Alex McDonnell

EMEA Recruitment @ Tesla

London Area, United Kingdom

About

Global Talent Acquisition Leader with 14+ years of experience building and scaling high-performing recruiting organisations across the UK, EMEA, and the Middle East. I’ve led teams of up to 110 recruiters, delivering thousands of hires each year for world-class companies including Tesla, BCG Digital Ventures, Mastercard, and EY. My experience ranges from leading large-scale recruitment transformation across 30+ countries to building new Talent functions and founding teams for venture-backed startups. I am motivated by developing exceptional recruitment leaders, improving efficiency and candidate experience through data-driven practices, and creating systems and cultures that enable organisations to scale with quality, speed, and consistency.

Experience

  • Tesla (Greater London, England, United Kingdom)
    • Senior Manager- EMEA Recruitment Lead
      Aug 2023 - Present · 2 yrs 11 mos

      Leading the recruitment function for the Tesla EMEA business (excluding Berlin Giga manufacturing hiring) that support sour Sales, Service, Delivery, IT, Engineering, Energy, Supercharging and G & A functions. I lead an organisation of 65 Recruitment Coordinators, Recruiters and Recruitment Managers, hiring across 30 markets, directly managing around 10 Recruitment leads and managers. Responsibilities include owning senior stakeholder management up to executive level, creating and driving the regional recruitment strategy, setting KPI's targets, defining skills matrices for the recruiters, and managing the headcount plan for our teams.

    • Senior Manager, EMEA, G & A and Tech Recruitment
      Oct 2021 - Aug 2023 · 1 yr 11 mos

      Senior Manager in the EMEA Recruitment team leading 30 Recruiters and Recruitment Coordinators in the following teams/functions: - General & Administrative recruitment - The EMEA Sourcing team - Leadership Recruitment - Internal Mobility - IT/Technology recruitment - Mechanical Design Engineering recruitment - Recruitment Coordination team - Recruitment Analytics team (interim, Dec 21 to June 22)

  • Talent Manager - Lead Talent Architect at BCG Digital Ventures
    Apr 2020 - Oct 2021 · 1 yr 7 mos

    BCG DV is a corporate investment and incubation firm that invents, builds and invests in startups with the world's most influential companies. As a Lead Talent Architect I fulfil the role of the interim HR Leader for the startups in London, Berlin and the Middlea East, project managing people-related work streams such as: - Talent Acquisition - Organisational design - Learning and Development/training - Compensation and benefits design

  • Manager, Talent Acquisition, Middle East and Africa at Mastercard
    Jul 2019 - Mar 2020 · 9 mos

    Looking after a portfolio of recruitment for Market Development, Government, Customer Delivery and Sales teams across the Middle East and African markets.

  • EY (4 yrs 5 mos)
    • Regional Learning & Development Manager, MENA - Assistant Director - Talent Development
      Oct 2018 - Jul 2019 · 10 mos

      I led the learning operations and firm wide learning curriculum for the MENA region. The firm wide learning curriculum includes training around professional skills such as business writing, presentation skills, project management, negotiation, commercial acumen, industry-relevant content and milestone training events. As well as the learning curriculum, I also had responsibility for the MENA learning budget, deployment strategy, and a team of 10 learning consultants supporting learning operations across all Service Lines.

    • MENA Graduate Development and L & D Consultant
      Feb 2017 - Oct 2018 · 1 yr 9 mos

      I was working as an Assistant Manager within the Learning & Development function of EY MENA. I was responsible for two graduate programs across MENA for the Advisory and TAS Service Lines. In January of 2018, I also took on additional responsibility in an acting Manager role looking after the MENA Learning Operations. This involved management of the MENA learning budget and the management of a small team of learning consultants. My roles and responsibilities include the design, day-to-day operations of the programs, pastoral care for graduates, and facilitating milestone training events.

    • Supervising Associate - MENA Experienced Hire Recruitment
      Mar 2015 - Mar 2017 · 2 yrs 1 mo

      I delivered on volume and specialist recruitment requirements, while managing relationships with key stakeholders (at Partner level), supervising team members and designing/implementing new approaches to our recruitment processes in the MENA Assurance Service Line.

  • Recruitment Consultant at NES Global Talent
    May 2013 - Feb 2015 · 1 yr 10 mos

    I worked as a Recruitment Consultant for NES Global Talent in their Dubai office, placing Oil and Gas, Power and Heavy Industry professionals on a permanent (direct-hire) basis in the Middle East, with a focus on Iraq, and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.