Post-Disruption Operating-Rhythm Recovery Leader

The mandate

The operations chief took medical leave midway through recovery from a three-week scheduling-platform outage. Emergency extensions, manual seat allocations and local refund promises protected candidates initially, but they now coexist with normal rules and require daily cross-regional calls. Thirty-eight thousand candidates remain in exception pathways, centre partners hold conflicting instructions, and credentialing bodies cannot see when standard service will resume. The company needs a temporary executive who can end the emergency without abandoning affected candidates.

The appointee must start within two weeks and serve for seven months, covering the absent executive while the board determines the permanent operating structure. The first 30 days establish one candidate ledger, triage ethics, partner instructions and decision clocks. Months two through four clear the disrupted cohorts and retire unsafe workarounds; the final three months run ordinary weekly, monthly and examination-window cadence through two peak cycles and prepare the permanent handover.

Handover is achieved when every affected candidate has a lawful disposition and communication, no region operates an undocumented exception, partner reconciliation is current, peak-window readiness has passed twice, and executive forums have returned from daily incident calls to the approved calendar. The successor must receive remaining cases by category, ageing and decision owner, plus tested playbooks showing which emergency controls activate and exactly when they expire.

The interim may prioritise scarce seats, approve candidate remedies up to PHP 10 million in aggregate per incident class, direct regional operations, suspend a centre for documented delivery breach and retire temporary workarounds. Changes to credential validity, examination standards, privacy policy, accessibility entitlement or remedies above delegation require the appropriate executive or board committee. The incumbent cannot determine the outage’s legal cause, settle litigation or sign the platform replacement contract.

Cyber forensics, core-platform replacement, permanent organisation design and redesign of examination content are outside scope. The leader will supply operating evidence and requirements to those programmes without taking their ownership. This is also not a general cost-reduction assignment: centre economics may be exposed, but the immediate objective is fair candidate resolution and a stable recurring operating system.

Why this seat is open

A prolonged outage exhausted the normal incident structure just as the serving operations chief became unavailable. Regional leaders acted conscientiously but created incompatible obligations that cannot be resolved by central coordination alone. The board has authorised temporary executive power so candidate consequence can be closed before an enduring leadership decision is made.

What you will own

• Establish one candidate-impact ledger linking examination event, accommodation, payment, communication, evidence, remedy and accountable decision owner.
• Decide transparent triage across credential expiry, employment consequence, accessibility need, travel burden and available test-centre capacity.
• Issue binding regional and partner instructions, withdraw superseded versions and verify that front-line teams can execute the current rule.
• Clear disrupted cohorts through rescheduling, refund, extension or escalation decisions while protecting examination security and equal treatment.
• Retire manual allocations, uncontrolled spreadsheets and emergency approval routes only after their cases and evidence enter governed systems.
• Restore weekly service, monthly performance and peak-readiness forums with explicit inputs, thresholds, decisions and escalation clocks.
• Hand the successor reconciled exceptions, partner obligations, tested incident playbooks, live risks and two-cycle readiness evidence.

Candidate qualifications

• Led high-volume, time-critical service recovery across examinations, travel, payments or another network where individual deadlines matter.
• Has closed tens of thousands of disrupted customer cases without allowing local discretion to create arbitrary or discriminatory outcomes.
• Understands test-centre, accessibility, credentialing, security and refund dependencies sufficiently to make executive allocation choices.
• Replaced prolonged crisis calls with a stable operating cadence while retaining appropriate trigger and escalation readiness.
• Can govern third-party centres and regional leaders through evidence, controlled instructions and time-bound decision delegation.
• Completed a transparent temporary handover after the immediate incident, backlog and emergency-control tail were closed.

Non-negotiables

• Available in Manila within two weeks and able to work six-day peak examination windows when required.
• Brings direct mass-service remediation experience; incident facilitation or platform programme management alone is insufficient.
• Accepts no authority over credential standards, examination content, cyber attribution, litigation or permanent platform procurement.
• Will disclose assessment, test-centre, education-technology and credentialing-body interests before appointment.

1. 49 words maximum. What is the largest disrupted customer cohort you resolved, and how did you prevent arbitrary prioritisation?
2. 49 words maximum. Confirm your Manila start date and describe the emergency control you found hardest to retire.
3. 49 words maximum. How would you prove that an examination operation is ready to leave daily crisis cadence?