Corporate Relations & Placements

Role overview

This position is a high-ownership, outcome-focused individual contributor role centered on creating internship and project partnerships for NxtWave’s college students. The work is primarily outbound and requires proactively uncovering opportunities from tech firms, startups, SMBs, and international businesses.

This is a true hunting role. The main day-to-day activity is cold calling founders, CTOs, CEOs, tech leaders, and HR decision-makers to uncover hiring needs and convert them into internship or project engagements, even when no vacancy has been advertised. You will manage the employer relationship from first contact through qualification, closure, and repeat business, while internal teams support student shortlisting and interview scheduling.

Core responsibilities

You will be expected to source companies independently through job boards, LinkedIn, AngelList, startup directories, career pages, funding updates, and other hiring signals. Lead-generation support may exist, but it is secondary to your own prospecting efforts.

Your approach should be consultative: understand team setup, product direction, hiring timelines, skill gaps, and business challenges before you pitch a solution. The aim is to uncover unmet talent needs and position internships as a practical answer to those needs rather than waiting for open roles to appear.

You will document every outreach action in the CRM and maintain disciplined follow-up so the pipeline remains active and organized.

Opportunity management

You will gather complete details for each prospect, including the scope of work, whether it is a micro-project, multi-week assignment, or multi-month internship, along with technical expectations, team structure, duration, time commitment, reporting line, compensation, and overall expectations.

You will also drive the placement process from the company side end to end by coordinating with the internal student team, aligning on availability, arranging interviews, briefing the employer, collecting feedback, and closing offers. After placement, you will remain involved to ensure the engagement runs smoothly and to uncover future opportunities.

Relationship building and account growth

The goal is to become a trusted hiring partner for each company so you are the first person they contact when a new need arises. Single placements should be converted into repeat engagements, larger opportunity sets, and durable partnerships.

You will also collect testimonials, case studies, and success stories from employers and students, represent NxtWave at startup events, tech meetups, founder communities, and industry forums, and contribute to visibility through LinkedIn updates, company highlights, and placement stories.

Pipeline discipline and performance tracking

You are expected to keep CRM records current after every interaction, including company status, opportunity stage, and the next follow-up date. Deals should not remain inactive for more than 30 days.

Daily stand-ups, weekly reviews, and regular reporting on pipeline quality, conversion trends, and channel performance are part of the role.

Qualification requirements

A bachelor’s degree in any discipline is required; an MBA is preferred but not mandatory.

The role calls for 1 to 5 years of full-time experience in B2B sales, recruitment, staffing, or placements. Candidates must have independently sourced and closed business without relying on warm leads or pre-assigned accounts; campus placement exposure does not count toward this requirement.

You should have experience managing at least 15 active companies at once while maintaining strong CRM discipline.

Tools and working style

You should be comfortable using CRM platforms such as HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, or similar tools, along with prospecting products like LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Apollo.io, and RocketReach.

AI-assisted research, outreach personalization, and pitch preparation are part of the workflow. You also need to learn quickly and communicate confidently about varied tech stacks, role types, and business functions.

Behavioural fit

The right candidate is highly proactive, resilient in the face of objections or silence, and comfortable with a consultative sales process. Ownership, persistence, and a strong bias toward action are essential.

Success in this role also depends on structured follow-up habits, comfort with targets and metrics, adaptability based on feedback, and a genuine interest in building long-term institutional relationships instead of one-off transactions.

What strong candidates have already done

Ideal candidates have independently managed a full cold-to-close cycle, maintained high call volumes for extended periods, spotted and sold opportunities the customer had not initially recognized, revived stalled relationships, handled 20 or more active deals at different stages, and built a personal network of decision-makers who respond quickly and refer opportunities.

They are also deeply familiar with CRM hygiene, conversion tracking, and follow-up planning without needing to check notes constantly.

Who this role is not suitable for

This role is not a fit if your experience came mainly through structured campus hiring, MBA placement processes, event-led sales, roadshows, or brand-assisted business development. It is also not suitable if you are uncomfortable with persistent high-volume cold calling or if you are looking for a short-term bridge to strategy, product, or leadership roles without committing to execution.

Candidates who do not handle rejection well, cannot independently recall recent deals and results, or rely heavily on warm introductions and pre-assigned accounts are unlikely to succeed here.

Why consider this role

The role offers direct visibility into the impact of your work, since every placement is tied to your effort. Compensation is variable and scales with placements and retained companies, and the position gives you strong ownership over pipeline, relationships, and outcomes.

You will gain exposure to startups, unicorns, established tech businesses, and international companies while developing skills in B2B sales, tech hiring, negotiation, consultative discovery, and stakeholder management. Internal teams handle student profiling and interview logistics, allowing you to stay focused on relationships and closure.

The role also offers direct interaction with founders, CTOs, CEOs, and HR leaders, plus a growth path into account leadership, regional expansion, or corporate partnership strategy for top performers. Most importantly, the work helps students gain real experience and launch careers.

First 90-day success markers

In the first month, the expectation is to build a consistent outreach habit, create an initial qualified pipeline, and close the first placements.

By the second month, you should be reaching 100 to 150 or more weekly call touchpoints, building an active pipeline of 30+ companies, and showing predictable placement output.

By the third month, you should be sustaining opportunity discovery, maintaining a healthy repeat-company rate, and operating as a dependable placement partner with strong CRM discipline.

Additional notes

Variable compensation is mentioned for this role, but no fixed salary figure, stipend, or pay period has been specified.