MELISSIA DRYDEN
Richmond,VA
Summary
People are my passion; leadership and development are my specialty.
As a transformational Talent Leader and Human Resources professional, I bridge the gap between corporate strategy and people operations across dynamic industries like specialty insurance, financial services, FinTech, and healthcare.
Throughout my career, I have served as a trusted advisor to business leaders—building and scaling high-performing recruitment teams and frameworks, mentoring next-generation talent consultants, and engineering process improvements that elevate the candidate experience from initial contact through onboarding.
Above all, I am driven by a simple philosophy: people are the ultimate catalyst for business success. I thrive in empowering individuals and leading teams to connect the right talent with the right opportunities, fueling sustainable business and professional growth.
Overview
1
1
Certification
20
20
years of professional experience
Work History
Talent Acquisition Partner
Markel
09.2023 - 07.2026
- Partner and consult with business leaders to identify current and future talent gaps, and develop and implement effective sourcing and market strategies for Markel North America, Bermuda, State National and Early Careers
- Lead, coach, and develop a team of senior recruiters,and onboarding coordinator by providing guidance, feedback and development training to ensure SLA's and KPI's are met
- Oversee the Markel Early Career Program with the Senior Recruiter including campus strategy, internship planning, local foundation collaboration ( Cristo Rey, Partnership for the Future), budget review and line of business metrics
- Provide progress reporting to leadership and internal stakeholders including recruitment, market and performance insights
- Own end to end recruitment for senior leader positions and any ad hoc projects and initiatives
- Liaison for compliance, legal, audit, and HRIS teams to ensure that process's, practices and procedures are ethical and meet all hiring laws and regulations
Client Services Manager
Cielo
04.2022 - 09.2023
- Client Services RPO Manager supporting Markel
- Implemented, launched and stabilized RPO partnership with Markel
- Developed recruiting metrics and analytics that provide insights and drive decisions, including time to fill, aging, cost per hire, candidate and hiring leader satisfaction surveys, recruiter productivity, source of candidate and hire
- Provide leadership, inspiration and coaching to the recruiting team. Including 2 Sr. Recruiters, 1 Recruiter, 2 Sourcers, 1 Talent Ambassador Coordinator
- Showcase an extremely high level of understanding and becomes fully engrained in the client organization including relationships with key stakeholders, organizational structure to further demonstrate “We Become You.”
- Effectively work as part of the Cielo Client Service Management team to share best practices and drive organizational initiatives, and P&L/budget management
Talent Acquisition Specialist
VCU Health
04.2020 - 04.2022
- Full lifecycle recruitment supporting the Children’s Hospital of Richmond
- Create and orchestrate diverse healthcare professional pipelines for a high-volume facility by developing trust and relationships with candidates and senior to executive business leaders. Over 100 positions revolving.
- Facilitate weekly leadership meetings to understand talent gaps, forecasting and provide strategy on executing fulfillment and retaining talent
- Leveraged as a Workday subject matter expert through organizational wide build out and implementation.
- Participate in Human Resource process improvement strategy meetings to ideate and drive change
- Brand Ambassador to candidates on culture, career growth, benefits and accomplishments of VCU Health and the Children’s Hospital of Richmond
Technology Recruiter/Contractor
Numerator
11.2019 - 04.2020
- Full lifecycle recruitment for Data Scientist and Machine Learning Engineers within Research and Development specifically focused on Women in Tech
- Partner directly with the CTO and Head of Data Science to create a robust recruiting strategy and process to attract top talent in the competitive market of technology hiring
- Candidate engagement including networking, sourcing, and interviewing to establish a pipeline of diverse superior prospects
- Own end to end candidate application and processing; application through onboarding
- Brainstorm with Talent Acquisition team on process improvements and systematic changes to deliver a world class experience to candidates
- Remote 3 month contract, extended to 5 due to favorable results
Data Science Recruiter/Contractor
Capital One
01.2017 - 01.2019
- Full lifecycle recruitment for Data Scientist placement throughout Audit, Risk, Bank, and Technology
- Provide counsel, support and direction to hiring managers and line of business leads on data science recruitment strategies and hiring process
- Sourced, recruited, processed and interviewed applicants to deliver an elite pipeline of candidates to stakeholders
- Assisted candidates throughout Capital One’s selection process to ensure a remarkable candidate experience from beginning to end
- Negotiate, create and influence candidate offers
- Collaborate with internal teams to negate/assume appropriate risk
Process Manager- Complaints Insights- US Card
Capital One
03.2017 - 09.2018
- Accountable for creating a team and process for US Card Corporate Complaints Insights
- Created and maintained a team and process to review the US Card corporate complaints (team of 9)
- Responsible for the interaction and engagement model with the US Card SLT and line of business leads to review the complaints and remediate and/or bring awareness to process gaps and breakdowns
- Partnered with the analyst teams to develop and execute a more robust reporting/tracking tool the team and business partners could leverage to make data driven changes
- Facilitated and lead on going focus groups with agents to understand the complexity of their work and how to improve the overall experience
- Liaised with lines of business leaders to understand customer impacts upon integrating new mergers to the same platform (Kohls, Bass Pro, Cabela’s)
Recruiting Manager/Lead-Card Workday Implementation
Capital One
01.2017 - 03.2017
- International recruiting lead responsible for executing and implementing Workday for the Card organization.
- Partnered with 5 country liaisons (US, UK, Canada, Philippines, and India) to understand all recruiting impacts prior to conversion including legal and privacy laws, candidate experience implications, system limitations, etc.
- Served as the “Voice of the Recruiter and Candidate” during build out and implementation
- Testing lead throughout the project to drive process improvements while understanding system/ platform constraints; assessing differences between high volume recruiting demands and other professional fulfillment positions
- Facilitated new system training and being the Change Champion for the Talent organization
- Command center personnel for post conversion. Provide errors, issues and incidents to mitigate risk within regulatory/compliance requirements
Recruiting Manager-Card Recruiting
Capital One
03.2010 - 01.2015
- Various responsibilities including high volume recruiting build out, leading recruitment teams, individual contributor recruiting and sourcing, process enhancements and relationship management
- Collaborated with Call Center Operation leaders to define an interaction model designed to insource all high-volume recruiting efforts. Desired service level agreement of 10 months (EOY 2010) to convert outsourcing to internal efforts; hit target of 100% by October 2010
- Lead numerous recruiting teams (US and Canada) responsible for hiring talent across Call Center Operations, Small Business, Human Resources and Specialty roles. Teams ranged from 4 to 15 geographically dispersed
- Educator for recruitment process to business leads and creating a “pod” approach to like job families
- Maintained business relationships across the enterprise to drive synergies
- Influenced and gained horizontal support for being a candidate and customer enthusiast and advocate
Unit Manager- Fraud Recovery
Capital One
01.2007 - 03.2010
- Responsible for leading a team of Fraud Recovery agents to investigate and determine accountability for fraudulent activity on customer accounts.
- Maintain a high performing team of agents by being a positive, inspiring, accountable leader and coach.
- Drive business results and metrics and communicate process gaps and changes
- Leader of the Morale Committee for the Fraud Recovery organization; approximately 300+ agents across US
- Recruiting lead for organization including working side by side with leaders and agents to understand the complexities of the role and what talent requirements are desired
- Training/ Nesting coach after agents completed onboarding and on the job training
Education
Some College (No Degree) - Nursing
J. Sargeant Reynolds School of Nursing
Richmond, VaSkills
- People Leadership & Mentorship
- Talent Acquisition Strategy & Execution
- Candidate/Customer Experience
- Collaborative Leadership with Colleagues & Stakeholders
- Human Resource Liaison
- System Implementation- Workday
- Process Optimization & Cross Functional Process Improvement
- Operational Delivery/ Recruitment Metric Analysis
- RPO-Recruitment Process Outsourcing
- Onboarding & Early Career Programs
Certification
- AIRS Advanced Certified Internet Recruiter
Timeline
Talent Acquisition Partner
Markel
09.2023 - 07.2026
Client Services Manager
Cielo
04.2022 - 09.2023
Talent Acquisition Specialist
VCU Health
04.2020 - 04.2022
Technology Recruiter/Contractor
Numerator
11.2019 - 04.2020
Process Manager- Complaints Insights- US Card
Capital One
03.2017 - 09.2018
Data Science Recruiter/Contractor
Capital One
01.2017 - 01.2019
Recruiting Manager/Lead-Card Workday Implementation
Capital One
01.2017 - 03.2017
Recruiting Manager-Card Recruiting
Capital One
03.2010 - 01.2015
Unit Manager- Fraud Recovery
Capital One
01.2007 - 03.2010
Some College (No Degree) - Nursing
J. Sargeant Reynolds School of Nursing