WHAT DOES A HEAD OF RECRUITMENT DO?

Reviewed by Lam Nguyen under Editorial Standards

Updated: Feb 02, 2026 - The Head of Recruitment leads strategic hiring aligned with business goals and oversees recruitment across multiple markets. This role manages a high-performing team and ensures a strong candidate experience. The head also drives employer branding and manages key recruitment metrics and budgets.

A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Head of Recruitment

1. Head of Recruitment Duties

  • Talent Strategy: Create and develop the recruiting discipline to drive the talent acquisition strategy for all business areas to attract top talent
  • Framework Design: Lead the design and implementation of the talent acquisition framework to ensure it is based on Darkstore’s culture and core values
  • Leadership Hiring: Develop a specific leadership recruitment strategy focusing on attracting top diverse leaders to meet hiring needs
  • Organizational Design: Partner with the CEO to continuously evolve organizational effectiveness and design
  • Interview Playbook: Create a values-driven interview playbook to enable managers to objectively hire all talent
  • Team Building: Build out the talent team across the business to operate as a support and empowerment function to the rest of the organization
  • Process Improvement: Drive a culture of constant improvement, identifying and implementing strategies and processes to increase business-wide recruiting effectiveness and efficiency
  • Team Supervision: Supervise the work of the team in charge, ensuring the correct operation and work methodology
  • Process Compliance: Ensure the correct compliance with the coverage and attention times of the recruitment processes
  • Job Monitoring: Monitor requirements, job descriptions, and job rotation
  • Goal Reporting: Carry out reports or analyses about monthly goals
  • KPI Management: Design and monitor the team's indicators and results
  • Internal Meetings: Hold constant meetings with the various internal clients and with the team in charge
  • Action Planning: Propose action plans or improvement proposals focused on the results of the talent acquisition processes

2. Head of Recruitment Details

  • Process Design: Design, implement and maintain scalable processes, tools, systems and training to support the recruiting function across the company
  • Recruiting Prioritization: Partner with stakeholders to determine recruiting priorities and capacity
  • Recruiting Training: Provide leadership, training, and guidance related to job creation, interviewing best practices, offer negotiations, and recruiting functions
  • Candidate Experience: Ensure an outstanding candidate experience and an exceptional talent acquisition process
  • Recruiting Metrics: Identify and develop relevant recruitment metrics, utilizing dashboards to track team performance, create recruiting reports, and inform business decisions
  • Tool Optimization: Optimize recruiting tools and practices to ensure compliance, consistency, and integrity
  • Sourcing Strategy: Lead innovative sourcing strategies to attract top talent for executive searches and high-priority technical requisitions
  • Contingent Hiring: Partner on the implementation of the managed service providers and streamlining of the use of their temporary or contingent hiring services
  • Business Partnership: Provide key business partnership and thought leadership on recruiting
  • Team Leadership: Lead, develop, and manage recruiting team hiring across tech, product, business and volume roles
  • Strategy Execution: Lead the development and execution of comprehensive recruiting strategies that will guarantee Hippo attracts and hires the top talent
  • Talent Attraction: Develop strategies and processes that utilize both traditional and innovative sources to attract talent
  • Workforce Planning: Collaborate with executives and senior leadership in determining the current and future talent requirements of the business and those needs unique to each department and function
  • Process Improvement: Drive a culture of constant improvement, identifying, and implementing projects to increase business-wide recruiting effectiveness and efficiency
  • Executive Hiring: Leads business and leadership recruiting efforts

3. Head of Recruitment Responsibilities

  • Client Relations: Building and developing positive relationships with their clients
  • Social Marketing: Use social media to market themselves/ the team and the company, attract candidates and build relationships with all levels of stakeholders
  • Target Achievement: Work towards and exceed targets that relate to the number of candidates placed, the value billed or clients/business leads generated every month
  • Business Development: Using sales, business development and networking to attract business from client companies
  • Career Advising: Offer advice to both clients and candidates on pay rates, legislation, training and career progression
  • Vision Planning: Collaborate with the executive team to establish and execute on the short-term and long-term vision for hiring and growth
  • Global Strategy: Develop a global recruitment strategy that is aligned with key business objectives, contributing to strategic planning, organization design and team-wide initiatives
  • Team Coaching: Manage and lead a high-performing global recruitment team with a focus on coaching and development of the team
  • Process Improvement: Identify, define and implement process improvements to drive operational efficiency and achieve target performance metrics
  • Recruitment Strategy: Build and execute the recruitment strategy for GYG for franchisees, restaurant management team positions and head office roles
  • Profile Definition: Understand the right profile for franchisees and internal roles by liaising with all stakeholders
  • Marketing Strategy: Building the marketing strategy to sell what GYG has to offer to the right people through traditional and non-traditional means
  • Active Sourcing: Lead sourcing for franchising and internal roles with a focus on active sourcing through headhunting and networking
  • Candidate Selection: Lead the selection process for franchisees and internal roles to ensure we get the PERFECT candidate every time
  • Onboarding Experience: Ensure the journey of every successful candidate is smooth and lives the GYG values from first contact to onboarding

4. Head of Recruitment Job Summary

  • Employer Branding: Develop Employer Brand strategy and implement Employee Value Proposition (EVP) messaging
  • Social Media Branding: Lead on recruitment social media channels, working closely with the Communications team to improve brand awareness and showcase the unique Decathlon culture
  • Recruitment Partnership: Partner with Regional Leaders and Store Managers to understand business requirements and local recruitment needs
  • Project Leadership: Recruitment Project Lead for HR Digital Transformation programme involving newly implemented Applicant Tracking System, SAP Success Factors
  • ATS Optimization: Continuous improvement and optimisation of the ATS and careers site
  • Recruitment Training: Lead on recruitment training nationally for hiring managers by designing, developing and sharing recruitment training and best practices
  • Diversity Strategy: Drive Equality, Diversity and Inclusion strategy to attract and promote diversity and authenticity amongst teammates
  • Process Analytics: Develop analytics and reporting to regularly review the efficiency and relevancy of existing processes and tools to improve the efficiency of the recruitment process
  • Candidate Experience: Design, develop, implement and evaluate the best possible candidate experience
  • External Partnerships: Build and maintain external partnerships with relevant organisations including universities, job boards and SAP consultants
  • People Projects: Involvement in wider People Transformation Projects
  • Brand Awareness: Increase awareness of employee branding for different brands to establish an image among different target groups
  • Sourcing Strategy: Create and implement unique and effective sourcing strategies and techniques
  • Talent Pipeline: Find and engage passive talent and build strong talent pipelines

5. Head of Recruitment Accountabilities

  • Hiring Strategy: Work with the Leadership Team to define & deliver the hiring plan against the business strategy
  • Team Management: Manage, motivate and grow a high-performing team and build out recruitment teams in new markets as they start to scale
  • Stakeholder Partnership: Operate as a business partner for Hiring Managers to help set best practices and drive process improvements
  • Goal Setting: Define team mission, metrics, objectives and goals which support business strategy
  • Workforce Planning: Responsible for ensuring the company has the people it needs when it needs them
  • Data Reporting: Present data and recruiting information to senior stakeholders around the company
  • Talent Strategy: Build and implement an efficient talent acquisition strategy to improve recruitment and business performance, and introduce new sourcing and talent attraction methods
  • Candidate Experience: Act as an advocate for a great candidate experience, coach the hiring managers and other parties involved in a well-established recruitment process
  • Recruitment Cycle: Oversee all stages of the recruitment cycle (including application, interviews and communication) to a successful offer, assuring a good standard across the group
  • Team Development: Build and develop a highly skilled recruitment team for great performance
  • KPI Tracking: Keeping track of recruiting metrics, providing transparency and reports on the progress, and relentlessly looking for ways to improve the set KPIs
  • Employer Branding: Support the improvement of the employer brand, lead participation in job fairs and branding-related events to drive awareness of the company
  • Network Building: Build the company’s professional network through relationships with HR professionals and other partners
  • Market Awareness: Communicate with external parties to acknowledge any trends in recruitment and talent attraction
  • Vendor Management: Manage external partnerships with universities, job portals and HR software vendors
  • Budget Planning: Prepare and manage the annual recruitment budget

Job Role FAQs

What is a job role?

A job role refers to the duties, responsibilities, and expectations associated with a specific position within an organization. It explains what tasks an employee performs, how they contribute to team objectives, and how their work supports the company’s overall goals.

What are the typical responsibilities of a job role?

Typical job role responsibilities include completing daily tasks, collaborating with team members, making decisions, and meeting performance targets. For example, a software developer may write code, fix bugs, review pull requests, and collaborate with product teams.

What is the difference between a job role and a job title?

A job title is the official name of a position, such as Marketing Manager or Software Engineer. A job role describes the actual duties, responsibilities, and expectations associated with that position.

Why are clearly defined job roles important?

Clearly defined job roles help organizations improve productivity, reduce workplace confusion, and ensure accountability. When employees understand their responsibilities and expectations, teams can collaborate more effectively.

How do job roles support career development?

Understanding different job roles helps professionals identify career paths and the skills required for advancement. By learning the expectations of various roles, individuals can build relevant skills and plan long-term career growth.

Editorial Process

Lamwork content is developed through structured review of publicly available job postings and documented hiring trends.

Editorial operations are managed by Thanh Huyen, Managing Editor, with research direction and final oversight by Lam Nguyen, Founder & Editorial Lead. Content is periodically reviewed to reflect observable labor market changes.