| Detail | For this role |
|---|---|
| Department | Human Resources |
| Level | Senior management |
| Reports to | Chief Human Resources Officer |
| Direct reports | Talent Acquisition Manager, Recruitment Manager, Senior Recruiter, Campus Hiring Coordinator |
| Experience | 12 to 15 years in recruitment, with 5 or more years leading a recruiting team across functions |
Head of Talent Acquisition job description template
Copy this job description, replace the text in square brackets and post it on your careers page or a job portal.
Job title: Head of Talent Acquisition
Department: Human Resources
Reports to: Chief Human Resources Officer
Location: [City], [office, branch or site]
About the role
The Head of Talent Acquisition owns how the company finds and hires people. The role turns the annual manpower plan into a hiring plan, builds the recruiting team and sourcing channels, manages search firms and campus programs, and answers for time to hire, cost per hire and the quality of people who join. It reports to the CHRO or HR Director. A good head of TA gives business leaders a realistic hiring forecast and then delivers it.
Key responsibilities
- Convert the approved manpower plan into a quarterly hiring plan by role, location and level, agreed with each business head.
- Build and lead the recruiting team, assign recruiters by function or region and set their monthly closure targets.
- Decide the sourcing mix across job portals, referrals, the careers page, social media, campus and search firms using cost and quality data.
- Negotiate terms with recruitment consultants and search firms, and review their delivery every quarter.
- Run the employee referral program and the campus program for graduate, engineering and management trainees.
- Set interview standards with hiring managers, including structured interviews, panel design and assessments for key roles.
- Build the employer brand on job portals, LinkedIn and the careers page with honest content about roles and working conditions.
- Approve offers within salary ranges with the compensation team, and manage offer dropouts and pre-joining follow-ups.
- Report time to hire, cost per hire, offer acceptance, early attrition and hiring manager satisfaction to leadership every month.
- Handle leadership and confidential hires personally, working with the CHRO and search partners.
Requirements
- MBA or PGDM in HR
- Graduate in any discipline
- Certification in assessment tools or recruitment analytics is an advantage
- 12 to 15 years in recruitment, with 5 or more years leading a recruiting team across functions
KRAs and KPIs for a Head of Talent Acquisition
Key result areas for the appraisal form, each with a KPI you can measure every month or quarter.
| Key result area | How to measure it |
|---|---|
| Hiring plan delivery | At least 90 percent of planned hires joined within the planned quarter |
| Time to hire | Average of 35 days or less from requisition approval to offer acceptance for non-leadership roles |
| Cost per hire | Cost per hire within budget, with consultant-sourced hires below 30 percent of all hires |
| Offer to joining | At least 85 percent of accepted offers convert into joinings |
| Quality of hire | Fewer than 10 percent of new hires leave or are released within 6 months |
| Hiring manager satisfaction | Average hiring manager rating of 4 out of 5 or higher each quarter |
Skills and tools
Tools used day to day: Applicant tracking system, Naukri RMS and Resdex, LinkedIn Recruiter, Online assessment platforms, Video interview tools, Excel or Power BI.
Reporting line and career path
Next roles: Chief Human Resources Officer, HR Director, Vice President HR
Interview questions for a Head of Talent Acquisition
- We need 200 hires next year across sales, technology and operations. How would you size the recruiting team?
- How do you decide when to use a search firm and when to hire directly?
- Our offer-to-joining ratio is poor. What would you investigate first?
- Tell us about a hiring manager who kept rejecting good candidates. How did you resolve it?
- Which three hiring numbers would you report to the CEO, and why those three?
- How do you make campus hiring work for a company that colleges do not know well?
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What does a head of talent acquisition do?
A head of talent acquisition plans and delivers all hiring for the company. The role builds the hiring plan with business heads, leads the recruiting team, chooses sourcing channels and search firms, runs campus and referral programs, sets interview standards and reports hiring metrics such as time to hire, cost per hire and quality of hire.
What is the difference between talent acquisition and recruitment?
Recruitment usually means filling open positions as they arise. Talent acquisition is broader and longer term: forecasting hiring needs, building talent pools before roles open, strengthening the employer brand and measuring the quality of people hired. In practice many Indian companies use the two names for the same team.
Which metrics does a head of talent acquisition track?
The common ones are hiring plan delivery, time to hire, cost per hire, offer acceptance and offer-to-joining ratios, source mix, early attrition of new hires and hiring manager satisfaction. Quality of hire matters most, often measured through six-month attrition and first-year performance ratings of new joiners.