Director of Talent Job Description

A Director of Talent is the senior leader who owns how a business finds, keeps and grows its people. The role covers talent acquisition, talent management, leadership development, succession, workforce planning and the data that ties them together. It sits apart from the wider HR function — payroll, employee relations, reward administration and policy — and below the C-suite People role held by a Chief People Officer or Chief Human Resources Officer. The Director of Talent usually reports to the CPO, CHRO or HR Director, and in some scale-ups directly to the Chief Executive or Managing Director.

This guide sets out what the role covers in UK businesses, how it differs from HR Director and CPO/CHRO roles, the employment law it has to work within (including the Employment Rights Act 2025 changes now coming into force), the responsibilities, experience and qualifications to specify, how to approach the package, and a sample job description you can adapt. If you are hiring into the wider People leadership team, our CHRO recruitment practice covers the senior end of the function.

The Director of Talent Role at UK Firms

The title is most common where people are the main driver of commercial performance and hiring volume or leadership depth is a constraint on growth. The emphasis of the role changes with the type of business, which is why a generic specification rarely produces a good shortlist.

Scaling businesses with high hiring volumes

After a Series B or C round, a business may need to double headcount while keeping the quality bar. The Director of Talent here is primarily a talent acquisition leader: building the recruiting team, choosing and running the applicant tracking system, setting hiring standards with line managers, improving candidate experience and reporting time-to-hire, cost-per-hire and quality-of-hire to the leadership team.

Technology and SaaS businesses

Engineering, product and data hiring is competitive and specialist. The role needs technical recruiting experience, an employer brand that engineers take seriously, and close work with reward on equity and pay benchmarking. Retention of scarce technical staff is often as important as hiring them.

Private equity-backed businesses

Under PE ownership, talent is tied to the value creation plan. The Director of Talent assesses the leadership team against the plan, fills gaps quickly, builds succession cover for critical roles before exit and reports on capability to the investor as well as the board. Some portfolio companies separate this role from HR operations so that someone is focused on leadership capability alone.

Professional services firms

In consulting, law and accountancy firms, the role centres on graduate intake, lateral hiring, promotion and partnership-track processes, and the development programmes that move people through grades. Fairness and consistency in promotion decisions carry real legal and reputational weight.

Leadership development, succession and workforce planning

Some businesses appoint a Director of Talent less for hiring and more for depth: leadership programmes, assessment and coaching, structured talent reviews, critical-role succession and internal mobility. Others need strategic workforce planning — modelling the skills and headcount a new operating model, transformation or regulatory change will require, and closing the gap through hiring, development or redeployment.

Financial services and other regulated firms

In banks, insurers, asset managers, payments firms and brokers, the talent function carries a compliance load on top of the usual hiring and development work. Senior hires may need regulatory approval, staff in certain roles must be assessed as fit and proper, and references have to be requested and given in a prescribed form. A Director of Talent in this setting needs to build those requirements into the hiring and promotion process rather than treat them as a separate compliance task run by someone else. The section on SMCR below sets out what that involves.

Multi-site, retail and service businesses

Where the business runs many sites or depends on frontline staff, the role is often weighted towards volume hiring, retention and the development of site and area managers. Attrition and time-to-fill matter, but so does building a pipeline of internal managers so that each new opening does not need an external hire. Workforce planning here is closely tied to trading patterns and to the cost of labour.

Signs a business needs a dedicated Director of Talent

The role usually becomes necessary when one or more of these is true: hiring volume has outgrown a single recruiter or the HR Director’s time; the leadership team has gaps that keep being filled by external hires because nobody internal is ready; regretted attrition is rising in a group the business depends on; or an investor or board has asked for a credible succession plan and there is no one to own it. If none of these applies, a strong Head of Talent Acquisition or an HR Director with talent experience may be enough.

Director of Talent vs HR Director vs CPO/CHRO — The Senior Distinctions

The three roles overlap, and in smaller businesses one person may cover all of them. The useful distinction is scope and level.

• Director of Talent — owns the talent lifecycle: attraction, selection, performance, development, succession and mobility. The role exists where the business has chosen to give talent its own senior leader rather than fold it into general HR.
• HR Director — leads the whole HR function in an SME or mid-market business, including payroll, employee relations, reward, policy and employment law compliance. Where there is no separate talent leader, the HR Director covers talent too. Our Human Resources Director job description sets out that broader role.
• Chief People Officer / Chief Human Resources Officer — the executive committee member accountable for people strategy, culture, organisation design and the board relationship on people matters, including remuneration committee support in listed companies. The Director of Talent often reports into this role. See the Chief People Officer job description for the C-suite specification.

Getting the level right matters before a search starts. A business that needs someone to set people strategy and sit on the executive committee is looking for a CPO, and should run a Chief People Officer search. A business that needs a hands-on leader to build hiring capability and leadership depth beneath an existing People executive is looking for a Director of Talent.

UK Regulatory Framework Intersection with Senior Talent Leadership

A Director of Talent is not usually the employment lawyer in the room, but most of the decisions the role owns — who is hired, how they are assessed, who is promoted and how probation works — carry legal risk. The specification should ask for working knowledge of the following.

Employment Rights Act 1996 and Employment Rights Act 2025

The 1996 Act remains the core statute for contracts, statutory rights and unfair dismissal. The Employment Rights Act 2025 amends it in phases, and several changes bear directly on talent work:

• Already in force from April 2026: statutory sick pay from the first day of absence, and day-one rights to paternity and unpaid parental leave. These affect offer letters, benefit statements and how the employer value proposition is described.
• From October 2026: the duty to prevent sexual harassment now requires employers to take all reasonable steps, and the time limit for most tribunal claims has been extended from three to six months. Recruitment events, interview panels and onboarding all fall within the harassment duty.
• From 1 January 2027: the unfair dismissal qualifying period falls from two years to six months, and the compensatory award cap is removed. This makes the first six months — selection quality, onboarding, probation reviews and documented performance conversations — far more important than before.
• Later in 2027: restrictions on fire and rehire, stronger flexible working rights and wider dismissal protection for pregnant employees and those returning from family leave are scheduled, with some dates already moved. A Director of Talent should track the timetable rather than rely on a fixed list.

Equality Act 2010

The Equality Act 2010 applies to every stage of recruitment, promotion and development: job adverts, selection criteria, assessment methods, reasonable adjustments for candidates and employees, and the limits of positive action. Talent reviews and promotion decisions need to be consistent and recorded, and any assessment tool — psychometrics, video interviewing or AI screening — should be checked for adverse impact on protected groups.

UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018

Candidate and employee data needs a lawful basis, clear privacy information, sensible retention periods and a process for subject access requests. The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 amends parts of this framework in stages, including the rules on automated decision-making, which matters to any business using automated screening or scoring in recruitment. The Director of Talent should know which tools in the stack make or support decisions about people and how those decisions can be reviewed by a human.

Right to work checks

Employers must carry out a right to work check before employment starts, using the Home Office online service for share codes or eVisas, or a manual document check where permitted. From 1 October 2026 the illegal working regime extends beyond employees to cover many casual, zero-hours, gig and other non-employee working arrangements, so businesses that engage contractors or platform workers need checks in place for those groups too. Where the business sponsors Skilled Worker visas, the talent function usually shares responsibility for sponsor licence compliance.

Agency relationships and off-payroll working

Most Directors of Talent manage a supplier list of search firms and agencies, so terms of business, fee structures and the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 are part of the job. The Recruitment & Employment Confederation’s Code of Professional Practice is a useful standard to hold suppliers to. Where the business engages contractors through their own companies, the off-payroll working rules (IR35) apply: medium and large end clients must assess status and issue a status determination statement.

Modern Slavery Act 2015

Commercial organisations with turnover of £36 million or more must publish an annual statement under section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. Where the business relies heavily on agency labour, contractors or overseas recruitment, the talent function often supplies the evidence on labour supply chains that goes into that statement.

SMCR, Certification and Fitness and Propriety in Regulated Firms

For businesses authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority or the Prudential Regulation Authority, the Senior Managers and Certification Regime adds a set of people processes that sit naturally with the talent function. The Director of Talent will rarely hold a senior manager function themselves, but they are often the person who makes sure the firm’s hiring, promotion and leaving processes meet the regime’s requirements. Our guide to the Certification Regime vs the Senior Managers Regime explains how the two parts fit together.

Where the talent function is involved

• Senior manager approvals. Hiring into a senior manager function means planning for the regulator’s approval process from the start: the application, the statement of responsibilities, criminal record checks and references. Offer letters and start dates need to reflect that approval is required before the person can perform the function.
• Certification and annual fitness and propriety assessments. Firms must assess staff in certification functions as fit and proper before appointment and at least once a year. The talent function usually designs the assessment, links it to the appraisal cycle and keeps the evidence.
• Regulatory references. When hiring into senior manager or certification roles, firms must request references from previous employers covering the past six years, and must provide references for people who leave. These need to be built into the recruitment timeline.
• Conduct rules training. Most staff are subject to the conduct rules, and new joiners need training that fits their role. Onboarding is the natural place for it.
• Directory updates. Changes to certified staff need to be reflected in the FCA Directory within the deadlines the FCA sets.

Recent and coming changes

The regime is being simplified in stages. The FCA’s first set of reforms took effect in April 2026, allowing digital certificates, letting recertification sit within the normal appraisal cycle and lighter reassessment where nothing material has changed, shortening the deadline for providing regulatory references and extending the validity of criminal record checks. HM Treasury has also confirmed that it intends to remove the Certification Regime from legislation when parliamentary time allows, with the regulators to put a more proportionate replacement in their own rules. Until that happens, the existing certification requirements still apply, and a Director of Talent in a regulated firm should plan for a further round of process changes rather than assume the current design will last.

What to put in the specification

For a regulated firm, add to the job description a working knowledge of SMCR, experience of running fitness and propriety assessments and regulatory references, and the ability to work with the compliance function on approval timetables. Candidates from regulated sectors will usually have this; strong candidates from outside financial services can learn it, but the business should allow for that in the first months.

Principal UK Director of Talent Responsibilities

The balance shifts by business, but most Director of Talent roles cover the following areas.

• Talent strategy. Turning the business plan into a people plan: which capabilities are needed, when, and whether to hire, develop or contract for them. Owning the talent budget and agreeing priorities with the CPO and executive team.
• Talent acquisition. Running the recruitment model — in-house team, agencies and search firms — with clear hiring standards, structured interviews and fair assessment. Choosing and running the applicant tracking system (Greenhouse, Workday Recruiting, SAP SuccessFactors and similar) and managing supplier relationships. Some businesses also bring in talent acquisition consultants to build or reset this capability.
• Talent management. Designing the performance and talent review cycle, identifying critical roles and high-potential people, running succession planning and internal mobility, and taking talent reviews to the executive team and board.
• Learning and leadership development. Leadership programmes, coaching, 360-degree feedback, management training and career frameworks, with a clear link between development spend and capability gaps.
• Workforce planning. Modelling future headcount and skills demand against supply, and agreeing with finance how the plan is funded.
• Talent analytics. Reporting on hiring (time-to-hire, cost-per-hire, source, offer acceptance, quality of hire), retention, internal mobility, promotion rates and diversity, in a form the board can act on.
• Employer brand and candidate experience. Working with marketing on the employer value proposition, careers content and review platforms, and making sure every candidate is treated well whether or not they are hired.
• Talent technology. Owning the ATS, learning platform and assessment tools, and their integration with the HR information system owned by HR operations.
• Team leadership. Leading talent acquisition managers, recruiters, sourcers, learning and development leads and people analytics staff, depending on scale.

What the role does not usually own

Being clear about the boundaries helps both the candidate and the existing HR team. A Director of Talent does not usually own payroll, employee relations casework, pay and benefits policy, HR operations or the HR information system, though they will work closely with whoever does. Reward is the most common grey area: the talent function needs a say in offer levels and retention awards, but the pay framework itself normally sits with reward or the HR Director. Write the boundary into the job description so that it does not have to be negotiated after the appointment.

Key Performance Indicators for a Talent Function

A Director of Talent should be measured on a small set of outcomes that the executive team cares about, not on every number the applicant tracking system can produce. The measures below are the ones most often used; pick five or six and agree the baseline before the person starts.

Hiring

• Time to hire and time to fill for priority roles, measured from approval to accepted offer and to start date.
• Offer acceptance rate, with reasons for declined offers recorded.
• Quality of hire, usually a combination of hiring manager rating and performance or retention at six and twelve months. With the unfair dismissal qualifying period falling to six months from January 2027, the twelve-month measure is worth tracking closely.
• Cost per hire and agency spend, showing how much hiring is done directly and how much through suppliers.
• Diversity of applicant pools and shortlists against the business’s own objectives.

Retention and development

• Regretted attrition in critical roles and high-potential groups, rather than overall staff turnover.
• Internal fill rate for management and senior roles, showing whether development is producing people who are ready to step up.
• Succession cover: the share of critical roles with at least one candidate ready now or within a year.
• Promotion and progression rates by group, checked for consistency.
• Engagement scores for the groups the talent strategy targets, where the business runs a survey.

Reporting

Report these quarterly to the executive team and at least annually to the board, with a short commentary on what has changed and what the talent function is doing about it. Businesses with 250 or more employees also publish gender pay gap data each year, and the talent function usually contributes the analysis of where in the hiring and promotion process gaps arise.

UK Director of Talent Required Experience and Qualifications

Experience

Strong candidates usually have a long talent career with a clear step up to Head of Talent, Head of Talent Acquisition or Head of Talent Management, ideally in a business of similar size and pace. Some come from executive search or talent consulting and have since moved in-house. Sector experience matters more than it does for many senior roles: a talent leader from a SaaS scale-up will understand engineering hiring and equity; one from a professional services firm will understand graduate schemes and partnership tracks; one from a PE portfolio company will understand leadership assessment against a value creation plan. Decide which of these the business needs most and say so in the specification.

Professional qualifications

The CIPD is the main UK professional body for people professionals. Its qualifications run from Level 3 to Level 7; the Level 5 Associate Diplomas (in People Management, or Organisational Learning and Development) suit managers, and the Level 7 Advanced Diplomas (in Strategic People Management, or Strategic Learning and Development) are the usual benchmark at director level. Membership grades rise to Chartered Member and Chartered Fellow, and many businesses specify Chartered Member status for this role. Treat CIPD as preferred rather than essential where a candidate’s track record is strong, particularly for acquisition-led roles where many good leaders came up through recruitment rather than HR.

Other useful credentials include the Recruitment & Employment Confederation’s recruitment qualifications for acquisition-led candidates, SHRM certification where there is a US parent, and accreditation in assessment tools such as Hogan or other psychometrics for leadership development roles. A degree in psychology, business or HR is common, and some candidates hold an MSc in occupational psychology or an MBA, but these are rarely decisive.

Personal qualities

The best talent leaders combine commercial credibility with line managers, comfort with data, and enough independence to tell the executive team when a hire or promotion is wrong. Look for evidence of measurable change: a hiring process rebuilt, a succession bench created, attrition reduced in a critical group.

Talent Leadership in PE-Backed, Scale-Up and Listed Firms

The same title covers quite different jobs depending on who owns the business. Being clear about which version you need is the single most useful thing a hiring business can do before a search starts.

PE-backed businesses

Under private equity ownership, the talent agenda follows the investment timetable. In the first months after a deal, the priority is usually assessing the management team against the value creation plan, replacing or adding to it where needed and putting incentives in place. In the middle of the hold period, the focus moves to building depth below the executive team so the business does not rely on a handful of people. Ahead of exit, buyers will look closely at management quality and succession, and the talent function has to be able to evidence both. Candidates who have been through a full hold period, including an exit, are particularly valuable. For portfolio hires more widely, see our portfolio company executive recruitment service.

Scale-ups

In a venture-backed or founder-led scale-up, the Director of Talent is often the first senior talent hire and may be building the function from very little. The work is practical: setting up the applicant tracking system, writing hiring standards, training managers to interview, building an employer brand and hiring at pace without lowering the bar. Founders often underestimate how much of this role is about changing management habits rather than running a recruitment process. Candidates need energy and a tolerance for ambiguity, and some will want to grow into a Chief People Officer role as the business matures. Our scale-up executive recruitment team works with businesses at this stage.

Listed companies

In a listed company, the role is more structured and more visible to the board. The nomination committee oversees succession for the board and senior management, and the Director of Talent typically prepares the succession material, supports executive appointments and runs leadership development for the senior population. Diversity disclosures in the annual report, gender pay gap reporting and investor interest in human capital all put more weight on accurate talent data. Candidates need to be comfortable presenting to committees and writing for a governance audience. Our listed company board construction guide gives more context on how boards approach composition and succession.

UK Director of Talent Compensation Calibration

Pay for this role varies widely with business size, sector, location and how much of the talent agenda the role owns, so we do not publish a single range here. The structure of the package is more predictable than the number:

• SMEs and mid-market businesses: base salary plus an annual bonus linked to company and hiring or retention objectives, with pension and standard benefits.
• Venture-backed technology businesses: base salary, a variable element and share options, with the option grant often the deciding factor for candidates.
• PE-backed businesses: base and bonus tied to the value creation plan, sometimes with participation in the management equity pool where the role is part of the senior team.
• Professional services firms: salary and bonus aligned to the firm’s director or senior manager grades, rather than to partner remuneration.

Benchmark against current offers rather than old surveys, and against the people the business actually wants to hire rather than the grade it would like to pay. Our salary guide for Human Resources Directors gives wider context on senior HR pay. The day-one sick pay and family leave changes in the Employment Rights Act 2025 also mean benefit statements written before April 2026 may need updating.

Sample UK Director of Talent Job Description Structure

Use the structure below as a starting point and cut anything that does not apply. A tight two-page specification attracts better candidates than a long list of every possible duty.

• Job title: Director of Talent (or Director of Talent Acquisition, Director of Talent Management or Director of Talent and Development, depending on emphasis).
• Reports to: [Chief People Officer / CHRO / HR Director / Chief Executive], with regular reporting to [executive committee / board / investor].
• Direct reports: [talent acquisition manager(s), recruiters, sourcers, learning and development lead, people analytics lead].
• Role purpose: To make sure [company] has the people and leadership capability its plan requires, by leading talent acquisition, talent management, development, succession and workforce planning.
• Key responsibilities: select the six to eight responsibilities from the section above that matter most, written as outcomes (for example, “build succession cover for every executive committee role within the first year”).
• Experience: the career background, sector exposure and scale the role needs, separating essential from desirable.
• Qualifications: CIPD Level 7 or Chartered Member status (essential or preferred), plus any specialist credentials.
• Knowledge: working knowledge of UK employment law relevant to recruitment and promotion, including the Employment Rights Act 2025 changes, the Equality Act 2010, UK GDPR and right to work checks.
• Package: base salary range, bonus, equity where relevant, pension and benefits, location and hybrid working pattern.
• Process: how to apply, interview stages, any assessment or presentation, and referencing.

Full Sample Director of Talent Job Description and Person Specification

The example below is written for a mid-sized, growing business with an existing Chief People Officer. Adjust the emphasis, reporting line and requirements to fit your business, and remove anything that does not apply.

Job description

Job title: Director of Talent

Reports to: Chief People Officer, with quarterly reporting to the executive committee and an annual talent review with the board.

Direct reports: Head of Talent Acquisition, Learning and Development Manager, People Analytics Lead.

Location: [office location], hybrid working with [number] days a week in the office.

Role purpose: To make sure the business can hire, develop and keep the people its plan depends on, by leading talent acquisition, talent management, leadership development, succession and workforce planning.

Key responsibilities:

• Agree an annual talent plan with the Chief People Officer and executive team, linked to the business plan and budget.
• Lead the talent acquisition team and supplier list, set hiring standards and structured interview practice, and report on hiring performance.
• Run the annual talent review and succession planning cycle for the senior population and critical roles.
• Design and deliver leadership and management development programmes, with clear measures of impact.
• Build a workforce plan with finance that sets out headcount and skills needs for the next two to three years.
• Own talent technology, including the applicant tracking system and learning platform, and their link to the HR information system.
• Make sure recruitment, promotion and assessment processes comply with employment law, equality obligations and data protection rules, working with HR and legal.
• Produce clear talent reporting for the executive committee and board.

Person specification

Essential:

• Senior talent leadership experience, with a record of measurable improvement in hiring, retention or succession.
• Experience of leading a team that includes recruiters and at least one of learning and development or people analytics.
• Working knowledge of UK employment law as it affects hiring and promotion, including the Employment Rights Act 2025 changes, the Equality Act 2010, UK GDPR and right to work checks.
• Comfort with data and the ability to turn it into decisions the executive team will act on.
• Credibility with senior line managers and the confidence to challenge a hiring or promotion decision.

Desirable:

• CIPD Level 7 or Chartered Member status.
• Experience in [sector] or in a business of similar size and growth rate.
• Experience of [PE ownership / a listed environment / SMCR], where relevant.
• Accreditation in psychometric or leadership assessment tools.

Package: base salary, annual bonus, [share options / equity participation], pension, private medical cover and [other benefits].

Process: first interview with the Chief People Officer, a case presentation to a panel including a member of the executive team, a meeting with the Chief Executive, and references.

Interview and Assessment Questions for a Director of Talent

Structured interviews with consistent questions give a fairer and more reliable comparison between candidates. The questions below are grouped by the areas most worth testing; use follow-up questions to get to specific examples and numbers. Our executive assessment guide covers wider assessment methods for senior hires.

Strategy and commercial judgement

• Tell us about a talent plan you built from a business plan. What did you prioritise, and what did you decide not to do?
• How would you decide whether to hire, develop or contract for a capability the business needs within a year?
• Which talent measures would you report to our board, and why those?

Talent acquisition

• Describe a hiring process you rebuilt. What was wrong with it, what did you change and what happened to the results?
• How do you get line managers to follow structured interview practice when they would rather trust their instinct?
• How do you decide which roles go to search firms, which to agencies and which stay in-house?

Talent management and succession

• Walk us through a talent review you ran. How did you make sure the ratings were consistent and fair?
• Tell us about a succession plan that was tested by a real departure. Did it work?
• How do you handle a high performer whom the business values but who is not ready for the promotion they want?

Compliance and risk

• How would the shorter unfair dismissal qualifying period change the way you run onboarding and probation?
• What checks would you make before introducing an AI screening tool into recruitment?
• [For regulated firms] How have you built fitness and propriety assessments and regulatory references into the hiring process?

Leadership

• How have you developed a member of your team into a role at your own level or above?
• Tell us about a time you told a senior leader they were making the wrong hiring or promotion decision.

Case exercise

A short case is often the most revealing part of the process. Give shortlisted candidates anonymised information about current hiring, attrition and succession, and ask them to present their priorities for the first year. Look for whether they ask good questions about the data, whether their priorities follow from the business plan, and whether they are realistic about what can be done in twelve months.

The First 90 Days for a New Director of Talent

A clear plan for the first three months helps the new hire make an early impact and gives the business a basis for its first review. Agree it during the offer stage and revisit it at the end of the first month. Our executive onboarding guide covers the wider principles.

Days 1 to 30: listen and assess

• Meet each executive committee member and the main hiring managers to understand their priorities and frustrations.
• Review current hiring data, supplier spend, attrition, engagement results and any existing succession plans.
• Assess the talent team: skills, workload, gaps and quick wins.
• Check that recruitment and onboarding processes reflect the Employment Rights Act 2025 changes already in force and those due in January 2027.

Days 31 to 60: set priorities

• Present a short diagnosis to the Chief People Officer and executive team: what is working, what is not and what matters most.
• Agree five or six measures and their baselines.
• Fix one or two visible problems, such as a slow approval process or a supplier list that has grown without control.
• Start planning the next talent review and succession cycle.

Days 61 to 90: deliver and plan

• Put a revised hiring standard or interview framework in place for priority roles.
• Agree the talent plan and budget for the rest of the year.
• Review probation and onboarding for new joiners so that the first six months of employment are properly managed and documented.
• Report progress against the agreed measures and confirm the plan for the next quarter.

From Director of Talent Job Description to Senior Search

The job description does three jobs: it tells candidates what the role is, it aligns the executive team on what they are hiring for, and it gives a search firm a brief it can be measured against. Most failed talent leadership hires trace back to an unclear brief — a business that wanted a strategic People executive but specified a hands-on recruiter, or the reverse.

Before going to market, agree three things internally: whether the role is acquisition-led, management-led, development-led or balanced; where it sits against the HR Director and CPO; and which sector background matters most. If the honest answer is that you need someone to run the whole HR function, an HR Director search may be the better route.

Exec Capital runs retained searches for talent and People leaders across scale-ups, PE-backed businesses, technology firms and professional services. Every search starts with a structured brief covering scope, level, sector and package, and candidates are assessed against that brief rather than a job title. For the most senior People hires, see our Chief Human Resources Officer recruitment service.

Frequently asked questions

What does a Director of Talent do?

They lead how a business attracts, assesses, develops and retains its people, covering talent acquisition, performance and talent reviews, leadership development, succession and workforce planning, supported by talent data.

Who does a Director of Talent report to?

Usually the Chief People Officer, CHRO or HR Director. In founder-led scale-ups without a People executive, the role may report to the Chief Executive or Managing Director.

Is a Director of Talent the same as a Head of Talent Acquisition?

No. A Head of Talent Acquisition focuses on recruitment. A Director of Talent normally also owns talent management, development and succession, and often manages the Head of Talent Acquisition.

Does a Director of Talent need a CIPD qualification?

It is common and often preferred, with CIPD Level 7 or Chartered Member status the usual benchmark. Many strong acquisition-led candidates built their careers without it, so treat it as preferred unless the role is HR-heavy.

How does the Employment Rights Act 2025 affect the role?

Most directly through the shorter unfair dismissal qualifying period from 1 January 2027, which puts more weight on selection, onboarding and probation, and through the stronger harassment prevention duty, day-one family and sick pay rights and the flexible working changes still to come.