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Carwow is a fast-growing online automotive marketplace and media company operating across Europe. The company combines technology, media, and automotive expertise to transform how people buy, sell, advertise, and lease cars. With nearly £3bn in cars bought on the platform annually, a YouTube channel with 10m subscribers, and recent acquisition of Autovia (AutoExpress and Evo magazines), Carwow is at a significant inflection point.
You will own the entire talent acquisition function at a business scaling rapidly and evolving its organizational structure. This is a strategic leadership role reporting to senior stakeholders, with full accountability for headcount planning, budget, hiring quality, and team development.
Key responsibilities include:
- Own end-to-end workforce and capability planning, partnering with the executive team to determine what capabilities are needed and when, translating this into talent acquisition strategy, headcount plans, and budgets
- Build strong relationships with senior stakeholders to understand talent needs and act as a trusted advisor on hiring strategy and organizational design
- Lead and directly influence senior and business-critical searches, including executive-level hiring, bringing market credibility to attract top-tier talent
- Raise the caliber of talent through consistent scorecards, structured interview processes, and quality-of-hire tracking
- Build talent intelligence capability to map critical and emerging skill pools ahead of need
- Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing talent acquisition team, setting expectations and building a culture of ownership
- Own how AI is applied across sourcing, process, and productivity; evolve hiring assessment approaches as skills requirements change
- Own employer brand and external candidate perception, working closely with the Employee Experience team
- Implement and embed DEI strategy within talent acquisition, ensuring inclusive practices at every stage
- Upskill hiring managers on structured, bias-aware interviewing and job specification writing
- Take on broader leadership team priorities as needed
The role is hybrid (2 days working from home) based in London. Benefits include competitive salary, matched pension, share options, private medical/dental insurance, life assurance, mental wellbeing support, 28 days annual leave (increasing to 30 at year 3, 35 at year 10), enhanced parental leave, childcare support, £500 home office allowance, and generous learning and development budget.
KEY REQUIREMENTS:
- Proven experience leading a talent acquisition function in a fast-paced, high-growth scale-up environment, ideally including significant periods of organizational change
- Experience building, leading, and developing high-performing talent teams with strong people management and coaching skills
- Excellent stakeholder management skills, including experience influencing senior leadership and translating business needs into talent plans
- Data-driven approach: comfortable building and using dashboards and metrics (time to hire, cost per hire, quality of hire) to drive decisions and report upwards
- Confident, expert-level knowledge of AI tools and their application to talent acquisition
- Hands-on experience implementing DEI strategy within hiring with a track record of embedding inclusive practices into recruitment processes
- Proven track record owning senior, business-critical, or executive-level searches with credibility at that level
- Experience owning employer brand and candidate experience, partnering with People/Employee Experience functions
- Comfortable operating in ambiguity with evolving structures and shifting priorities; able to balance long-term strategy with short-term delivery
