Talent Acquisition Lead in Bristol

This is a great opportunity to play a leading role in shaping how Talent Acquisition operates across Motability Operations. Reporting into the Head of HR Operations & Enablement, the role will bring specialist Talent Acquisition expertise and take day-to-day ownership of developing and embedding a more proactive, structured, insight-led and strategically partnered Talent Acquisition model.

The Talent Acquisition Lead will act as the lead partner for key business areas, manage recruitment directly and lead a small Talent Acquisition team. The role combines senior recruitment delivery, functional leadership, commercial control and expert judgement, helping to strengthen sourcing decisions, candidate management, team standards, service resilience and overall Talent Acquisition effectiveness.

This role would suit someone who enjoys building capability as well as delivering high-quality recruitment. You'll have real scope to influence how Talent Acquisition partners with the business, strengthens direct hiring, improves control and creates a more consistent candidate and hiring manager experience.

Key Accountabilities:

• Talent Acquisition leadership, delivery and control
• Lead and develop a small Talent Acquisition team, providing direction, coaching and support to strengthen capability, consistency and service resilience.
• Work with the Head of HR Operations & Enablement to shape and deliver the Talent Acquisition roadmap, providing expert recruitment input across sourcing, attraction, hiring manager partnering, agency control, candidate experience, data and process improvement.
• Lead recruitment delivery for key business areas, partnering early with leaders and hiring managers to shape hiring plans, challenge approach, strengthen assessment quality and ensure hiring activity is well-managed, prioritised and delivered consistently.
• Create and embed consistent Talent Acquisition standards, ways of working and review routines, helping the team deliver a more joined-up, accountable and high-quality service.
• Sourcing strategy, agency management and hiring quality
• Lead sourcing strategy across external hiring, making strong use of direct channels and applying agency support with clear commercial discipline, challenge and cost control.
• Own the assessment and oversight of contractor engagements for IR35 purposes, ensuring decisions are well-governed, compliant and properly documented.
• Monitor agency usage, source effectiveness, recruitment spend and quality of hire, using insight to improve retention, strengthen hiring outcomes, reduce avoidable agency reliance and improve cost effectiveness over time.
• Strengthen attraction and go-to-market activity, ensuring roles are positioned effectively and relevant talent pools are developed.
• Maintain strong candidate management and process discipline, ensuring vacancies, workflows, candidate records and recruitment documentation are handled accurately and consistently.
• Performance insight, governance and continuous improvement
• Use recruitment reporting, service measures and management information to generate actionable insight, highlight risks, support decision-making and drive improvements where needed.
• Maintain strong governance and compliance across recruitment activity, including requisitions, candidate data, offer processes, contractor engagements and recruitment records.
• Identify and implement improvements to recruitment processes, workflows and ways of working to increase consistency, resilience and efficiency.
• Support inclusive hiring practices, fair recruitment processes and attraction approaches that widen access to talent and support EDI goals.
• Service resilience and senior partnering
• Build service resilience across Talent Acquisition, ensuring recruitment activity can be maintained during peak demand, absence, reduced cover and high-volume recruitment periods.
• Set clear expectations for recruitment quality, stakeholder experience and ways of working, while developing stronger partnering capability across the team.
• Work closely with HR Operations, hiring managers and wider stakeholders to ensure recruitment activity is joined up, well-co-ordinated and effectively handed over at the right stages.
• Provide credible strategic input on workforce priorities, recruitment risks, market insight and delivery options, helping leaders make better hiring decisions and plan ahead with confidence.

Qualifications

You are an experienced Talent Acquisition lead who brings deep recruitment expertise and has led recruitment activity and people within an in-house, recruitment or resourcing environment. You know how to set direction, create clear standards, manage priorities across a small team and build capability in others.

You combine senior recruitment delivery with strong operational judgement. You understand what effective recruitment looks like in a complex organisation and can operate as a strategic partner to the business, connecting hiring activity to workforce priorities, commercial needs and longer-term talent planning.

You bring structure, challenge and practical problem-solving to hiring activity. You are confident shaping hiring plans, improving sourcing approaches, managing agency use effectively and strengthening recruitment process discipline from requisition through to offer, while maintaining quality, service and fair, inclusive hiring practices that widen access to talent and support meaningful progress against EDI goals.

Minimum criteria:

• Significant Talent Acquisition, recruitment or resourcing experience, including operating at Senior Partner, Lead or equivalent leadership level within an in-house function.
• Experience leading or managing a small Talent Acquisition, recruitment or resourcing team, including balancing direct recruitment delivery with team leadership, workload management, coaching, service quality and continuous improvement.
• Experience helping to shape, build or embed a Talent Acquisition strategy, roadmap, service model or consistent set of recruitment standards.
• Experience operating as a strategic Talent Acquisition partner to business leaders and hiring managers, including shaping hiring plans, constructively challenging approach, improving assessment quality and supporting better recruitment decision-making.
• Experience managing agency relationships, external hiring activity and direct sourcing approaches, with a focus on quality, control, cost effectiveness and reduced agency reliance.
• Experience assessing contractor engagements for IR35 purposes and ensuring appropriate compliance, governance, decision-making and record keeping.
• Strong understanding of recruitment process control, candidate data management, governance and compliance within a Talent Acquisition environment.
• Experience using recruitment data, service insight, source effectiveness, quality-of-hire information and retention outcomes to monitor performance and support evidence-based recommendations.
• Experience leading recruitment delivery through periods of high demand, reduced cover or competing priorities, while maintaining service quality and candidate experience.
• Strong organisational judgement and influencing skills, with the ability to manage competing priorities, maintain delivery momentum and uphold high standards of accuracy and professionalism.

Benefits

Motability Operations is a unique organisation, virtually one of a kind. We combine a strong sense of purpose with a real commercial edge to ensure we provide the best possible worry-free mobility solutions to over 860,000 customers and their families across the UK. Customers exchange their higher rate mobility allowance to lease a range of affordable vehicles (cars, wheelchair accessible vehicles, scooters, and powered wheelchairs) with insurance, maintenance and breakdown assistance included. We are the largest car fleet operator in the UK (purchasing around 10% of all the new cars sold in the UK) and work with a network of around 5,000 car dealers and all the major manufacturers. We pride ourselves on delivering outstanding customer service, achieving an independently verified customer satisfaction rating of 9.8 out of 10.

Our values are at the heart of everything we do. They represent ambition, and we look for our people to live and breathe them every day:

• We find solutions
• We drive change
• We care

We operate hybrid working across the organisation where we split our time between working on-site at our offices, and at home, remotely within the UK. We believe hybrid working achieves a good work/life balance for our colleagues, allowing us to connect with each other, collaborate on important work, and perform together to deliver for our customers. It allows us to have the flexibility to work remotely up to 2-days per week whilst also using the great office spaces we have available.

As a Motability Operations team member, you can expect:

• An annual discretionary bonus
• 15% non-contributory pension (9% non-contributory pension during probation period)
• Life assurance at 4 times your basic salary to give you peace of mind that your loved ones will receive some financial help
• Employee Discount Scheme with a huge number of retailers and an app to save on the go
• Discounted Electric/Hybrid Car Salary Sacrifice Scheme
• Access to the Cycle to Work Scheme (we have showers, changing rooms and secure bike sheds on site)

As well as financial benefits, our staff's health and well-being are very important to us, so we also offer:

• 28 days annual leave with option to purchase and sell days
• Funded Private Medical Insurance cover
• Critical illness insurance
• Free access to healthcare apps, such as Peppy, Unmind, Aviva Digital GP
• Funded health screening for over 50s
• 1 day per year to volunteer - Staff can support a local charity or do a sponsored event whilst being paid for it
• Access to our fully accessible company allotment - Where we grow our own produce for local charitable organisations
• Access to Prayer room and quiet spaces whilst working in the office

We also understand that not everyone is the same so offer several voluntary benefits that you can select outside the core package, these include;

• Dental Insurance
• Health and cancer screenings for you and your partner
• Discounted gym memberships
• Charitable giving

At Motability Operations, we believe in building a diverse workforce, where our people are empowered to attend work as their true selves, and we encourage people from all backgrounds to apply. We want to sustain a culture that nurtures, where employees are free to flourish and where they're rewarded equally, regardless of race, nationality or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, age, disability, or gender.

We pride ourselves on being an inclusive employer and as such, all our offices provide first rate disability access. With our hybrid working environment, we do our best to accommodate part-time and flexible working requests where possible, building on our culture of trust, empowerment, and flexibility.

Please note, Motability Operations reserves the right to bring forward the closing date of any of its job vacancies if we receive a suitable number of quality applications from which to make a shortlist. Therefore, we recommend that you apply as soon as possible rather than wait until the published closing date.