Head of Talent in Oxford

Description

Join us at EIT

At the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), we’re on a mission to translate scientific discovery into real world impact.

We bring together visionary scientists, technologists, engineers, researchers, educators and innovators to tackle humanity’s greatest challenges in four transformative areas:

• Health, Medical Science & Generative Biology
• Food Security & Sustainable Agriculture
• Climate Change & Managing CO₂
• Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

This is ambitious work - work that demands curiosity, courage, and a relentless drive to make a difference.

At EIT, you’ll join a community built on excellence, innovation, tenacity, trust, and collaboration, where bold ideas become real-world breakthroughs.

Together, we push boundaries, embrace complexity, and create solutions to scale ideas from lab to society.

Explore more at www. eit. org .

Your Role

Joining EIT Oxford as

Head of Talent offers a unique opportunity to shape the future of the Institutes’ workforce from the ground up.

You won’t just be filling positions - you’ll be crafting the recruitment strategies and processes that will help define EIT's culture and success long term.

We have scaled fast, hiring over 400 people in three years.

A small in-house Talent team is already in place, and they have built structures and processes to get them to where we are today.

In this role you’ll have full creative freedom to innovate, build scalable hiring systems, and create a truly engaging candidate experience.

Your impact will be felt immediately, and you’ll play a pivotal role in driving the institutes’ growth.

This is a high-impact, dynamic role perfect for someone who is proactive, adaptable, and thrives in a fast-paced, ever-evolving environment.

You will have the opportunity to play an active role in not only recruitment but also supporting and leading the internal talent team and hiring managers.

You will be responsible for upskilling stakeholders in recruitment best practice, while ensuring compliant and consistent processes are followed to deliver an exceptional candidate experience.

In addition, the role will contribute to onboarding, employer branding, employee engagement, and the ongoing development of our overall employee value proposition.

Your Responsibilities

• Full-Cycle

Recruitment: The Head of Talent oversees the entire recruitment process, from job requisition creation and approval, supporting HR colleagues on salary/package benchmarking, sourcing and screening candidates to conducting interviews and managing offers.

In a startup, this will span a wide variety of roles and levels.

This will include

• Building a talent pipeline strategy by both role and function
• Design inclusive selection processes and review and measure to ensure they remain fair, market leading and support employee value proposition
• Source and provide market insights to provide evidence and business justification for compensation decisions, benefits, reward and recognition structures
• Employer

Branding: In a competitive talent market, especially for startups/scaleups, you will work with the Talent team to support building and promoting EIT’s brand to attract top talent.

This includes crafting compelling job descriptions, highlighting EIT’s culture, and utilising social media and other platforms to promote and raise awareness of EIT Oxfords mission and values.

• Process

Development: You will be responsible for developing and implementing recruitment strategies and processes where none may currently exist.

This includes creating efficient candidate experience, establishing KPIs for recruiting success, and recommending and implementing tools or technologies to streamline hiring.

• Sourcing

Strategy: Identifying the best sources for top talent is critical.

You will explore a mix of traditional (job boards, Linked In) and innovative sourcing channels (networking, events, conferences, communities, referrals) to attract both active and passive candidates.

• Stakeholder

Management: Working closely with department heads and leadership to understand the needs of each role, aligning recruitment strategies with the Institutes’ growth goals.

In a startup/scaleup, this may also mean working with limited resources, existing systems that need optimising and adapting recruitment to changing priorities.

• Diversity & Inclusion

Initiatives: You will be an advocate for a diverse and inclusive workforce, ensuring that recruitment processes are unbiased and that the company attracts a wide variety of candidate from different backgrounds.

• Culture and employee engagement: You will put people experience first, creating a workplace of inclusion and kindness.

Working with department leads to define and communicate the team culture - nurture and cultivate it.

You will be a facilitator of leadership behaviours and operating principles, helping to embed best practice and keep it alive through observation, measurement and feedback.

• Talent

Management: Working with the wider HR team you will be integral to assessing individual/ team/organisational needs and support identifying and delivering training needs.

In collaboration with the central HR team, you will support the creation of best practice in terms of creating a connected workplace community.

Succession mapping, career planning and development pathways will be an ongoing output of your talent focus.

Requirements

Essential Skills, Qualifications & Experience

• Recruitment & Talent Acquisition Expertise
• Significant experience in talent acquisition, recruitment, or HR, ideally within high-growth, start-up, scale-up, technology, AI, life sciences, or innovation-led environments.
• Proven ability to source and engage both active and passive candidates through a range of channels including Linked In, networking, referrals, and direct sourcing techniques.
• Experience building and maintaining talent pipelines for current and future hiring needs.
• Strong understanding of recruitment best practice and end-to-end hiring processes.
• Stakeholder & Relationship Management
• Demonstrable experience partnering with hiring managers and senior stakeholders to understand workforce requirements and deliver effective recruitment solutions.
• Ability to build and maintain trusted relationships with candidates and internal stakeholders.
• Strong commitment to delivering an exceptional candidate experience throughout the recruitment lifecycle.
• Communication & Influencing Skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong influencing and negotiation skills, including managing offer discussions and candidate expectations.
• Ability to act as an ambassador for the organisation and communicate its mission, values and employee proposition effectively.
• Planning, Organisation & Delivery
• Proven ability to manage multiple recruitment campaigns simultaneously in a fast-paced environment.
• Excellent organisational, prioritisation and project management skills, with the ability to work effectively under pressure and meet deadlines.
• Recruitment Systems & Data
• Experience using Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and recruitment technologies to manage and optimise hiring processes.
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to monitor, interpret and improve recruitment metrics and KPIs.
• Experience using digital platforms and social media to attract talent and strengthen employer brand visibility.
• Diversity, Inclusion & Employment Law
• Sound understanding of diversity, equity and inclusion principles and their practical application within recruitment.
• Good knowledge of UK employment legislation relating to recruitment, right to work, employment contracts and fair hiring practices.
• Sector & Market Knowledge
• Strong understanding of talent markets within technology, AI, life sciences, research, innovation, or related sectors.
• Knowledge of salary benchmarking, talent trends and competitor activity within relevant markets.

Desirable Knowledge, Skills and Experience

• Regional Knowledge & Networks
• Knowledge of the Oxfordshire talent market and wider Home Counties region.
• Understanding of local talent pipelines, including Oxford University and other regional academic institutions.
• Established professional networks across technology, AI, healthcare, academia and life sciences sectors.
• Recruitment Function Development
• Experience establishing, redesigning or improving recruitment processes within organisations undergoing growth or transformation.
• Experience supporting ATS implementations, system integrations or transitions (e. g. Workable, Oracle Fusion, or similar platforms).
• Employer Branding
• Experience developing employer branding and attraction strategies to support growth and increase market visibility.
• Ability to position an organisation competitively against larger employers in attracting specialist talent.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in human resources, Business, Psychology, or a related discipline.
• CIPD Level 3, Level 5, or equivalent professional qualification.
• Additional Market Awareness
• Understanding of the employment dynamics between Oxfordshire, Cambridge and London talent markets.
• Awareness of regional factors influencing recruitment, including commuting patterns, university talent flows and sector-specific talent clusters.

Benefits

We offer the following benefits

• Enhanced holiday.

Our annual leave allowance is 25 days plus 8 bank holidays and an additional 3 days between Christmas and New Year.

You will also have the opportunity to purchase an additional 5 days annual leave in January and July.

• Pension - Employer contribution 7.5%, minimum employee contribution 5%
• Life Assurance
• Income Protection
• Private Medical Insurance as standard for you, your partner and any dependents. Including hospital Cash Plan
• Employee discounts
• Electric car scheme
• Nursery Salary Sacrifice scheme
• Cycle to Work Scheme
• Family Planning
• Neurodiversity support including advise and assessments
• Coaching & Therapy services

Working Together – What It Involves

• You must have the right to work permanently in the UK with a willingness to travel as necessary.

In certain cases, we can consider sponsorship, and this will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

• You will live in, or within easy commuting distance of, Oxford (or be willing to relocate).