Lead - Talent Acquisition & Center of Excellence

About the Role:

We are hiring for Lead TA & COE for a company into Financial services. Please note it is an individual contributor role.

Responsibilities:

- Set up the Talent Acquisition Centre of Excellence (COE) from the ground up - define charter, operating model, governance structure, and success metrics in alignment with business and HR leadership.

- Design end-to-end COE processes: sourcing strategy, market mapping, assessment frameworks, interview governance, offer management, and reporting/dashboards.

- Build the future COE team - define roles (sourcers, TA specialists, market intelligence analysts), create hiring plans, and recruit, onboard, and mentor team members as the function scales.

- Personally drive leadership hiring (CXO-1/CXO-2, business heads, function heads) - manage confidential, high-touch search processes including stakeholder management, market mapping, and closure.

- Lead niche and specialist hiring for hard-to-fill mandates such as Risk, Treasury, Compliance, Data & Analytics, Technology, Digital Banking, and other specialized banking domains.

- Build and continuously refresh talent maps, competitor benchmarking, and industry mapping for critical and niche roles across the banking/BFSI landscape.

- Partner with business leaders, HRBPs, and senior stakeholders to understand workforce plans and translate them into proactive, pipeline-driven hiring strategies.

- Establish vendor and RPO management frameworks, executive search partnerships, and premium sourcing channels (LinkedIn Recruiter, niche job boards, headhunting) as required.

- Define and track COE metrics - time-to-fill, cost-per-hire, quality-of-hire, offer-to-join ratio, diversity metrics - and present insights to senior leadership.

- Ensure a strong candidate and hiring-manager experience across all senior and specialist hiring processes, maintaining confidentiality and discretion at all times.