Operations Lead in London

We're hiring an Operations Lead to join our small and growing team at The Search.

The business:

• People & Talent Executive Search firm, based in London and hiring across the UK, Europe and the US.
• We're only 5 years old and punching well above our weight, winning work against some of the most established players in the market.
• We’ve built a brand known for authentic storytelling, an exceptionally high bar, and a hands-on, fun, and personal approach.
• We’ve worked with some of the most ambitious global scale-up brands, such as Multiverse, Kraken, Nothing.tech, Starling Bank, and Wise. We specialise in People & Talent leadership hires (Chief People Officers, Heads of Talent, etc), and we’ve grown through referrals, reputation, and results.

Is this role right for you?

Experience: Whilst our ideal candidate would already have experience in an Operational role in a fast-paced recruitment or executive search business, we’re open. As it’s a varied role, we’d consider relevant experience within a Business Operations, Chief of Staff, or even Talent Operations role. We’d even consider recruiters looking to shift into ops, or recent graduates with some solid experience in high-stakes organisation or customer service. You don’t need to have all the experience - as long as you can demonstrate resilience, hard work, commitment, organisation and impact, we want to hear from you!

Ambition: You’re excited to learn how a start-up business operates from the inside, you want to be involved in lots of different things, you’re not precious and you’re happy to get stuck in to whatever is required. You’re not afraid of hard work and you want to make a difference.

Approach: You’re super organised, structured, with impeccable attention to detail, and you consider yourself creative and full of ideas. You’re also comfortable being client facing, whether that’s speaking to people over the phone or face to face at events. You get stuff done, and you’ll have amazing communication skills (as a team of storytellers and creative writers turned recruiters, writing skills are super important).

What’s the team like?

• Penny is like any passionate Founder - high-energy, passionate, somewhat chaotic, and relentless. You’ll need to not take quick and constant feedback personally, want to grow, and be energised by the thought of working with smart, entrepreneurial people and having to meet incredibly high expectations.
• As a team we like to work hard and have fun. We are extremely hardworking. If you're looking for balance, this probably isn't the job for you. However if you're looking to build something exceptional, have huge exposure, and learn how a small business operates from the inside, it could be.

What will you be doing?

This isn't just an ops role - it’s a chance to shape how the business runs, grows, and performs. You’ll be across everything from pipeline and reporting to marketing execution, events, finance, and strategic projects. You’ll bring order to the chaos, calm to the pace, and ideas to the table.

You’ll own:

• Talent Operations - CRM management (ensuring clean and useable data, training the team), pipeline health and reporting, market mapping, interview scheduling for high priority roles, managing NDA’s and follow ups.
• Marketing operations (Canva, website etc), community management (Slack channels), event management (CPO Network, Founders Network, Talent Leaders Network).
• Finance operations (liaising with our Finance team), budget management, reporting, etc.
• Founder support - managing Founders emails and diary where required, fielding interest and responding to enquiries on her behalf.
• Supplier, legal & contract management, being the point of contact for anything operational.
• People Operations - helping to implement our playbook, arrange onboarding, training, off boarding, benefits admin etc.
• Internal Recruitment - Assisting with hiring the team as we scale.
• Internal projects - such as assisting with international expansion and creating our podcast.

Why us:

• We don’t take ourselves too seriously, but we take our work very seriously.
• We donate 1% of turnover annually through The Search For Change, our charity arm.
• We look after our team - if you commit to us, we commit to you (team holidays, substantial learning budget, generous holiday allowance, a lot of flexibility).

This is not for you if:

• You need your hand held - this role comes with autonomy and expectation.
• You’re after a classic 9–5 with rigid boundaries - this is high-growth, high-trust, high-stakes.
• You want everything figured out already - we definitely don’t know it all!

One last thing: Most people won’t have read this far - but we’re not hiring most people. If this sounds like you, and you’re genuinely interested (not just blindly clicking apply), email me at penny@thesearch.com with the subject line: "Sausage" (my dog’s name) and tell me about your story and why you think you’re the right fit. We are an equal opportunities employer and believe diverse teams are better teams. We don’t care where you went to uni (or if you went at all). We care that you care.

The details: Up to £40,000 depending on experience. Performance related bonus. Hybrid 2 days a week with flex (we have an office in London and a workspace in Reading).

www.thesearch.com