Early Talent Acquisition Partner

We are seeking an Early Talent Acquisition Partner to work collaboratively with both the People

Business Partners, Early Talent team, and our third-party provider, on all early talent recruitment

and onboarding activities across the Audit, Tax, NAS and Operation areas of the Firm. Activities will

include oversight of sourcing, undertaking selection and supporting with offers and acceptance of

suitable candidates that meet our early talent expectations and align to our firm culture and values.

The People function is a busy team where confidentiality, a collaborative work ethic, curiosity and a

proactive approach are essential. The team provides advice and support to partners and staff

throughout their entire tenure at the Firm. We deliver a full range of generalist support working

collaboratively together across early talent and experienced hire recruitment, learning and

development, professional qualifications, business partnering, operations and payroll activities. The

Team gain credibility through being proactive, responsive, creative and accurate ensuring we are

collaborative with each other and act as “one” team so all activities and communications are joined up. Together this forms the basis of success in this role.

The role

Reporting to the L&D & Early Talent Manager, the successful candidate will oversee the recruitment activities for early talent across all areas the firm ensuring activities are undertaken in line with our Talent Acquisition strategy and policies and ensuring we demonstrate, over time, a commercial return on the investment of working with the third-party supplier.

The incumbent will work collaboratively with the People Business Partners across Audit, Operations, Tax and NAS areas of the firm to determine final headcount requirements for early talent, and act as a coordinator working with the key stakeholders internally and the third party provider to plan and implement agreed methods of attraction, sourcing and evaluation approaches to identify suitable early talent candidates and ultimately hiring the right talent in alignment to the Firm’s strategic goals.

The incumbent will act as a representative of the Firm with educational institutions and/or external

career fairs and engaging with the third-party supplier and its representatives. You will oversee the

engagement of candidates at various stages of the hiring and onboarding process, ensuring a

positive candidate experience and positively promoting the external awareness of the HaysMac

brand, constantly reviewing post-employment data analytics relating to the overview of the early

talent processes delivered by the third-party supplier. All learning and insights from the process to

be proactively shared with the Early Talent team to ensure a continued learning to enhance success.

The incumbent requires knowledge and experience in the Early Talent Acquisition field, working with a third-party supplier, with the ability or experience to observe and propose improvement

opportunities and influence ideas through to considered implementation and successful outcomes

all with a value-add and positive candidate objective in mind.

The role will entail implementing:

1. Strategic Planning:

• In conjunction with the L&D & Early Talent Manager and the Talent Acquisition Manager,

review and develop an early talent acquisition strategy, which can be incorporated into the

Firm’s Talent Acquisition strategy and is aligned to the Firm’s and People team’s objectives.

• Work collaboratively with People Business Partners to determine volume of proposed early

talent headcount across the Firm, and in turn with the third-party provider, to manage the

early talent recruitment activities.

• Provide quarterly updates for the CPO on all activities and progress to ensure MT is

constantly updated.

• Ensure overall contract with third party supplier is fit for purpose, consider proposals to

include or exclude elements going forward, and ensure any contract negotiation is flagged

and undertaken in good time to enable full consideration at the right level.

• Develop full understanding of all PQ activities in order to be able to speak confidently to all

joiners and current Associates.

2. Recruitment Process

• Work collaboratively with the third-party provider on the end-to-end early talent recruitment

process from job posting to verbal offer of employment, ensuring proactive oversight and

monitoring of onboarding with the People Operations team to ensure contract acceptance

by offered candidates through to commencement of employment.

• Support in any design and delivery of assessment processes, make recommendations for

process improvements including proposed solutions and agreed implementation changes.

Ensure suitable candidates are being identified and a DEI-considered approach taken during

the selection processes.

• Support and work with the third-party provider and its representatives to positively promote

the HaysMac culture and brand, possibly through organising and attending campus events

and career fairs and planned social media posting.

• Attend early talent related networking events to build external network and ideas to support

early talent colleague experiences.

• Partner with key stakeholders across the Firm to keep them proactively informed at key

stages of early talent recruitment activities and proactively advising when their engagement

may be required for activities.

3. Employer Branding and Candidate Experience

• Act as a HaysMac representative when attending any external Talent Acquisition events and

participating in any social media activities, positively promoting the HaysMac brand and

culture for attraction purposes.

• Ensure a consistent and engaging early talent candidate experience, demonstrated through

frequent monitoring of early talent candidate and new employee data insights

(Glassdoor/candidate surveys), and collaborating with the Junior Business Partner to review

solutions and make improvements in the recruitment and onboarding processes where

appropriate.

• Consider the overall pre-employment engagement process, from offer acceptance to start

date, and work with the Early Talent team to ensure this is best in class.

4. Projects

• Work with the Head of HR & L&D, the relevant People Team representatives on the HRIS

project, and the third-party provider, to design and plan the utilisation of the HRIS Hiring

functionality and Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to enhance the process of managing early

talent candidates.

• Support with the design and delivery of onboarding and induction programmes for early talent

hires.

• Understand where the Firm’s strategy lies in relations to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, CSR

and Training Development programmes and ensure these are embedded into early talent

recruitment end-to-end activities.

• Any other ad hoc or early talent related projects as required.

5. Data & Reporting

• Use data insights from the third-party provider, and once implemented, the new HRIS hiring

module, to demonstrate and inform on early talent recruitment activities, as well as provide

data for the Management Team dashboard and performance monitoring relative to People

Team KPIs.

• Provide qualitative analysis which support data insights, be it positive and challenges relative

to KPIs, and any proposal solutions if appropriate to redress challenges.

6. Idea Generation

At all times, ideas are welcomed to improve, be more efficient, save time and enhance

compliance. Laws change, market practices develop and generations want different things so

demonstrating your awareness and understanding of changes and how they may impact all

scope of the role activities will be a responsibility for the incumbent.

In this area in particular, we really welcome best practice activities which we can accommodate

from market intel, network knowledge or just learning in the Early Talent field so please share

all as appropriate.

You will have:

• Experience in an Early Talent Acquisition position demonstrating experiences of end to-

end recruitment activities focused on early talent programmes (school leaver,

placement and graduate related programmes)

• Engagement with schools and universities and their representatives, and working with

other third-party providers albeit this can be developed on the job

• Experience of using social media tools e.g. TikTok, LinkedIn

• Good understanding of employment law in relation to hiring activities and best

practices

• Experience of working within a professional services environment, ideally

Accountancy and ICAEW regulated environment

• An ability to support numerous colleagues and departments concurrently and balance

priorities accordingly

• The willingness to jump in and support the wider team when there are requirements to

cover

• Experience of working with applicant tracking systems and sourcing tools

What you’ll need to succeed:

• A good technical recruitment background working on early talent programmes, and

with professional services stakeholders

• Ability to establish and build strong and positive stakeholder relationships, with third

parties, People Business Partners and internal clients, instilling confidence on early

career TA activities within the Firm

• Strong organisational and project management

• Effective communication and presentation skills

• A collaborative style and team working ethos

• Adaptable, flexible and strong at problem-solving in fast-paced environment with great

ideas for improvement

• Analytical mindset and attention to detail

• PC literate with a working knowledge of Recruitment ATS systems (preference)

• Presence in the London office up to 3 days a week