Application Guide
How to Apply for Director, People Partnering
at GiveDirectly
🏢 About GiveDirectly
GiveDirectly is the leading nonprofit delivering unconditional cash transfers directly to people living in extreme poverty, operating across multiple countries with a radical commitment to evidence and efficiency. Working here means joining a data-driven, globally distributed team that treats cash as a tool for dignity and choice, not charity—and you'll help scale the people infrastructure that makes that mission possible.
About This Role
As Director, People Partnering, you'll be the strategic HR partner to Global Shared Services leaders (~200 employees) during a period of rapid organizational scale-up, while also building the employee relations frameworks that govern how the organization manages performance, behavior, and disciplinary decisions across multiple countries. This is a build-and-lead role: you'll design the standards, decision frameworks, and manager enablement that ensure consistency and fairness as GiveDirectly grows, directly shaping how a mission-driven workforce is managed at scale.
💡 A Day in the Life
Your day might start with a coaching session for a GSS manager navigating a complex underperformance case, followed by a working session with GSS leaders on org design for an expanding team. Later, you'd refine a cross-jurisdictional decision framework for disciplinary actions, then sync with a regional HR partner to ensure consistent application—all while keeping GiveDirectly's mission and global workforce top of mind.
🚀 Application Tools
🎯 Who GiveDirectly Is Looking For
- 7+ years as an HR business partner supporting executives in high-growth scale-ups or transformation environments, ideally with exposure to global or multi-country teams.
- Demonstrated experience building employee relations frameworks from scratch—behavior standards, underperformance processes, decision matrices—and driving consistent application across jurisdictions.
- Strong coaching and influence skills, able to guide managers and HR teams through complex ER cases with sound judgment and cultural sensitivity.
- Preferred: hands-on experience in sub-Saharan Africa, prior involvement in building a people function, and formal workplace investigations capability.
📝 Tips for Applying to GiveDirectly
Lead with your ER framework-building experience: give a concrete example of a behavior or underperformance standard you designed and how you ensured consistent application across countries or business units.
Highlight your scale-up credentials explicitly—quantify the growth (headcount, countries, revenue) you supported and your specific role in org design, workforce planning, or talent management during that period.
If you have sub-Saharan Africa experience, make it prominent; if not, draw parallels to other complex, multi-jurisdiction environments and show cultural adaptability.
Demonstrate familiarity with GiveDirectly's cash transfer model and its implications for a globally distributed, mission-driven workforce—mention how you'd align people strategy with that operating reality.
Show you can both build and coach: provide an example of a time you personally coached a manager through a difficult ER case while also creating the system that made that case easier to handle.
✉️ What to Emphasize in Your Cover Letter
Focus on: (1) your track record building ER standards and decision frameworks across multiple countries, with specific outcomes; (2) your experience partnering with executives during scale-up, including org design and workforce planning; (3) your ability to coach managers and HR teams through complex disciplinary and capability decisions; and (4) your motivation to apply these skills in a mission-driven, globally distributed nonprofit like GiveDirectly.
Generate Cover Letter →🔍 Research Before Applying
To stand out, make sure you've researched:
- → GiveDirectly's operating model and country footprint—understand how Global Shared Services supports field operations and what scale-up pressures that creates.
- → GiveDirectly's public research and evidence base on cash transfers, to speak credibly about the mission and its workforce implications.
- → Recent news or blog posts about GiveDirectly's growth, funding, or expansion plans, to anticipate the specific scale-up challenges the role will address.
- → Common employee relations challenges in sub-Saharan Africa and other GiveDirectly operating regions, including local labor law variations and cultural considerations.
💬 Prepare for These Interview Topics
Based on this role, you may be asked about:
⚠️ Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Applying with a generic HRBP resume that doesn't explicitly call out ER framework-building or multi-country consistency—this role is about building systems, not just advising.
- Overemphasizing policy compliance while neglecting the coaching and enablement aspect; GiveDirectly needs someone who can both design standards and help managers apply them with judgment.
- Ignoring the nonprofit, mission-driven context and treating this like a standard corporate scale-up role—show you understand the unique workforce dynamics of a globally distributed, impact-focused organization.
📅 Application Timeline
This position is open until filled. However, we recommend applying as soon as possible as roles at mission-driven organizations tend to fill quickly.
Typical hiring timeline:
Application Review
1-2 weeks
Initial Screening
Phone call or written assessment
Interviews
1-2 rounds, usually virtual
Offer
Congratulations!