Head of talent
A head of talent acquisition owns how a company hires: the strategy, the recruiting team, the tools and the reporting. Employers use the title with different scopes, so settle whether talent development and employer brand are included before you hire.
What a head of talent acquisition owns
The role owns the outcome of hiring across teams, not one search. In practice that means:
- Priorities: agreeing with leadership which roles open and in what order, usually in a hiring plan.
- The team: coaching the recruiters and deciding where agencies or other support are worth the cost.
- Process and tools: which applicant tracking system, which job boards, how stages and standards stay consistent from team to team.
- Reporting: the numbers leadership reads, such as time to hire, cost per hire and quality of hire.
Descriptions of the role differ on where it stops. Hunt Club pairs recruitment leadership with succession planning and talent development, and separates it from HR managers who cover payroll and benefits. Klearskill describes a head of talent with a wider mandate that includes workforce planning, employer branding and retention. Neither is the standard, so decide your own boundary.
Recruiter, head of talent acquisition and chief people officer
| Role | Typical focus | Question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Recruiter | Running searches and moving candidates through the stages | Who fills this role? |
| Head of talent acquisition | Owning hiring as a function: priorities, team, tools, reporting | Is hiring working across the company? |
| Chief people officer | HR, talent and culture at executive level | Is the people agenda working? |
Reporting lines vary. Where a chief people officer exists, the head of talent acquisition may report to that role; where there is none, the company sets the line. In a small company one person can hold more than one of these roles.
When to hire one
Hunt Club names situations rather than a headcount: fast growth, trouble sourcing or handling a high volume of applications, and no talent development programmes. It does not give a size at which the role becomes necessary, and neither does this entry. Signs worth acting on:
- Hiring is steady rather than occasional, yet nobody owns the result.
- Several in-house recruiters, agencies or hiring managers pull in different directions.
- Teams apply different standards to the same kind of role.
- Leadership cannot see where the funnel stalls.
If hiring is occasional, a recruiter working from a clear hiring plan, with an HR lead as sponsor, may do the job.
A first-90-days remit
- Listen and audit
Meet the hiring managers, list open roles, and see where candidates drop out and which channels produced hires.
- Agree the plan
Settle with leadership which roles come first and who owns each, and write it down as a hiring plan.
- Fix one bottleneck and set the numbers
Pick the stage that holds most roles back, change it, and agree which figures you will report each month.
This is a suggested order, not a rule. A company that already has a plan and reporting can start at the bottleneck.