People & Talent Lead

You run talent at Hire Space. You hire well, you help line managers hold a high bar on their teams, and you make sure the admin and office run themselves in the background. This is a hands-on, operator-first role – your wins show up in who we hire, who we keep, and how quickly we can do both.

You own three things, in priority order:

• Talent acquisition – the pipeline, the process, the hires themselves
• Performance management – holding line managers accountable for running their teams at a high bar, and giving them the tools and cover to do it
• Office & people ops – the workplace works, the admin runs itself, the business doesn't trip over itself

Roughly: 50% hiring, 25% performance management, 15% office & workplace, 10% people ops, comp and reporting.

Key Responsibilities

1. Talent acquisition
   • Full-cycle hiring for every role in the business, end-to-end
   • Competency frameworks and interview scorecards for every role — hiring decisions are evidence-based, not gut-feel
   • Direct sourcing and headhunting for senior and critical hires; own the outreach, build a referral engine
   • Screen candidates so line managers only see the top of the pile
   • Run the candidate experience end-to-end — scheduling, comms, status — using automation and AI-assisted tooling (ATS workflows, AI interview notes, LLM-drafted JDs and outreach sequences)
   • Retrospective every bad hire and every final-stage rejection. Fix the process upstream.
   • Build a targeted employer presence in the events-industry talent pool, leaning on the Growth team's network and industry knowledge
2. Performance Management
   • Run quarterly 9-box grid reviews across the whole team, with clear board-level reporting
   • Operate an "Up or Out" policy for the bottom quadrants — you coach managers through the conversation; they own the call
   • Hold line managers accountable for running 30/60/90 probation reviews with real pass/fail gates. No surprise reviews. Swift exits when the bar isn't met.
   • Work with managers to define minimum standards for every role — zero ambiguity on what "good" looks like
   • Build cadence for recognising strong performance — specific, public, tied to real outcomes. People who smash the bar should know they did, and so should the rest of the team.
   • Feed performance data into payroll for bonus cycles
   • Spot-check payroll and comp outputs; Finance owns payroll, you sanity-check
3. Office and Workplace
   • Own the London office as a working environment: space, layout, suppliers, kit, the things that make people want to be there
   • Execute the hybrid / in-office policy — attendance patterns, visibility, logistics
   • Onboarding logistics: a new hire's first day should feel designed, not improvised
4. PeopleOps & Comp
   • Automate the admin: holiday, sickness, attendance, onboarding and offboarding checklists. If you're doing it manually twice, build the workflow.
   • Run a regular team engagement survey as a retention signal — tight, consistent, and useful. The output is a handful of clear actions, not a 40-slide deck.
   • Bi-annual benefits benchmarking against market; flag gaps, recommend changes
   • Support Finance on headcount forecasting and comp modelling
   • Keep our policies and process up to date; flag complex employment law or ER matters to our external employment counsel and the C-suite rather than trying to resolve them solo
5. AI Acceleration - how you work, across everything. You are expected to use AI to scale your output. Concretely: CV screening and shortlisting, interview note-taking and summarisation, onboarding sequence automation, performance review prep, policy drafting, comms at volume. We want to see workflows you've built.

You should apply if you have:

• 3–6 years in a People / Talent role at a scale-up or fast-moving business; you've owned hiring end-to-end
• Track record of performance management that actually moves people — not just documents underperformance
• Fluent with AI tooling. You've built workflows with AI, not just tried the demo
• Systems thinker. You automate, templatise, and build once. You dislike manual repetition.
• Comfortable being the only People hire in the business — no team below you, you're the one driving it
• Straight-talking. You'll tell a manager when they're avoiding a conversation, and you're ready to lead difficult ones yourself.
• Solid grasp of UK employment basics; you know when to elevate and when to act
• Events industry experience is nice but not needed

What's on offer

• Competitive Salary - £50k-£55k with annual salary reviews
• Enhanced pension contributions
• Workplace Nursery Scheme which allows you achieve tax savings by paying your nursery fees through your gross pay
• Professional Development Plans & Career Pathways
• 4 weeks Company Paid Sick Leave
• 32 days holiday allowance with additional for long service
• 3pm Friday finishes during BST (average 36-hour working week over the year)
• Tech and Cycle Schemes
• Access to Juno wellbeing platform
• Exceptional maternity and paternity benefits
• Regular team socials and monthly lunches
• £200 Home office spending allowance
• Free nights out in top London venues

Logistics

This is a hybrid/in-person role. Our team is predominantly London-based and it is important that you are able to collaborate, attend ad-hoc events and attend our away days in-person. You can usually expect to be in/around London on average 3-4 days per week, usually working from our central London office location near London Bridge.

About Us

Hire Space is a leader and pioneer in event technology, both in the UK and globally. We are at the forefront of a vibrant and fast-changing industry that is seeing a renaissance since the pandemic as companies seek to bring people together. We operate the UK’s largest venue marketplace, which hosts over 6,000 venues and is used by over 2 million event planners each year. Our clients include Google, Facebook, Red Bull, MAC Cosmetics, UNICEF, and Dr. Martens. Separate to the online marketplace, our technology and team also power the global event functions at a number of well-known companies. In addition to our well-known technology and expertise in venue finding, we have built a reputation for delivering world-class events both in-person and online through our own event platform, Arena. At Hire Space, we embrace diversity in all of its forms and foster an inclusive environment for all people to do the best work of their lives with us. We are an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, veteran, neurodiversity status or disability status.