Senior HR & Recruitment Administrator

Lead a team that helps new colleagues join smoothly, compliantly and with an outstanding first impression. Joining us means playing a key role in delivering a high-quality recruitment and onboarding experience across a growing care organisation. Working closely with Recruitment, HR and operational teams, you'll help ensure new colleagues are onboarded efficiently, safely and compliantly, while supporting continuous improvement across the recruitment administration function. This is a full-time, office-based role based at our Support Office in Darlington, working 40 hours per week and offering the opportunity to work closely with colleagues across the organisation to support homes nationwide.

As a Senior HR & Recruitment Administrator, you'll lead the day-to-day operation of the recruitment administration team, providing guidance, coaching and oversight while remaining actively involved in pre-employment compliance and onboarding. You'll ensure service standards are met, support colleagues with complex cases and help create a positive experience for every candidate joining the organisation.

This is an operational leadership role responsible for overseeing recruitment administration and onboarding activity across the organisation. You'll manage and support a team of HR & Recruitment Administrators, allocating workloads, monitoring performance and providing day-to-day coaching to ensure candidates progress smoothly through the onboarding process. You'll oversee pre-employment compliance, ensuring right-to-work checks, DBS clearances, references, occupational health requirements and professional registrations are completed accurately and within agreed timescales. Working closely with Recruitment, HR, Home Managers and Payroll, you'll act as the first point of escalation for complex onboarding queries, coordinate start dates and ensure recruitment systems remain accurate and up to date. You'll also monitor performance data, analyse onboarding activity and identify opportunities to improve processes, service delivery and the overall candidate experience, helping the team achieve consistently high standards.

You'll have experience in HR or recruitment administration and be confident leading a busy operational team in a fast-paced environment. You'll combine excellent organisational skills with a strong understanding of recruitment compliance and safer recruitment practices, ensuring high levels of accuracy while managing multiple priorities and deadlines. Comfortable working with a wide range of stakeholders, you'll be an effective communicator who enjoys supporting colleagues, solving problems and delivering an excellent service. You'll be a proactive and approachable leader with a passion for developing others, improving processes and creating a positive onboarding experience that leaves every new colleague feeling welcomed and supported.

Essential What you'll bring:

• Previous experience within HR or recruitment administration.
• Strong knowledge of recruitment compliance and safer recruitment practices.
• Experience coordinating or overseeing pre-employment checks and onboarding processes.
• Excellent organisational skills with the ability to manage competing priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Confident IT skills, including HR systems, Applicant Tracking Systems and Microsoft Office 365.
• Experience monitoring performance, managing workloads and supporting continuous improvement.
• Ability to coach, support and develop colleagues to deliver high-quality service.

Desirable:

• CIPD Level 3 qualification or equivalent HR qualification.
• Experience within health or social care recruitment.
• Knowledge of sponsorship and immigration processes.
• Experience managing recruitment KPIs and implementing process improvements.

This role is a key leadership position within the Recruitment Team, combining operational management with hands-on involvement in recruitment administration and onboarding. You'll work closely with colleagues across Recruitment, HR and operational teams to ensure new starters receive a seamless, professional and compliant onboarding experience. As with all colleagues, you'll be expected to comply with our policies relating to health and safety, infection prevention and control, safeguarding and all relevant regulatory requirements. From time to time, you may be asked to undertake other duties appropriate to the role, and the responsibilities outlined above may be reasonably reviewed and updated following consultation to reflect business needs.