Student Recruitment Senior Manager - Operations, Business Engagement & Partnering - 15 Month FTC

Job Description

Senior Manager – Student Operations and Business Engagement and Partnering 

15 Month fixed term contract
Locations: London, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh or Glasgow
Hybrid: one day per week in the office plus 40% travel/ on campuses seasonally

At EY, you’ll have the chance to build a career as unique as you are, with the global scale, support, inclusive culture and technology to become the best version of you. And we’re counting on your unique voice and perspective to help EY become even better, too. Join us and build an exceptional experience for yourself and a better working world for all. 

 

We’re looking for people with a real passion for Student Recruitment. We’re looking for people with great experience in managing student assessment and selection campaigns, bringing senior business stakeholders into the conversation, and the ability to use data to shape future success.  We’re also looking to grow our regional presence in areas like Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow. 

 

EY is one of the largest student employers in the UK. In total, we recruit around 2,500 students every year into Apprentice and Graduate programmes, as well as a broad range of work experience opportunities. We attract over 75,000 candidates each year.

 

Our vision is to become the leading and most innovative student recruitment team, revolutionizing how we engage and attract top talent from universities and schools. We have a passion not just for recruiting the best student talent but ensuring we attract the most diverse talent by making a positive impact on the lives of students in the UK, and our wider society.

 

The student recruitment team is fast paced, forward thinking and innovative.  Together, we’re helping to build a better working world for our future talent. 

 

The Opportunity

This is a unique opportunity to join the in-house recruitment team at EY, finding future talent that will enable us to grow as a business. You’ll join a multi award winning team, responsible for setting a market beating candidate assessment and selection strategy and engaging with senior business stakeholders to ensure we meet their hiring needs.

 

Reporting to the Head of Student Recruitment UK&I, you will take a lead role for the candidate assessment and selection strategy. You will take a lead role in setting a strategy that meets hiring needs of our business stakeholders across the whole of student recruitment operations of all entry level talent; that includes work experience, graduate and apprentice roles. We manage high volumes, annually around 75,000 applications and 2,500 hires. You’ll help us leave a lasting impression both externally with our candidates, and internally with our business stakeholders.

 

Your key responsibilities

First and foremost, you’ll have a real passion for student recruitment and engaging business stakeholders with their recruitment process to hire the best, most diverse talent for a wide range of vacancies. You will bring innovative ideas of how to deliver the assessment process efficiently and quickly, ensuring best in class candidate experience. You will have a passion for transformation, using data and reviewing ways of working and operational processes to streamline, ensure value exchange to candidates, and consolidate activity.

 

You will lead a team managing the assessment and selection process for candidates from application to hire, ensuring positive candidate experience, efficiency in the assessment process, and hiring the best talent from diverse backgrounds. The team will engage with key business stakeholders as a trusted advisor for recruiting the best hires for their vacancies and engage them in the selection process at appropriate points.

• You will focus on delivering a best-in-class assessment and selection process which is time and cost effective, and a positive candidate experience
• You will work with the Head of Student Recruitment to set the budget for assessment and selection, and ensure the team deliver a cost-effective process within budget
• You will work towards a stable application performance across key diversity metrics, where there is no advantage or disadvantage for any particular group
• You will monitor net promoter scores and candidate feedback to drive continuous improvement and learning
• You will minimise time to offer, ensuring candidate wait times are kept to a minimum
• You will minimise application to offer rates, ensuring candidates are utilised across all Service Lines where they are most needed
• You will focus on process simplification, consolidation and alignment across service lines to provide a consistent candidate experience that optimises pipelines and fills roles
• You will become a trusted advisor to key business stakeholders, helping them set realistic targets which take into account current market conditions, and strategically plan for future demand
• You will work with key business stakeholders to ensure the team understands their recruitment needs, and work towards filling demand
• You will enable business stakeholders to become involved in the selection process in the most efficient and appropriate way to fill their vacancies
• You will drive the technology roadmap and vision for Student Engagement and Business Partnering to deliver improvements to service and delivery
• You will work with the Candidate Engagement and TA Operations teams on implementation of CRM / ATS propositions for dynamic talent hub sourcing and applicant and assessment tracking
• You will have an excellent grasp of technology options in the student hiring space including a strong desire to stay abreast of opportunities to enhance and harness new technologies across the recruitment lifecycle

Skills and attributes for success

Leadership

• Undertake projects or responsibilities as and when required by the UK&I Head of Student Recruitment
• Accountable for the operational delivery and oversight of all hiring requirements, continually monitoring progress and ROI throughout the season, updating key stakeholders across the service lines and student recruitment throughout
• Plan, launch and manage the key student milestone delivery plan throughout the year, application windows, recruitment sprints, and selection days across Service Line and regional priorities 
• Ensuring the proactive delivery of candidate pipelines and assessment activities, development of offshoring capability 
• Development and nurturing of inclusive talent pools and talent pathways that align to service line overall diversity recruitment strategy and longer-term objectives
• Candidate engagement, management and selection processes are running efficiently and to best practice

 

Business partnering

• Collaborating closely with the business to assess current-state and future business needs, understanding capability gaps (people, process, structure) and opportunities to deliver through innovative assessment and selection solutions
• Tactically deploy resources and ensure pipeline initiatives are optimally managed to ensure a demand/supply balance to critical hiring needs
• You will partner with our Campaigns and Attraction, Candidate Engagement, and Employer Brand teams to identify which talent pools need more targeting via social media campaigns, youth brand activation strategies, university / schools future talent pool strategies

 

Technology 

• Understand the technology roadmap and support various implementation initiatives, maintain and develop knowledge of available tools to drive improvements in our recruiting processes and approach
• Ensure technology within the assessment and selection process meets the future needs of the business, and enables us to select the best and most diverse talent from our applications
• Work towards a best-in-class assessment process with innovative technological solutions to engage candidates in their assessment journey, helping EY stand out as the employer of choice

MI 

• Ensure the Head of Student Recruitment and Head of Recruitment are kept informed ahead of time on key issues developing in the assessment and selection process
• Ensure key business stakeholders are kept informed on fill rate and other key metrics specific to their business needs
• Enable the team to report on MI to their business stakeholders in the most time efficient way, allowing them to become trusted business advisors by being knowledgeable and in control of the story the data tells us
• Work with the Candidate Engagement team to review candidate process analysis and develop continuous improvements
• Ensure the business is trained in interviewing best practices and development of ‘Licence to Hire’ roadmap and closely monitor fair and balanced business hiring decisions
• Design and implement metrics and guidelines that consistently measure the efficiency and cost effectiveness of the assessment and selection process

To qualify for the role you must have all or some of the following

• You’ll have a background and record of achievement in student recruitment driving innovation and continuous improvement centred on delivering the assessment and selection process for business stakeholders. This may include leading on projects that involve transformation, technology and operational excellence. 
• Strong recruitment operations experience and leadership of a student recruitment team 
• Knowledge of recruitment ATS systems, advanced recruitment technology and analytics/power BI
• Experience of leading diverse teams across multiple locations
• Experience of delivering high volume assessment and selection strategies for student programmes
• Effective change management and communications skills
• Experience of development of assessment and selection processes for best-in-class candidate experience and internal hiring demand
• Commercial management of assessment providers and actively reviewing the assessment strategies to ensure pipelines are filled with the best and most diverse talent
• Significant experience of improving assessment and selection capability within an organisation across large scale delivery 
• Demonstrated ability to navigate ambiguity, problem solving and exercise judgement under time pressure
• Refining and validating data, extracting and prioritizing key insights and storytelling in a compelling way
• Making business cases to drive continue technology, process or people solutions

 

Ideally, you’ll also have

• Deep understanding of student recruitment process design and candidate propositioning
• Thrives on researching and networking across the industry to be ahead of the curve on the latest approaches to student recruitment assessment and selection
• Proven ability to focus on continuous improvement and innovation
• Strong team player with positive personal impact

 

What we offer
We offer a competitive remuneration package where you’ll be rewarded for your individual and team performance. Our comprehensive Total Rewards package includes support for flexible working and career development, and with MyReward you can select benefits that suit your needs, covering holidays, health and well-being, insurance, savings and a wide range of discounts, offers and promotions. Plus, we offer:

• Continuous learning: You’ll develop the mindset and skills to navigate whatever comes next.
• Success as defined by you: We’ll provide the tools and flexibility, so you can make a meaningful impact, your way.
• Transformative leadership: We’ll give you the insights, coaching and confidence to be the leader the world needs.
• Diverse and inclusive culture: You’ll be embraced for who you are and empowered to use your voice to help others find theirs.

 

Please note
Prior to finalizing your application, you will be asked to provide personal information across several dimensions of diversity and inclusiveness. The information you provide is kept entirely confidential and will not be used to evaluate your candidacy. We collect this data to help us analyse our recruitment process holistically and implement actions that promote diversity and inclusiveness. While optional, we encourage you to provide this information to hold us accountable towards our goal of building a better working world. Read more about our commitment to diversity & inclusiveness here. We ask because it matters! 

 

If you can demonstrate that you meet the criteria above, please contact us as soon as possible.
 

The exceptional EY experience. It’s yours to build.