process, a program, a platform, or an AI tool. The problem people bring you is rarely the whole story.
Build with the people who will use it.
The people affected by a change know where it will break. Design for how the organization really works, not how the org chart says it does.
Make it outlast you.
An improvement is worth more when someone else can run it, challenge it, and keep making it better.
What people say.
“Taking the lead on the many actions and changes needed to translate our culture to a remote-first model.”
“Raj leads teams at a caliber I have never experienced. ... He deeply understands the connection between people and business needs.”
“When Raj first reached out about the opportunity, I had no intention of switching jobs. ... Raj is the reason I'm at MP today.”
Things I've been thinking about.
- Growing the people function
You can't hire your way out of every people problem
A growing company can add HR headcount and still keep the same broken handoffs, manager habits and unclear ownership. Ask what the work really needs first.
- Culture across borders
Culture is what happens on an ordinary Tuesday
The small moments that make people feel seen matter more than a perfectly designed culture calendar. A practical case for everyday consistency.
- Useful and accountable AI
AI doesn't fix a process nobody understands
AI can make an HR workflow faster. That doesn't mean the workflow should exist in the first place. Five questions to ask before automating people work.
Try something I've built.
Onboarding health check
Ten questions about how your company welcomes new people. In about three minutes you get a score, a breakdown by area, and the three fixes that would matter most. No sign-up, and nothing leaves your browser.
Take the checkSample result
Fix first: book the first one-to-one the day the offer is accepted.
A little about me.
I started out as a recruiter who loved the moment someone said yes, and stayed for everything that comes after it. These days I'm a dad of two, outdoors whenever I can be, usually making music, and I've lived, worked, and travelled in more than 30 countries.