About the job

We’re looking for a thought-leading, game-changing Head of Talent Acquisition to join M&C Saatchi Group. As part of the UK People leadership team, this is a newly created role that will report into the UK People Director. This role will lead the on the talent acquisition agenda for the UK Group, with three direct reports. The role is based in London on a hybrid working basis.

About Us

M&C Saatchi Group is a creative federation of companies who navigate, create and lead meaningful change for clients. Across five specialist divisions connected through people, culture, data, technology and creativity, M&C Saatchi Group aims to unlock new value for clients and leave a positive impact on the world.

M&C Saatchi Group’s work is informed by two core principles – Brutal Simplicity of Thought and Diversity of Thought. Together they guide how problem are solved and integrated specialist teams are built. Headquartered in London, M&C Saatchi Group have circa 2,500 employees globally of which 720 employees are UK based, and operations spanning 23 countries with major hubs in the UK, Europe, Middle East & Africa, Asia and Australia.

M&C Saatchi Group is entering a new era with new strategic priority – to work in a more connected way. Across all businesses within the UK Group and globally, M&C Saatchi Group seeks to optimise talent, infrastructure, systems and processes and leverage the benefits of being a global company with a collective vision. The People Team are at the centre of enabling this change.

As a federated group with multiple businesses with unique identities and competing priorities – the transformational challenge ahead is complex, yet the potential opportunity is significant.

About The Role

The Talent Acquisition Lead will be part of the UK Group People leadership team, working closely with our UK People Director and CEOs across all businesses to design and deliver a talent attraction strategy and a vibrant employee value proposition that enables M&C Saatchi to bring on board the best talent, with a particular focus on increasing representation of underrepresented talent. This role will also drive rigor, consistency and simplicity across recruitment processes to ensure fair process and a seamless experience for candidates and hiring managers.

Success for this role will be to enhance our Careers and Linked In pages to compellingly communicate why talent should join us, evolve our hiring practices to be more inclusive and attract more diverse talent, and implement a streamlined hiring process with simple, consistent toolkits and templates. Overtime, this role will also reduce reliance on recruitment agents by driving up the number of direct applications received.

More specifically, this role will be focused on the following key activities:

Recruitment Audit & Plan: carry out a comprehensive review of existing recruitment activities from attraction to selection and identify opportunities to evolve our approach. As part of this, review our existing ATS and assess its functionality and scalability for the future. In particular, consider multi-channel attraction strategies and what changes will be required to embed inclusive hiring practices that bring on board diverse talent. Make recommendations that will streamline process and drive rigor, consistency and fairness. Gain buy-in across UK Group CEOs around your recommendations and any investment that may be required. Use audit insight and specialist expertise to define a roadmap for improvements within talent attraction and acquisition across the next 18 months.

Workforce Planning: work with UK Group CEOs, Talent Acquisition Manager and Talent Development Lead, to garner a rich picture of future hiring needs across the next 12 months based on business growth and talent progression and attrition. Use this insight to define hiring priorities for the UK Group and within specific businesses, to inform talent attraction plans and ideas as well as recruitment budgets and resource requirements.

Preferred Agency Partnerships: working with UK CEOs and hiring managers to review all recruitment agencies engaged across the UK Group, assessing their performance in delivering high calibre, bespoke or under-represented talent, and the relationship to date. Identify opportunities to streamline the number of agencies on our books, and make recommendations to enhance our partnership with a smaller number of favoured agencies. Ensure all preferred agencies are aligned with UK Group terms of engagement and negotiate favourable rates and terms. Activate the future relationship and maximise agency delivery by educating them on strategy, culture and growth plans, as well as our UK Group DE&I Strategy including our requirement for balanced shortlists for select roles.

Connected Talent: own and embed our internal recruitment approach across the UK Group including transfers of talent between businesses and promotional moves within businesses. Drive high awareness of the initiative and associated process requirements across hiring managers and colleagues. Devise a set of rigorous assessment tools and guides for hiring managers to support with the selection of candidates. Report on adoption and success of the initiative over time and continually look to refine upon it.

Upskilling Hiring Managers: create simple, effective tools and templates to enable hiring managers to become more self-sufficient around talent acquisition. This will include role spec templates for each business and group, interview scripts, assessment tools and candidate communications. Provide guidance to hiring managers around the use of recruitment tools and educates them on strong hiring and interview practices.

Recruitment Systems, Data & Insight: ensure full adoption of the Applicant Tracking System across the UK Group Hiring Manager population, regularly checking that hiring managers are interacting correctly with the system and moving candidates through the workflow. Provide training to managers as required. Orchestrate the creation of insightful, accurate and up-to-date Talent Acquisition reports that support action planning and decision making. This will include summary information around number of live vacancies, average time to hire, agency Vs direct hire ratio amongst other metrics. Derive insight from data and use this to inform future talent acquisition priorities and plans.

Employee Value Proposition: work with the UK Group People Director to define a compelling and irresistible narrative that articulates to potential candidates what is on offer from working for the UK Group. Outline the full suite of benefits and learning and development opportunities, as well as our commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, as part of this. Refresh our UK Group Careers page and LinkedIn Pages with new multi-media content that supports talent attraction and details the potential employee experience on offer.

Senior & Critical Hiring: lean in to support on full recruitment management of executive appointments, specifically CEO and their direct reports. Where required, for roles that need to be hired urgently or have been live for a protracted period and are critical offer additional hands-on recruitment support. This will typically involve direct sourcing, moving candidates through the workflow on the Applicant Tracking System, screening and/or interviewing candidates and managing candidate and agency communications. Work closely with hiring managers through this process to upskill and educate them to be more self-sufficient.

Job Posting & Coaching: for other live vacancies, if the hiring business does not have a dedicated Talent Acquisition Manager, support hiring by posting role specs on the Applicant Tracking System and Linked In or other jobs board where required. Provide a light-touch review of the role spec and advert, and coaching to hiring managers. This does not extend to managing the recruitment process on their behalf or direct sourcing, unless otherwise agreed.

Support Open House 2.0 and other entry schemes: work closely with the Talent Development Team to provide input around attraction and assessment of early talent in OpenHouse and other schemes such as KickStarter and Apprenticeship Scheme.

About You

This role is a fantastic opportunity to bring innovative thought-leadership to our talent acquisition approach and streamline processes and practices across the UK Group. Given the impact this role will have on our people and business, we’re looking for someone with a stellar mix of relevant experience and skills. Ideally, the successful candidate will have the following experiences and strengths:

Demonstrable experience of successfully leading a Talent Acquisition function across a large, complex business: extensive subject matter expertise in devising and implementing a talent attraction strategy that attracts a variety of different types of across a number of different businesses or sub-divisions. Ideally you have worked both creative and larger corporate industries e.g., communications, branding, design, insight, innovation so you are able to hit the ground running since you have experience of the skills and language associated with our talent acquisition needs, and nuances of a decentralised, complex business.

Track record in operational excellence around recruitment processes: has designed and instituted new approaches to recruitment drawing on the latest thinking around how to ensure inclusive practices. Have delivered a transformative programme of change to streamline processes and embed new practices that everyone adheres too that improve rigor and candidate experience.

Credible Recruiter: considerable experience in a hands-on recruitment, particularly at an executive level. You are well-versed in working with senior executives and asking precise questions to design a clear brief. You know how to activate the right talent attraction strategies, including having an established network of strong recruitment agencies who can support you. Where necessary you are able to turn your hand to direct sourcing and headhunting. You are an exceptional interviewer, able to follow a methodology that differentiates good talent from great and delivering an exceptional candidate experience at the same time. Your hiring decisions and recommendations are always substantiated and trusted by those around you – you are known for sound judgement.

Relationship Builder: is able to build strong relationships with a broad, varied range of hiring managers and other stakeholders. Your strong listening skills ensure they are heard, and you identify their needs and priorities. You are adept at stakeholder management and working with demanding stakeholders. Is able to gently push back and say no where required and will not be afraid to challenge those around them where they see value can be derived. They use their voice and insight in a compelling way to bring others around to the appropriate view and knows what it takes to lay out a compelling business case for change and influence key stakeholders and decision makers to enable change to happen.

Resilient Multi-Tasker: works at pace and thrives in a fast-paced environment. Enjoys the challenge of juggling several projects at the same time. Is able to identify priorities and switch focus between strategic thinking and operational delivery with ease. No task is too big or too small, and the ideal candidate will willingly roll their sleeves up to immerse themselves in what needs to be done to find and bring on board the right talent.

Analytical Thinker: able to identify ways of capturing essential recruitment data so that it is accurate and meaningful. Synthesise different data sets to consolidate and extract insight. Presents and communicates data in a clear, meaningful and relevant way to different audiences.

Exceptional Planner & Project Manager: the ideal candidate will plan ahead in detail and anticipate the work required across all Talent Acquisition briefs and projects. They are meticulous in carving out a clear pathway for progress and influencing others, whether inside or outside of the organisation, to deliver against milestones. They are diligent in reporting on progress and outcomes and work tirelessly to keep everyone fully up to speed and ensures nobody gets left behind.

Quality Finisher: has an eagle eye for precision and pays acute attention to detail. Is able to distil ambiguous ideas and thoughts into succinct, clear and beautiful communications, guides, templates and toolkits as well as job specifications. All their copy and documents create clarity and understanding for the reader and audience. To this end, they are highly skilled on PowerPoint, Excel and Word.

Brilliant Coach & Trainer: is able to act as an approachable performance coach to support hiring managers level up their hiring. Is able to craft learning materials around recruitment calling upon their subject matter expertise and captures the full engagement and attention of any audience when facilitating interactive training workshops and live discussions. Always ensures everyone is included and heard in any group discussion. Every upskill session they deliver is memorable and impactful.

Innovative & Fresh Thinking: proven experience of being an HR disruptor in the area of talent acquisition. They are not afraid to challenge the status quo and proactively seeks out opportunities to modernise processes and systems. Is driven by continuous improvement and loves to problem solve. Brings creativity and boldness to exponentially make improvements where traditional answers won’t work. As part of this, keeps abreast of latest trends and thinking in Talent Acquisition and proactively finds ways to introduce them to the business.

Brand Ambassador & Cultural Advocate: understands the importance of creating an incredible first impression for candidates. Is faultless in personal presentation and epitomises the brand in all interactions. Deeply understands the nuances of the organisations culture and is able to talk with authority to others about the business to build their understanding and awareness.

Force of Energy & Positivity: people want to work with this candidate and for this candidate. They elevate the quality of everyone’s work around them.

What We Offer

For the right candidate, we will offer a competitive salary and benefits package which includes 26 days annual holiday, medical history disregarded private healthcare, employer contributory pension, life assurance and income protection. We also offer a host of benefits that support wellbeing including subsided gym membership and 11: counselling, whilst our commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion sees us offer learning opportunities around DE&I, targeted mentoring programmes and the opportunity to participate in a number of active Employee Led Networks and associated events. Finally, this role will have a vibrant development offer that sets it up for success.

The M&C Saatchi Group UK has pledged its commitment to create a company that values difference, with an inclusive culture brought to life through equity with an 18-month roadmap of business-wide activity across people, culture, industry and society. As part of this, M&C Saatchi Group continues to be an Equal Opportunity Employer which does not and shall not discriminate, celebrates diversity and bases all hiring and promotion decisions solely on merit, without regard for any personal characteristics.

Your information will be kept confidential according to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Company: Job Squad

Vacancy Type:

Job Location: London, England, United Kingdom

Application Deadline: N/A

Apply Here

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