L4 Talent Acquisition Service Line Portfolio Lead (Tax) - Perm

Talent Acquisition Service Line Portfolio Lead, Tax and Law

Level 4: Associate Director

Location: UK Wide

Hybrid working: Currently a minimum of 1 day per week in the office

This role requires strategic thinking, and the ability to partner and influence decision makers within a service line.  The successful candidate will ensure our service line experienced hires and early careers recruiters are maximizing our core and regional technology, digital tools, and processes in alignment with the regional vision and strategy. The Talent Acquisition function has been through a large transformation globally over the last year to adapt and enhance how we attract and select candidates in a highly competitive landscape.  This role will ensure that the Service Line Experience Hires and Early Careers recruitment teams adopt a best-in-class service and maximizing all available tools to achieve this.

As the Service Line Portfolio Lead, UKI, you will drive delivery & execution across experienced hires and early careers within the Service Line and our big bet expansion areas. This role will deliver a seamless recruiting process and exceptional experience for our candidates, recruiters, and business stakeholders in the Service Line. You will report to the Head of Portfolios & Business Partnership UKI and work as part of the extended UK TA2 Leadership team, driving and executing on end-to-end hiring across experienced hires and early careers. 

This role will require a high level of collaboration with key stakeholders and peers.  It is essential that this role instils a level of consistency in approach and methodology with best practice methods being always utilised in line with EY’s regional and global standards. 

Job Duties

People Management
Service Line TA2 Managers across Experienced Hires and Early Careers will report into this role.  Each role type will have a team of recruiters that deliver a best-in-class service to our clients that report into their respective Service Line TA2 Managers.

• Develop a collaborative team within the Service Line TA2 team that can pivot through peaks and troughs through the financial year. 
• Work with the Head of TA2 Portfolios to achieve a clear succession plans at all levels and offer a transparent career pathway for our recruitment teams in alignment with our career agility strategy.
• Upskill teams to help recruiters perform now and prepare for a future driven by AI and automation.  

Business Partnership 

• Become the single point of contact for our Service Line Leadership teams and Strategic Talent Leads to ensure there is a clear understanding and alignment of all TA2 activities that relate to the end-to-end delivery of our experienced and early career hiring. 
• Develop our service line recruiters to become true business partners at all levels, 
• Being part of a Portfolio Lead team ensuring a consistent way of approaching successes, challenges, opportunities and threats across all experience hires and early careers recruitment delivery. 

Operating Model

• Working collaboratively with our strategic and specialist services such as talent intelligence, candidate experience to deliver a proactive and value add service to our Service Lines. 
• Partner closely where applicable with our Head of Contingent Workers to maximise the Build, Buy, Borrow strategy across the service line and champion our contingent worker model to give agility to our client server teams. 
• Ensuring our offshore IBM, Talent Shared Services and Global Talent Attraction teams are delivering to the standards and SLA’s required to maintain an excellent experience for our service line hiring teams, candidate and recruiters along the whole recruitment lifecycle. 
• Maximise the services provided by our Employer Brand Team to attract the right candidates at the right time by selling our EVP through people stories on all relevant digital channels internally and externally.
• Utilising our services from our TA2 Operations function by continuously improving and simplifying our core tech, processes and governance, ensuring we are compliant and ethical in everything we do. 
• Bringing to life a cross-service line delivery model in Experienced Hires by aligning closely to our UKI Big Bet expansion & growth areas, while maintaining best-in-class recruitment services in our heritage and expertise areas.

Workforce Planning & portfolio delivery 

• An understanding of the drivers required to measure demand in order to deliver our financial targets is required. 
• Working with our head of TA2 Portfolios and coordinate with our Strategic Talent Leads, Service Line Operations Directors and Financial Planning & Analysis team to plan each financial year from an FTE perspective and measure/review this throughout. 
• Provide practical solutions to deliver the workforce demand through each financial year across early careers and experienced hires. 
• Provide Service Line Leadership regular update of progress against plan, using objective workforce planning data. This is to be done in a consistent manner in collaboration with all Service Line Portfolio Leads. 
• Accountable for the delivery and execution of our workforce plans across experienced hires and early careers, ensuring a world class approach to candidate and hiring manager experience. 

TA2 Management Information

• Working with TA2 Operations, validate and review existing reports, gather feedback, and prioritise iterative improvements. You will use key data to provide insights and storyboard reporting to our service line leadership teams that drives continuous improvement and collaboration.
• Support our Head of Portfolios by promoting a culture of diving deep, using analytics and insights to drive tactical solutions and get to the root cause of issues based on data from our reporting systems
• Leverage and use the MI from across our technology (ATS, CRM, Core HR and LinkedIn) and ensure we use this in a safe and compliant manner to ensure data protection. 

Recruitment Agency Suppliers 

• Control and measure agency spend across the region and provide this data and insights to operational leadership to put measures in place where needed. 

Sourcing Mix

• Use all available sources such as business referrals, advertising, direct sourcing, internal hiring and agency usage as part of our overall sourcing strategy to deliver against our workforce plans. 

Qualifications and Experience

As this is a demanding role in a fast-paced and complex service line/environment, we are looking for someone who can quickly build trusted stakeholder relationships, establish credibility and step confidently into the role from day one.

As such, consideration will be given to candidates who can demonstrate:

• Strong stakeholder management and influencing capabilities.
• A proven track record of leading specialist recruitment delivery within a complex recruitment environment.
• Experience operating at Senior Manager level, or equivalent leadership experience.
• Ability to effectively balance a TAA leadership role with commerciality and pragmatism

Additional experience

• Demonstrated experience as a Talent Acquisition Lead in a professional services or multinational organisation, with a strong focus on people management, delivery and business partnerships. 
• Commercially astute, with the confidence to influence at all levels of an organisation and the humility to listen, learn, and adapt.
• Extensive experience in managing a sub service line or service line, in either Early Careers or Experienced hiring.
• Stakeholder-oriented with a strong ability to collaborate with multiple stakeholders across borders, fostering and maintaining robust relationships with recruiters, hiring managers, business partners, and candidates.
• Demonstrated analytical expertise in data, reporting, and insights, leading to practical solutions and informed decision-making.
• Deep knowledge and appreciation of recruitment ATS, CRM and HRIS systems, including the ability to interpret and present recruitment metrics effectively.

Skills and Abilities:

• Committed to ensuring data accuracy and implementing measures for regional TA teams to maintain real-time and accurate data.
• Strong proficiency in Microsoft Excel and familiarity with MI tools such as Power BI 
• Passionate about refining and validating data, prioritizing key insights, and presenting them compellingly.
• Advocate for ED&I within the organisation and to external audiences, ensuring comprehensive market representation in Early Careers programs and experience hiring.
• Hands-on leader with a problem-solving and solutions-oriented approach.
• Capable of navigating ambiguity, exercising sound judgment under pressure, and engaging and influencing internal stakeholders and the external market confidently.
• Ethical and compliant, always acting in the best interests of the business and leading by example.

Additional Attributes:

• Exceptional interpersonal and communication skills.
• Ability to drive continuous improvement initiatives.
• Resilient and adaptable to change. 
• Strong organisational and time-management abilities.
• Commitment to professional development and staying current with industry trends.

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 FlexEY 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.

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.

Apply now.

About EY

As a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services, we’re using the finance products, expertise and systems we’ve developed to build a better working world. That starts with a culture that believes in giving you the training, opportunities and creative freedom to make things better. Whenever you join, however long you stay, the exceptional EY experience lasts a lifetime.

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!