Talent Acquisition Lead in Manchester

Location: Manchester, office in the heart of the Northern Quarter

Hybrid Working: 3 days per week in office (Monday to Wednesday), 2 days from home

Salary: Up to £40,000

About Grayce: Grayce partners with some of the world’s most ambitious organisations to deliver meaningful transformation. For over a decade, we’ve driven impact by developing, deploying and supporting high-performing talent across the UK and beyond. Joining Grayce means working for a company with a deeper purpose of supporting emerging talent careers and offers the opportunity to work in partnership with FTSE100 and FTSE250 organisations across multiple sectors.

Role Purpose: The Talent Acquisition Lead is responsible for leading recruitment delivery across the full talent pipeline, managing a team of Talent Officers and ensuring consistent, high-quality hiring outcomes aligned to business demand. This role provides operational leadership across the recruitment function, owning pipeline performance, overseeing end-to-end processes and acting as a key escalation point for complex hiring challenges. Working in close partnership with internal stakeholders, the Talent Acquisition Lead ensures recruitment activity is effectively prioritised, balancing pace, quality and candidate experience. The role plays a critical part in driving team performance, embedding consistency across processes and leading continuous improvement across the function.

About You: You are an experienced talent professional with a strong track record of delivering against hiring demand in a fast-paced environment. You take ownership of recruitment delivery, balancing pace and quality across multiple priorities. You are confident supporting and guiding others, and are either already in a management role or ready to step into one. You remain hands-on, with strong capability across sourcing, pipeline management and candidate assessment, and you build effective relationships with stakeholders while navigating challenges with confidence.

Responsibilities:

• Recruitment Delivery & Pipeline Management: Lead and oversee talent pipelines, ensuring a consistent, high-quality flow of candidates. Manage recruitment activity across the team in line with hiring demand and targets. Identify risks and take proactive action to maintain pipeline performance. Support interviews and hiring decisions where required.
• Attraction, Sourcing & Assessment: Partner with the Attraction Manager to deliver headhunting, advertising and sourcing strategies. Proactively source candidates using LinkedIn and other tools. Support the coordination and delivery of assessment centres. Line manage and develop Talent Officers through coaching and feedback. Set clear expectations around delivery, quality and performance. Build a high-performing, collaborative team environment.
• Stakeholder Management & Continuous Improvement: Act as an escalation point for complex recruitment or stakeholder challenges. Build strong relationships with hiring managers to align on priorities and expectations. Drive improvements across recruitment processes, pipeline effectiveness and candidate experience. Develop a strong understanding of the attributes that define successful hires.

Qualifications & Experience: Experience in recruitment, talent acquisition or resource management. Strong experience managing recruitment pipelines and delivering against hiring targets. Strong organisational, problem-solving and stakeholder management skills. Experience recruiting within consulting environments. Exposure to business change, data or technology roles.

Benefits: 25 days annual leave, increasing annually up to 30 days. Employee Assistance Programme. Cash Plan (optical, dental, therapies and more). Smart Spending – cashback and discounts at over 900 retailers.