The Talent Acquisition Partner is responsible for managing the full recruitment lifecycle for mid to senior, specialist and white-collar positions across the business. Working closely with hiring managers and business leaders, the role will focus on identifying, attracting and securing high-calibre professionals to support strategic business objectives and project delivery requirements, with a strong emphasis on direct sourcing and reducing reliance on external recruitment agencies.
The successful candidate will possess strong headhunting, networking, and stakeholder management skills, with a proven ability to recruit experienced professionals across technical, operational, commercial, and leadership functions. This role requires a proactive and consultative approach to talent acquisition, ensuring the business attracts and retains the highest quality talent in a competitive market.
Responsibilities -
-
Manage the end-to-end recruitment process for senior, specialist, and white-collar positions across the business.
-
Partner with hiring managers and business leaders to understand recruitment requirements, workforce plans, and succession needs.
-
Develop and implement targeted sourcing strategies and measurable recruitment plans for hard-to-fill, business-critical and priority vacancies, including agreed sourcing channels, target companies, candidate pipelines, timescales and escalation points.
-
Raise and manage vacancies through VVB’s Rec+ system, ensuring recruitment activity, candidate records, compliance information and reporting data are accurate and up to date.
-
Promote the Rec+ system throughout the business ensuing usage, compliance and understanding
-
Support line manager upskilling activities in regards recruitment training and development
-
Manage and deliver recruitment roadshows, with a focus on SEE activities and Emerging Talent
-
Create job advertisements and recruitment campaigns across job boards, social media platforms, professional networks, and industry-specific channels.
-
Screen and shortlist candidates against role requirements, technical competencies, and organisational fit.
-
Conduct competency-based interviews and candidate assessments to evaluate suitability and capability.
-
Manage candidate offers and negotiations
-
Deliver an exceptional candidate experience through professional communication and engagement at all stages of the recruitment lifecycle.
-
Take ownership of direct recruitment activity by proactively sourcing, headhunting and engaging candidates through professional networks, talent mapping, LinkedIn Recruiter, referrals, industry contacts and targeted market engagement to reduce external agency dependency and associated recruitment costs.
-
Challenge, advise and support hiring managers on role requirements, attraction strategies, selection criteria, recruitment routes and interview processes, ensuring vacancies are properly qualified before going to market.
-
Work closely with the Recruitment Coordinator to ensure that recruitment performance, including direct hire rates, agency usage, time to hire, quality of shortlist, offer acceptance, vacancy status, recruitment risks, market intelligence and salary benchmarking are all monitored and reporting is accurate.
-
Co-ordinate relationships with external recruitment agencies only where required, ensuring clear justification, cost control, agreed terms and consistent governance over agency engagement.
-
Support employer branding initiatives to enhance the company's reputation as an employer of choice.
-
Ensure all recruitment activities comply with company policies, employment legislation, and recruitment best practice.
Requirements -
-
Proven experience recruiting mid to senior-level white-collar professionals within engineering, infrastructure, utilities, rail, or related sectors.
-
Proven experience recruiting roles across engineering, project management, commercial, planning, design, health and safety, operations, finance, HR, procurement, and leadership functions.
-
Strong track record of successfully sourcing and placing specialist, technical, commercial, and management-level candidates.
-
Demonstrable experience in direct sourcing, executive search and headhunting methodologies, with a clear track record of reducing reliance on external recruitment agencies and delivering direct hires for specialist and hard-to-fill roles.
-
Strong understanding of talent acquisition best practices and candidate attraction strategies.
-
Experience using Applicant Tracking Systems, LinkedIn Recruiter, job boards, and candidate databases.
-
Excellent interviewing, assessment, and candidate evaluation skills.
-
Strong stakeholder management skills with experience partnering with senior managers and business leaders.
Our vision is to deliver sustainable Mechanical, Electrical and Telecommunication engineering solutions for our clients, our people and our environment.
Our ethical approach assures:
-
Customer-centric self-delivery, thanks to a unique combination of Tier 1 industry knowledge and Tier 2 agility.
-
A values-driven, partnership approach that ensures we make the ethical decision, always.
-
True sustainability that’s actively considered and built into the design phase of projects.
T:
E:
