Talent Acquisition Specialist in Cardiff

Location: Cardiff (Hybrid)

Salary: £35,000 - £38,000

Contract type: Permanent

About the role

Are you a recruiter who is focused on finding the right people and making an impact? At ARO, we're looking for a Talent Acquisition Specialist to join our proactive, delivery-focused Recruitment team. You'll be a true partner to our Managers, sourcing, attracting, and hiring top talent across a range of tech roles. Reporting to the Talent Acquisition Manager, you'll play a hands-on role in a busy team, managing the full recruitment cycle for vacancies across the UK. This is a fast-paced, high-impact role where your work directly shapes the growth of the business.

We're looking for an experienced recruiter, ideally with a tech or sales recruitment background, who thrives on building relationships, creating proactive talent pipelines, and delivering a seamless candidate experience. If you want to join a team that never compromises on quality — for our candidates or internal stakeholders — and have the drive to make a real difference, this could be your next role.

Please note that this is a Hybrid role with onsite requirement in Cardiff 3 days a week. You must be able to commute to the office and have your own transport.

What you'll do

• Take full ownership of the recruitment process, managing vacancies from start to finish.
• Conduct detailed role briefings with Hiring Managers to ensure clear alignment on requirements and expectations.
• Create and launch compelling advertising campaigns to attract the right talent.
• Shortlist suitably qualified candidates and conduct interviews, ensuring a positive candidate experience throughout.
• Manage the offer process, including salary negotiations, offer letters, pre-employment checks, and onboarding plans.
• Build and maintain proactive talent pools to reduce reactive sourcing and accelerate time-to-hire.
• Partner closely with hiring managers to streamline interview processes and minimise delays.
• Monitor recruitment metrics weekly, identifying bottlenecks and implementing process improvements.
• Strengthen and execute direct sourcing strategies, including LinkedIn outreach, networking, headhunting, and employee referrals.
• Develop strong, engaged talent pipelines for key and hard-to-fill roles to support business growth.
• Promote and support employee referral initiatives to increase quality direct hires.
• Track agency usage, challenge unnecessary spend, and convert agency roles to direct sourcing wherever possible.
• Ensure strong candidate-to-role alignment through effective screening and competency-based interviews aligned to ARO Values.
• Provide structured interview guidance and best-practice support to hiring managers.
• Set clear expectations with candidates regarding role scope, culture, and career progression opportunities.
• Analyse feedback from new starters to identify trends and continuously improve hiring quality.
• Partner with HR and line managers to ensure effective onboarding and smooth integration of new hires.
• Increase ARO's visibility and reputation as an employer of choice through targeted employer branding initiatives.
• Collaborate with Marketing to enhance attraction strategies, careers content, and talent campaigns.
• Map talent markets and maintain regular engagement with high-potential candidates.
• Support the design and rollout of an Early Careers strategy, including graduate, apprenticeship, and entry-level hiring pathways.
• Continuously review recruitment processes, implementing new ideas and initiatives to improve efficiency, quality, and candidate experience.

Requirements

What we are looking for?

Essential:

• Proven experience within an internal recruitment team or agency environment.
• Demonstrated experience managing the end-to-end recruitment process, including role briefing, advertising, shortlisting, interviewing, offer management, and onboarding.
• Strong direct sourcing experience with excellent networking and headhunting skills to attract top talent.
• Ability to work with multiple stakeholders across the business, building strong, trusted relationships in a busy and fast-paced environment.
• Solid understanding of what a good recruitment process looks like and a proactive mindset to continually review and improve recruitment practices.
• Proven ability to manage multiple roles simultaneously and deliver recruitment outcomes on time.
• Strong interpersonal skills with the ability to maintain excellent working relationships with internal colleagues, hiring managers, and external contacts.
• Based in or around Cardiff with the ability to commute to the office on a hybrid working basis.
• Willingness to roll up your sleeves, support the wider team, and contribute to shared objectives.
• Highly organised, detail-oriented, and results-driven approach to work, balancing speed with quality of hire.
• Experience recruiting for technical roles including understanding of technical skills, certifications, and market trends.

Desirable:

• Previous experience recruiting for technical sales roles, with an understanding of commercial hiring needs, sales competencies, and target-driven cultures.
• Experience contributing to employer branding initiatives, including social media promotion, events, or talent marketing campaigns.
• Experience designing or delivering graduate, apprenticeship, or entry-level hiring programs.
• Proficiency in using an ATS to manage vacancies, track candidates, and report on recruitment metrics.
• Ability to analyse recruitment metrics and use insights to improve process efficiency, time-to-hire, and quality of hire.
• Experience implementing strategies to enhance candidate experience, from application through onboarding.
• Knowledge of talent mapping techniques and competitor analysis to build proactive pipelines for hard-to-fill or niche roles.

Benefits

Who are we?

ARO has 25 years' experience in Collaboration, Connectivity, Cloud and Infrastructure and Cyber Security services both in the UK and Internationally and has a nationwide presence with offices across the UK. As one of the UK's leading independent IT and communication experts our mission is to deliver a seamless technology experience to all end users. To make that vision a reality, we need bright, tenacious and inspiring talent to help drive our performance, growth and achieve this mission. To make us successful we focus on strong communication, a culture based on fun, trust and collaboration. We have created a modern workplace environment, which is full of engaged, energetic, positive and curious people whose productivity, resilience and wellbeing allow them to thrive. In 2021 we were awarded the People Insight's Outstanding Workplace Award, which celebrates organisations building positive workplace cultures and acting on employee feedback to spark positive change.

Why Work for ARO?

At ARO we are committed to creating an excellent employee experience. Our employees, culture and additional benefits all make ARO a great place to work. Come join us!

We offer a wide range of benefits and incentives to our employees including:

• Company Pension Scheme and matching contributions
• Company Perks portal
• Private Medical insurance
• Life assurance
• 25 days holiday plus bank holidays plus holiday trading
• Your Birthday off, on us
• Health Club and Wellbeing Scheme
• ARO Shares after 12 months employment
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Technical Training Academy and E-learning
• Hybrid working

If even 80% of this matches your experience and attributes, we would be delighted to hear from you.