Osborne Clarke is a future‑focused international legal practice, and our Business Services teams are critical to the delivery of excellent client service. We are looking for an experienced Recruitment Manager to lead end‑to‑end recruitment for our Business Services functions on a 12 month FTC.
This is a high‑impact role, partnering closely with senior stakeholders to shape resourcing strategy, design and deliver robust assessment processes, and use market intelligence and data to drive continuous improvement. You will act as an escalation point for complex recruitment matters, support the development of our Recruitment Advisors, and contribute to recruitment projects across the firm.
Reporting to the Senior Recruitment Manager, you will work closely with the wider Recruitment team, HRBPs, the Reward team and senior business services stakeholders. This role is based in our Bristol office, with the flexibility of regular home working as part of our hybrid working model.
Key role responsibilities:
Stakeholder Management & Vacancy Briefing
- Lead meetings with hiring managers and key stakeholders to take clear, detailed briefings for new vacancies.
- Advise on the most appropriate recruitment strategy for each role, including route to market, assessment approach and timelines.
- Offer challenge where required, helping stakeholders to refine role requirements and manage expectations.
- Keep line managers regularly updated on progress, responding promptly to queries and proactively addressing any issues or delays.
- Uses sound commercial judgement and organisational awareness to navigate sensitive issues (e.g. salary parity within teams, differing stakeholder views on working arrangements or role requirements), balancing fairness, legal/commercial risk, market conditions and internal relationships
Assessment & Selection Strategy
- Lead on the design of assessment processes for Business Services roles, with particular focus on senior and/or complex vacancies.
- Draft technical exercises and other assessment tools or liaise with hiring teams to co‑create these where appropriate.
- Interview alongside hiring managers for key vacancies, ensuring consistency of assessment and a high‑quality candidate experience.
- Oversee and, where appropriate, undertake candidate screening calls.
- Review and shortlist applications.
Direct Sourcing, Market Mapping & Talent Pipelining
- Conduct market mapping and headhunting activity for Business Services roles.
- Build and maintain talent banks, proactively sharing candidate profiles with relevant stakeholders.
- Maintain and develop external networks and relationships (e.g. agencies, search firms, peers at competitors) to gather market intelligence and support current and future hiring needs.
Agency & Supplier Management
- Facilitate agency briefing meetings to ensure clear understanding of requirements, timelines and assessment approach.
- Act as the final escalation point for negotiations on complex agency terms, ensuring commercial value and risk mitigation.
- Monitor agency performance and collaborate with suppliers to drive quality and continuous improvement.
Offers, Onboarding & Candidate Experience
- Lead offer discussions and negotiations, ensuring alignment with internal frameworks and budget constraints.
- Check offer paperwork before it is issued, ensuring accuracy and compliance with internal policies and legal requirements.
- Provide clear, constructive interview feedback to candidates.
- Act as an escalation point for new joiner queries and background checking (e.g. Accurate) discrepancies.
Data, Reporting & Budget Management
- Monitor standard Applicant Tracking System (Eploy) reports, analysing data and trends and feeding insights into recruitment strategy and process improvements.
- Track and monitor recruitment spend against budget, and escalating potential overspend in a timely manner to the Senior Recruitment Manager.
- Contribute to recruitment budget planning discussions with the Senior Recruitment Manager ahead of each new financial year, bringing data‑driven insight and market knowledge.
Process, Compliance & Best Practice
- Ensure recruitment processes are followed consistently and reflect best practice, promoting fairness, inclusion and a strong candidate experience.
- Oversee atypical processes, such as hiring day‑rate contractors and roles requiring visa sponsorship, ensuring correct procedures and compliance are followed.
- Identify opportunities to streamline and improve recruitment processes, systems and candidate journeys, and drive implementation of agreed changes.
Team Leadership & Development
- Take a proactive role in developing other team members, particularly direct reports, through coaching, feedback and knowledge sharing.
- Support on projects.
- Role‑model collaborative working, constructive challenge and a solution‑focused mindset within the recruitment team and wider HR function.
What we're looking for:
As one of our Recruitment Managers, you'll need to demonstrate significant experience in in‑house or agency recruitment, within professional services or a similar complex, multi‑stakeholder environment.
You'll also need:
- Strong commercial acumen and a deep understanding of how wider business operations, strategy and processes interact with and impact workforce planning and recruitment e.g. visa sponsorship, IR35, employment law relating to recruitment etc
- Exceptional communication and influencing skills, with a proven ability to build credible, trusted relationships and challenge constructively at senior stakeholder level.
- Excellent written skills and meticulous attention to detail, with a clear appreciation of the importance of accuracy, consistency and risk management in recruitment documentation and processes.
- Demonstrated ability to manage and prioritise multiple complex recruitment projects and competing deadlines, ensuring delivery against agreed SLAs and business priorities.
- Have a professional, resilient and adaptable approach, with experience handling sensitive and confidential information and navigating complex stakeholder dynamics.
- Be comfortable taking full ownership of the recruitment function or key business areas, working autonomously whilst providing clear direction, guidance and support to colleagues.
- Demonstrate strong judgement and problem‑solving skills, including the ability to interpret data and insight, make sound recommendations and know when and how to escalate issues.
- Proven ability to think strategically, lead on continuous improvement initiatives and contribute to the design and implementation of recruitment strategy, policy and best practice.
- Collaborative leadership style, fostering a positive team culture, sharing knowledge and supporting the development of less experienced team members.
- Highly proactive and service‑focused, anticipating stakeholder needs, managing expectations effectively.
- Driving a high‑quality candidate experience, with proven experience of utilising a variety of direct sourcing methods, including adverts, referrals and proactive LinkedIn sourcing.
- Be a proficient user of ATS and HR systems, with the ability to use data and reporting to inform decisions and improve processes.
We offer competitive salaries and generous benefits. We value the health and wellbeing of our people and our wide range of initiatives and benefits support this.
Our recruitment process
Please note that although we include closing dates for our roles as a guide, we review and progress applications on a rolling basis. At Osborne Clarke we do not make any recruitment decisions using automated decision-making.
We are committed to providing an environment where you can perform to the best of your abilities at every stage of your recruitment experience and beyond. If you require any adjustments to be made during the application stage, interview process, or when working with us, please let us know in confidence.
