London, England, United Kingdom
The role of Talent Acquisition is a broad, encompassing role, that is as much about WHAT one does as it is about HOW one does it. It fits into so much more than simply hiring; it's the company strategy, 3 year plan, long-term goals. It's the ability to support change and growth. Collaboratively. Intelligently. With passion, drive & most importantly, with integrity & trust.
Group Head of Talent Acquisition, reporting into the Chief People Officer. Head up a global team of TA Managers and TA Partners, based in New York, Medellin (Colombia), London, Tallinn (Estonia) and Sofia (Bulgaria). Engage with Exec, SVP & Director level stakeholders Overseeing our talent acquisition strategy across the company including Employer Branding, D&I and salary benchmarking for all locations Supporting data driven decision-making and forward-thinking hiring strategies for Technology, Product, Operations, Commercial and Corporate globally Partner with finance to manage budget and headcount planning Manage Greenhouse ATS and work closely with Workday HCM team Own & implement "AI in Talent Acquisition" stratgey
As well as still actively involved in Tech recruitment listed below, I oversee the team responsible for all Tech hiring for London, Italy, Bulgaria, Estonia, Switzerland & Lithuania. As a Lead, my additional responsibilities include various aspects of recruitment operations, such as employer branding strategies in the various locations; Workday & Greenhouse data and data cleanses; reporting, salary benchmarking, training and people management responsibilities.
This has been a great & challenging role to get into & an awesome company to join! As the sole Talent Acquisition Partner for London, I have been a part of hiring in both the tech & non-tech spaces. From hiring .NET Developers, Product Owners, Network, Cyber Security & Infrastructure Engineers & DevOps Engineers, Data Architects & BI Analysts on the Tech side, to hiring Account Managers, People Ops & Legal Counsel for the business. From London to New York to Manila, this has been a full, fast-paced & varied role from the start! The company listed on the NYSE in April 2021 which saw my remit broaden further to support the hiring of US based regulatory roles required by the company listing. From the kick-off session through to the offer, I partner with the stakeholders at all stages of the recruitment process.. A keen advocate of the candidate's experience, I aim for a quality experience for all those involved in the recruitment process, both internally & externally. I'm involved in numerous projects that relate to Talent, focusing on how to correctly attract & engage with the individuals that would thrive in our company. I work on various aspects of the talent acquisition process, such as recruitment marketing, employer branding, kick-off sessions, to sourcing & advertising strategies. I also enjoy exploring new platforms & tools to assist in being able to attract & engage with talented individuals.
A challenging but exciting role within the recruitment team, supporting the ever-growing front end teams within the business. Key focus areas of recruitment were Front End & Full Stack Developers (React/Node,js) (from Junior to Lead), iOS Developers (Swift & ObjectiveC) (from Junior to Lead), Automated Test Analysts and iOS Test Analysts. From initial role discussion to sourcing strategy to talent-mapping & competency interviewing, my role supported the growth & challenges presented in this space in a fast-paced industry! Some projects involved in: Salary bench-marking exercise for technology, organised various events & meet-ups hosted in the Tech Hub, active member on the Women in Tech initiative, chaired a panel on Imposter Syndrome, gave a talk on Presence & the Art of Negotiation, performed market mapping exercises for difficult skills (such as IBM WCS).
My purpose at Yoox Net-A-Porter was to actively engage with individuals within numerous areas and at all levels of Tech in London & in Europe. I had the exciting task of appointing the right individuals into the new YNAP (Yoox Net-A-Porter) Tech Hub in White City, London, to help achieve the technology goals and strategy - from re-platforming, to complete mobilisation to AI & personalisation. Individuals hired included Front End Developers (from junior up to Principal), back end Java Developers, Testers, InfoSec Engineers, Finance Budget Analyst, Procurement Specialist, Asset Analyst, Desktop & Service Desk support to name some of them.
A sense of adventure captured me, & I decided to challenge myself and do something different for a while, so I headed off to the South of France to be a Stewardess on the Super Yachts. I worked on a beautiful 39m Feadship as a Second/Service Stewardess for a family. It was a fantastic opportunity to see how far I could go out of my comfort zone as well as travel around and see the Mediterranean. After some time of being at sea, despite really enjoying myself, I decided to be London based & continue my career in an industry that I truly enjoy!
Technologies/roles recruited in: Software Engineers & Developers (Java/.NET/PHP/Javascript - all both front end & back end), Machine Learning/Data Scientists, Analysts, Managers & Directors, Testing (both manual & automated), Infrastructure Engineers, DevOps, Security Specialists to name a few. In my 12 years of IT recruitment, I was exposed to all areas of IT. Understanding that the majority of candidates that we sourced for were not active on ‘obvious’ recruitment platforms, I was actively involved in exploring new avenues for Candidate Sourcing - such as Github and Stack Overflow as well as ‘different’ ways to ‘attract’ candidates, to name a few. Despite being a Manager, I was still actively involved in engaging with my own candidates and clients in the full 360 cycle. As well as managing the business, I was also managing my own team of IT Consultants, and assisting them in dealing with all areas of IT recruitment. Having built my career in IT recruitment, becoming a Manager saw me adding skills, such a target management, budget management, people and performance management, as well as being involved in the strategic direction of the company by my role on MANCO (management committee). Being part of a listed entity (AdvTech), gave me exposure to the direct impact our businesses, as well as any strategic decisions made, had on the bottom line. Further to these day-to-day activities, I was still actively involved in training my staff on topics ranging from the technologies we recruited in, to sourcing of candidates using various methods from Boolean searches to effective LinkedIn recruitment, as well as successful candidate engagement etc. As the Manager of a few businesses, I was the end point for any challenging negotiations or situations that required high-level resolution, as well as the business representative for large-scale client recruitment. Our client industry base was very broad - from e-commerce to product specific development houses .
Due to my success and reputation within the Cape Town IT industry, I was selected to grow and develop a team of IT Consultants. Here I started my journey of learning people management skills. From how to effectively train individuals, to how to create engaged, successful & motivated staff.
I started as a Junior IT Recruitment Consultant, growing my relationships and reputation in the field of IT recruitment. Here I learnt key skills such as high-level client engagement & identifying good candidates within the IT sector.