Head Early Careers - CIB, WRB & Exc.

We are looking for a dynamic and forward‑thinking professional to lead the Early Careers agenda for our Corporate & Investment Banking (CIB) & Wealth & Retail Banking (WRB) globally. This role is responsible for setting the strategic direction and ensuring end‑to‑end execution of early careers hiring for CIB and WRB and graduate program management—aligned to workforce planning, business needs, and future skills development. The role combines strategic ownership, programmatic delivery, and deep stakeholder engagement across business leaders, HR Business Partners, Talent Acquisition, and People Capability teams globally.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and drive the Early Careers strategy for CIB and WRB globally, ensuring alignment with the bank’s skills agenda, broader workforce strategy and enterprise talent goals.
• The role holder is accountable for ensuring a differentiated offering that maximises candidate and employee experience for CIB and WRB EC talent including but not limited to the Graduate Programme, the Internship Programme, Apprenticeship, Spring Programme etc.
• Shape the “what, how, and where” of EC talent hiring—from skills‑based demand planning, campus strategy, building EC pipeline, compensation review, talent attraction approach, selection & assessment, development, high‑potential pipeline visibility and deployment frameworks.
• Responsible for developing and managing a sustainable, high quality and diverse early careers talent pipeline delivering the skills and competencies required by the business to best serve the client.
• Stay ahead of market trends and elevate the graduate proposition through innovation and best practices.
• Embed and optimise the new RPO model to enhance productivity and effectiveness, ensuring alignment with global and regional goals, with a focus on creating streamlined ways of working that maximise ROI.
• Collaborate with global early careers team and global HR teams to align on consistent frameworks, value propositions, and governance models.
• Responsible for continual engagement with relevant senior stakeholders and building a deep, strategic collaboration with business leaders, Talent and People Capability functions, Lateral Recruitment, Diversity and Inclusion teams, and country HR teams to align early careers strategies.
• Build a deep understanding of business priorities and align the early careers programme to meet long‑term business needs, focusing on creating a structured, programme‑matic approach that supports workforce evolution and organisational strategy.
• Actively engage with business leaders to understand early careers pipeline requirements and integrate feeder roles into the talent strategy, ensuring seamless deployment of interns and graduates into permanent roles.
• Represent CIB and WRB in global early careers forums, sharing insights and shaping strategy.

About Standard Chartered

We’re an international bank, nimble enough to act, big enough for impact. For more than 170 years, we’ve worked to make a positive difference for our clients, communities, and each other. We question the status quo, love a challenge and enjoy finding new opportunities to grow and do better than before. If you’re looking for a career with purpose and you want to work for a bank making a difference, we want to hear from you. You can count on us to celebrate your unique talents and we can’t wait to see the talents you can bring us. Our purpose, to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity, together with our brand promise, to be here for good are achieved by how we each live our valued behaviours.

When you work with us, you’ll see how we value difference and advocate inclusion. Together We Do the right thing and are assertive, challenge one another, and live with integrity, while putting the client at the heart of what we do. Never settle, continuously striving to improve and innovate, keeping things simple and learning from doing well, and not so well. Are better together, we can be ourselves, be inclusive, see more good in others, and work collectively to build for the long term.

What We Offer

In line with our Fair Pay Charter, we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing. Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance, with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations. Time‑off including annual leave, parental/maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 months maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum. Flexible working options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns. Proactive wellbeing support through Unmind, a market‑leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global Employee Assistance Programme, sick leave, mental health first‑aiders and all sorts of self‑help toolkits. A continuous learning culture to support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual and digital learning. Being part of an inclusive and values‑driven organisation, one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions and geographies – everyone feels respected and can realise their full potential.