Talent Acquisition Lead in Leeds

Schroders Personal Wealth aims to improve the way financial advice is offered, by making it more affordable, accessible and powerful for more people. We want to change lives for the better.

As a Talent Acquisition Lead, you will manage the end-to-end hiring journey across the organisation, with a primary focus on Personal Wealth Adviser (PWA) recruitment.

Role:

• Type: Fixed-term contract until 31/03/2027
• Location: National
• Salary: £70,000+

As an experienced Talent Acquisition Lead, you’ll play a pivotal role in shaping the future of our Financial Adviser community. You’ll lead our hiring strategy, partnering with leaders to understand workforce needs, build proactive talent pipelines, and deliver a high-quality, compliant hiring experience.

You understand that effective hiring is built on strong partnerships and thoughtful decision-making, so your ability to manage stakeholders is central to this role. You’ll have the opportunity to build a seamless, well-structured recruitment process that supports the delivery of great client outcomes. You’ll be joining a collaborative and close-knit team where your expertise is valued and your ideas can make a real impact.

Responsibilities:

• Personal Wealth Adviser Hiring (Primary Focus): Own the full recruitment lifecycle for experienced advisers and adviser academy/early-career talent—from role intake and attraction strategy to offer and onboarding.
• Run targeted sourcing (direct search/headhunt, market mapping, talent pools) to engage high-calibre advisers and advice leaders in a competitive market.
• Partner with Regional Managers and Client Office leadership teams to sequence hiring against demand, capacity, and location requirements.
• Sourcing, Attraction & Employer Brand: Support the development of the Adviser value proposition, evolving this as the business transitions to Lloyds Wealth.
• Design multi-channel attraction plans tailored to adviser talent.
• Create inclusive adverts and candidate materials that reflect SPW’s tone of voice and Consumer Duty ethos.
• Leverage market insight (supply/demand, compensation signals, competitor moves) to advise hiring managers and shape campaigns.
• Work with marketing teams to nurture future talent.
• Selection & Assessment: Design structured, job-relevant assessments aligned to Adviser capabilities, company values around quality of advice, client centricity and relationship management.
• Brief, coach and support interviewers to ensure fair, consistent and evidence-based decision-making.
• Track and improve quality-of-hire through probation/early tenure insights in partnership with People Partners and line managers.
• Compliance, Screening & Governance: Ensure all recruitment activity meets internal policy and regulatory expectations.
• Work closely with HR Admin to manage pre-employment checks and ensure accurate job classifications are applied to regulatory roles.
• Liaise with governance forums when new or revised job profiles are required.
• Stakeholder Management & Vendor Oversight: Act as a trusted partner to hiring managers, HR Business Partners and senior leaders—aligning recruitment with workforce, budget and risk considerations.
• Manage recruitment agency partners and ensure they meet agreed SLAs, cost expectations and candidate-experience standards.
• Data & Continuous Improvement: Own pipeline and recruitment MI including time-to-hire, source mix, diversity, cost-per-hire and candidate feedback.
• Identify bottlenecks and lead improvements in processes, tools, messaging and assessment approach and share best practice across the broader hiring community.

Qualifications & Skills:

• Proven experience delivering end-to-end recruitment within the wealth management, IFA or private client sector—particularly financial adviser sourcing.
• Strong direct search/headhunting capability with experience engaging niche, relationship-driven talent pools.
• Knowledge of the regulatory environment related to financial adviser recruitment (e.g., SMCR/T&C considerations, vetting standards).
• Excellent stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence and coach hiring leaders.
• Data-literate, with experience using ATS (ideally Workday) to manage pipelines and produce actionable MI.
• Clear, engaging written and verbal communication skills, able to represent the organisation credibly to senior advisers.
• A commitment to inclusive hiring and improving diversity through fair and transparent processes.

This job vacancy may close earlier than the advertised date if a suitable candidate is found. We encourage interested applicants to submit their applications as soon as possible.

Benefits:

• Generous Holiday Entitlement: 30 days of annual leave plus bank holidays, with the option to buy or sell 5 days.
• Health & Wellbeing: Company-paid Private Medical Insurance, Life Insurance, and Health Screening.
• Company Pension Contribution: A matched pension contribution of up to 15% of your base pay.
• Cash Allowance: Flexible allowance to spend on additional benefits personal to you, including: dental cover, paid sabbatical leave, gym membership, menopause support.
• Bonus Opportunity: Dependent on individual/company performance (eligible after 3 months’ service).
• Financial Advice: Access to free financial advice to help secure your financial future.

We support flexible working: At SPW, we know how important it is to be able to achieve a balance. We want to support your lifestyle as well as meeting our business needs, so will always aim to be flexible. As well as traditional working patterns, we have colleagues who work informal flexible hours, reduced working hours, and have job-sharing arrangements. Many colleagues work from home, or in a hybrid way.

We warmly welcome applications from those returning to work after a period of leave, providing appropriate support and training where required.

At SPW, we embrace individuality and diversity of identity, experience, and thought. We actively strive for inclusive behaviours and actions, making appropriate adjustments for disabilities, health conditions and neurodiversities. We ensure equal opportunities for all and transparently report on gender pay to promote fairness.