Talent Development Specialist

Talent & Capability Specialist

Location: Swindon

Salary: c£(phone number removed) + benefits

Working pattern: Hybrid – 3 days office / 2 days home

The Opportunity

We are partnering with a successful, growing international business to recruit a Talent & Capability Specialist for a newly created 12-month fixed-term contract.

This is not a traditional Learning & Development role.

It is an opportunity to take ownership of a genuinely business-critical piece of work: understanding the skills the organisation has today, identifying the capabilities it will need tomorrow, and building the frameworks, systems and development pathways that connect the two.

The business is growing at pace, both organically and through acquisition, and has an established workforce with considerable technical knowledge and long service. Its next challenge is to ensure that knowledge and capability is understood, developed and translated into clear opportunities for people to grow with the organisation.

You will be joining at an ideal point to influence that journey.

Alongside the implementation of a new HR system, you will have the opportunity to build a business-wide skills and capability framework, establish meaningful career pathways and create a much clearer connection between roles, skills, learning, performance, talent and future workforce requirements.

The hiring manager's ambition is clear: within the first 12 months, the organisation needs a defined skills taxonomy and career/behavioural framework that gives employees and managers a common language around what good looks like and how people develop towards it.

What You'll Be Doing

You will take ownership of the organisation's evolving skills and capability agenda, working closely with leaders, managers, employees and subject-matter experts to understand both current and future requirements.

Your remit will include:

• Developing and embedding a consistent skills and capability framework across the business.
• Creating a clear skills taxonomy and common language across different functions, roles and levels.
• Mapping existing organisational capability and identifying critical or emerging skills gaps.
• Building clear career and development pathways that help employees understand how they can progress.
• Connecting role requirements, skills, learning and workplace application rather than treating development as a series of standalone training interventions.
• Supporting the implementation of the skills, development and performance elements of a new HRIS.
• Establishing effective skills and learning architecture within the system.
• Using people and capability data to provide meaningful insight to leaders.
• Creating practical tools and guidance that enable managers to have better development conversations.
• Supporting capability development across areas including leadership, communication, collaboration and strategic thinking.
• Partnering with internal subject-matter experts and external providers to develop appropriate learning solutions.
• Measuring whether learning is actually translating into improved workplace capability and performance.
• Contributing to the wider talent agenda, including succession, career development, performance and workforce planning.

Ultimately, you will help create an environment where employees can understand where they are today, what they need to develop and where their skills could take them next.

The organisation specifically wants career pathways that reflect the individual as well as the hierarchy – enabling people to build careers through different skills and experiences rather than assuming progression always means moving vertically into management.

The Environment

This is a relatively lean, agile organisation rather than a heavily layered corporate environment.

That distinction matters.

There won't be multiple committees and approval layers sitting between you and implementation. You will be trusted to develop a point of view, engage the right stakeholders and get things delivered.

The organisation therefore needs somebody comfortable with pace, accountability and visibility, someone who can take a broad brief and think, "This is mine; I'm going to make it happen."

At the same time, this isn't about arriving with an off-the-shelf corporate framework and imposing it on the business.

The organisation has a positive culture, relatively low employee turnover and considerable technical knowledge amongst its workforce, including individuals with exceptionally long service. The challenge is to capture that knowledge, connect it more effectively and give people greater structure and support around how they continue to develop.

What We're Looking For

We are open-minded about your industry background.

You could currently be working within Talent, Organisational Development, Learning & Development, People Development or Organisational Capability.

More important is evidence that you have worked beyond traditional training delivery and understand how skills, capability, systems and talent connect.

We would particularly like to see:

• Experience developing, implementing or contributing significantly to a skills, competency or capability framework.
• Strong understanding of skills mapping and organisational capability.
• Experience creating learning and/or career development pathways.
• Exposure to an HRIS implementation or significant HR system enhancement.
• Confidence working with people data and translating it into meaningful insight.
• Experience partnering with leaders and subject-matter experts to understand capability requirements.
• An understanding of talent, succession, career development or workforce planning.
• Strong project management capability.
• Excellent stakeholder engagement and influencing skills.
• A practical, commercially minded approach to People development.

Experience creating a skills taxonomy or skills-based architecture would be particularly valuable, as would experience configuring or implementing skills/capability functionality within an HR system.

You do not need experience within this organisation's particular industry. The hiring manager is deliberately open on sector; the ability to get underneath a business, understand its people and translate organisational requirements into meaningful skills and capability interventions is much more important.

The Person

This opportunity will particularly suit somebody who is:

Curious – you enjoy getting underneath how an organisation really works and discovering capability that may not currently be visible.

Commercial – you understand that capability development needs to improve business performance rather than simply increase training participation.

Analytical – comfortable working with skills data, identifying gaps and turning information into meaningful recommendations.

Engaging – able to take concepts such as skills architecture and capability frameworks and make them relevant and accessible to managers and employees.

Pragmatic – capable of creating frameworks that work in the real world rather than becoming overly theoretical.

Self-directed – comfortable taking genuine ownership without needing a large corporate infrastructure around you.

Driven – excited by the opportunity to build something, demonstrate its value and see tangible results within 12 months.

Why Join?

This is a particularly attractive opportunity for somebody who enjoys building rather than inheriting.

You won't simply be administering an established L&D calendar or maintaining somebody else's capability framework.

You will have the opportunity to shape the architecture from the ground up and see it embedded within a new HR system, influencing how the organisation approaches development, career pathways, leadership capability, talent, succession and future workforce planning.

The business is also entering a significant period of growth. Its ambition is approximately 18% year-on-year growth, with both organic expansion and acquisitions expected to contribute. That means the capability agenda will continue to evolve as new skills, roles and businesses enter the organisation.

For somebody passionate about talent and capability who wants the autonomy to create something tangible rather than simply maintain what already exists, this is a rare opportunity to make a highly visible impact.

To apply please email your CV