Building a talent acquisition function across EMEA

There was no talent acquisition function. Hiring ran through agencies booked by HR, office by office, with no shared view of what it cost or how long it took.

I built it. That started with the shape of the function itself — which roles, at what level — and phased hiring plans built against each office's own growth plan rather than against whatever vacancies happened to land. Then the operating model: sourcing strategy, employer proposition, assessment framework and ATS governance, with competency-based interviewing, hiring manager training and psychometric assessment brought in to make the quality of a hiring decision consistent across countries.

I hired the recruiters into the function, set their objectives, ran their reviews and coached them as it scaled. I defined the service levels the function would be held to and reported against them: time to hire, cost per hire, shortlist turnaround, interview-to-placement ratios, and hiring manager satisfaction at 30 and 90 days. Being measured on satisfaction three months after someone starts changes what you recruit for.

In twelve months the function delivered 280 hires, more than 85% of them sourced directly. One office launch needed 40-plus offers made in two weeks, with sourcing, assessment and onboarding running at once. I headhunted and hired the firm's first General Counsel in the region myself, outside the standard process. Workday Recruiting was deployed across the region during that period, with configuration, training and workflow governance, so the reporting meant something.