Talent Researcher - High-Performance Quantitative Energy Trading Firm in City of London

Talent Researcher - High-Performance Quantitative Energy Trading Firm

Location: City of London - 5 days onsite

Employment: Permanent, Full-time

Hawkwood are excited to be partnering with a High-Performance Quantitative Energy Trading Firm, operating across global commodities markets. Combining deep trading expertise with proprietary technology and data science, our client operates in complex, volatile and highly data-intensive markets.

We're looking for a Talent Researcher to join a growing Talent function and play a key role in providing the market intelligence that shapes how the business hires.

The role is a great opportunity for an early-in-career agency recruiter looking to make the move in-house. You’ll support the Talent function by keeping a finger on the pulse of market intelligence and hiring trends, creating detailed market maps, and building networks across the industry to gather insights and report back to senior stakeholders. You’ll be encouraged to experiment with new tooling to streamline searching, mapping and engagement with top talent, while autonomously tracking internal and external data to help inform hiring decisions.

Here’s a taste of what you can expect to be doing:

• Own talent research from intake to insight, partnering with recruiters and hiring managers to understand requirements and define target organisations, candidate profiles and research strategies.
• Build detailed talent maps of competitor firms, teams and individuals, supporting both immediate hiring and longer-term workforce planning.
• Get creative in uncovering prospective talent, leveraging LinkedIn Recruiter, Boolean and X-ray search, talent databases, GitHub, publications, conferences and other specialist sources.
• Deliver market intelligence across compensation, competitor structures, hiring trends and talent supply, helping the business make more informed hiring decisions.
• Keep your finger on the pulse of the market, tracking senior hires, team moves and competitor activity to continually build the firm's understanding of the talent landscape.
• Build structured, searchable talent intelligence and use data to measure market coverage, conversion and research quality.
• Experiment with AI and automation to accelerate research, data enrichment and analysis, while helping develop smarter ways of working across Talent.

You’ll be a great fit if you have:

• Experience in talent research, market mapping or sourcing, whether that’s been in-house, within executive search or at a specialist research firm.
• A genuinely analytical mindset, with strong Excel skills and the ability to turn large volumes of information into clear, commercially useful insight.
• Strong hands‑on experience with LinkedIn Recruiter, Boolean and X‑ray searching, talent databases and ATS platforms.
• The curiosity to quickly understand complex markets, including technical and trading roles, and how competitor organisations and teams are structured.
• An interest in leveraging AI, automation and new technology to push the boundaries of traditional talent research.
• Excellent attention to detail, with the ability to build and maintain accurate, organised and compliant talent data.
• The confidence to present your findings clearly and use evidence to influence search strategy and hiring decisions.
• Experience working in a high‑growth, high‑performance environment, with exposure to financial services, trading or commodities particularly relevant.

A note on Applicant Experience

We recognise how challenging this current job market is for candidates, and Hawkwood are therefore striving to provide the best candidate experience we can.

We are eager to ensure that each candidate application is considered fairly, and receives a consistent experience.

Unfortunately, we cannot ensure this standard if you inquire about a role via email or LinkedIn message, as it falls outside of our established process.

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