Lead Talent Specialist in Manchester

As a Talent Specialist, you will play an instrumental role in identifying, attracting, and securing top‑tier consulting & technical professionals for Transform's expanding teams. Your responsibilities will encompass the entire talent lifecycle, from sourcing candidates through multiple channels—including professional networks, career fairs, and targeted outreach—to guiding them seamlessly through the interview and selection process. You will work across a wide spectrum of technical and non‑technical disciplines, ensuring that each team within Transform is equipped with the specialised expertise needed to drive innovation and deliver outstanding results for our clients.

In addition to permanent hiring, you will curate and nurture a robust associate (freelance) network, building relationships with skilled contractors who can support project delivery with agility and excellence. Your ability to anticipate future skills requirements and adapt talent strategies will be central to maintaining Transform’s competitive edge. Functioning as a leader in the talent space within Transform, you will foster close collaboration with the Leadership Community, delivery teams, and senior management.

By leveraging your deep industry knowledge and insight into evolving technological trends, you will champion innovative approaches to talent acquisition and continuously refine internal processes to align with best practices. This includes introducing new tools for candidate assessment, streamlining talent procedures, and implementing data‑driven methods for evaluating talent needs. Your future‑focused mindset will enable you to proactively address workforce gaps, support succession planning, and ensure Transform’s readiness for emerging challenges. The partnerships you build across the teams will be the foundation of Transform’s talent strategy, directly contributing to Transform’s sustained success and ability to adapt in a rapidly changing digital landscape.

Key Responsibilities

• Talent Acquisition: Lead end‑to‑end recruitment for technical & non‑technical roles across Transform. Partner with our Leadership Community and hiring managers to define role requirements, skills, and success profiles. Proactively source and engage high‑quality technical & non‑technical candidates through direct outreach, networks, and targeted sourcing. Manage the full recruitment lifecycle including screening, interviewing coordination, offer negotiation, and onboarding.
• Contractor & Associate Network Development: Build and maintain a high‑quality network of trusted associates, and specialist consultants to support project delivery. Identify and engage specialist talent aligned to Transform’s service offerings and emerging client demand. Maintain strong relationships with external talent to enable rapid deployment to client engagements. Support commercial teams and delivery leads in identifying appropriate contract resources when required.
• Talent Pipeline: Build proactive talent pipelines across priority areas. Maintain visibility of available skills across the contractor network.
• Stakeholder Partnership: Act as a trusted partner to leaders across Transform, bringing your knowledge, skills and insight to support the team successes. Provide insight into market availability, hiring trends, and compensation benchmarks.
• Employer Brand & Talent Engagement: Promote Transform as an attractive destination for exceptional talent. Engage with professional communities, industry groups, and talent networks. Develop long‑term relationships with high‑potential candidates and specialists.
• Process & Talent Operations: Continuously improve recruitment processes and candidate experience. Implement scalable approaches to sourcing, talent tracking, and pipeline management. Track and report key recruitment metrics such as pipeline strength, time‑to‑hire and NPS.

Skills, Knowledge & Expertise

• Strong experience recruiting technical or consulting talent within a consultancy, technology company, or professional services environment.
• Demonstrated success in direct sourcing and headhunting technical & non‑technical specialists.
• Experience building and managing contractor or associate talent networks.
• Strong stakeholder management and ability to work closely with senior leaders.
• Good understanding of technical roles such as engineering, cloud, data, digital delivery, architecture, or similar.
• Strong experience using and maintaining a range of recruitment systems to support hiring.
• AI ready and open to proactively exploring new technology.
• Growth mindset.

Benefits

• Holiday entitlement, 28 days with the option to buy/sell up to 5 days (note that 3 days are held for Christmas holidays).
• Day off (on or in the week of) your birthday.
• Pension eligibility, up to 5% matched contributions.
• Private healthcare.
• Life assurance.
• Enhanced maternity and enhanced paternity and shared parental leave.
• Cycle to work schemes.
• Gym & retail discounts.
• Regular social events/activities.
• A range of other benefits from our flexible benefits package.

We’re committed to equality of opportunity for all, and we actively seek applications from all ethnicities, orientations, beliefs, gender identities + those with neurodiverse traits and disabilities. We want you to have the best opportunity to show us who you are and what you can do. Please do let us know if you need any adjustments now or at any point in the recruitment process.