My Job: Explained (Junior Talent Manager)

Name: Rochelle Dennis

Age: 23

Job Title: Junior Talent Manager

Describe your role:

My role is a nice hybrid of talent acquisition and human resources.

I’m predominantly responsible for supporting our talent acquisition strategy by managing the end-to-end recruitment process, from assessing an organisational need, creating job briefs, rolling these out to different channels, interviewing candidates and progressing them through the application process and onboarding.

I’m also able to get involved with other talent-related projects, such as developing internal surveys to assess employee engagement, implementing wellbeing initiatives, developing new processes that ensure our candidate experience is inclusive, and collaborating with the Marketing department on our employer branding.

How long have you worked in the industry?

I initially worked in the recruitment industry for a year (where I specialised in the recruitment of creative medical communications professionals) before transitioning into talent acquisition (within a creative healthcare marketing consultancy) where I’ve been for the past 7 months.

How did you get into this role/industry?

My main desire upon completing university was to go into a field where I could utilise the skills and knowledge I learnt in my psychology degree. I felt recruitment was very fitting for this; you’re establishing rapport and really understanding a candidate’s personality, personal values, motivational drives and cognitive abilities to align them to suitable opportunities. Initially, I was excited by the possibility of using my degree to increase my earnings and the speed at which I achieved my targets (e.g. using Robert Cialdini’s 6 Principles of Persuasion to boost my cold-calling success), not to mention the commission, incentives and similar university “work hard, play hard” culture.

I soon came to realise that agency recruitment was not for me; I don’t have an aggressive ‘go-getter’ attitude, I’m far from salesy and not necessarily ‘money-motivated’. I also began to see a massive shift towards our clients outsourcing their recruitment needs, to building and growing their own talent acquisition teams. It felt like the logical next step to transition in-house, where I could work in a people-oriented role, had more focus on the candidate experience and could deliver end-to-end solutions.

What's the best part of your job?

My work is meaningful and adds genuine value to the lives of others.

On the one hand, I get the chance to make a difference to society (albeit indirectly) through recruiting exceptionally talented individuals who go on to save and transform lives through the work they do, e.g. our blood cancer visibility campaign.

On the other hand, I can influence innumerable aspects of the organisation by creatively solving complex challenges, shaping our policies and practices, and introducing initiatives that go on to have a lasting impact on the wellbeing and personal/professional development of employees.

What's the hardest part of your job?

Being the bearer of bad news. It never gets easier calling up a candidate to tell them they didn’t get the position.

What skills would you say are necessary for this role?

My top three would be:

1. Comprehensive range of communication abilities - good written communication will ensure your job adverts and social media posts are effective and attractive. You’ll also have to make sure you can verbally correspond clearly, concisely and confidently to candidates, hiring managers and senior stakeholders.

2. Ability to multitask – due to the nature of the job a typical day can often involve you juggling both planned tasks and unanticipated challenges that arise.

3. Patience – it takes time to find the right person. Unlike recruitment, which is very reactive and momentary, talent acquisition requires a lot of strategic long-term planning. So don't feel disheartened if things don't fall into place immediately.

What advice would you give to someone thinking of entering this industry?

Make sure you understand the difference between recruitment and talent acquisition to determine which position best suits your motivations, personality and career goals. Although they share a common objective, they are not synonymous!

What surprised you most when taking on this role?

I was entrusted with the responsibility of navigating our exciting phase of expansion by building out our team in the New York office from day 1.

Are there any things that you didn't expect to be doing that has been asked of you?

I didn’t expect to take ownership of a core company-wide meeting which kicks off the working week and has been embedded in the company calendar since long before I joined. I’ve been responsible for its smooth coordination, from both a technological and administrative standpoint, and have had to redesign the process to ensure it continues as we all work remotely.

If you weren't in this job, what else would you want to be doing?

I would have loved to be a video game designer specialising in action-adventure and interactive drama!

The My Job series was created to help those unsure on the industry they want to go in, so this is an insight on the day to day life of different people in different industries. If you would like more details on working in this industry please drop me a message and I'll direct you to the interviewee! If you would like to get involved, please let me know.