Talent Lead (Maternity Cover)
dnata
Who are we?
Dnata is one of the world’s largest air and travel services providers. We provide a comprehensive range of inflight catering, onboard retail, supply chain and logistics services at all major and regional airports across the UK. Dnata Catering provide expertly crafted inflight catering services, delivering fresh and high-quality meals at major and regional airports across the UK. As the leading Halal caterer in the UK, we also provide tailored experiences to meet each customer’s unique needs. We’re a leader in VIP catering, offering bespoke inflight to private and charter clients.
The Role
We are looking for a Talent Lead (Maternity Cover) to lead recruitment activity across dnata Catering UK, ensuring we attract, recruit, and retain the talent needed to support operational excellence and future business growth.
This role combines strategic talent management with hands-on recruitment leadership. You will be responsible for delivering salaried and permanent recruitment across Head Office and specialist functions, while leading the Hourly Recruitment Team to ensure frontline and operational recruitment needs are met across the business.
Working closely with operational leaders, hiring managers, HR colleagues, and external recruitment partners, you will develop talent pipelines, support workforce planning and succession initiatives, strengthen our employer brand, and ensure recruitment processes are efficient, compliant, and aligned to business priorities.
This is a maternity cover position and represents an excellent opportunity for an experienced recruitment or talent professional to make a significant impact across a dynamic, fast-paced national business.
Key Responsibilities
Recruitment Leadership
- Lead the end-to-end recruitment process for salaried, permanent, and specialist vacancies across Head Office and support functions.
- Manage, coach, and develop the Hourly Recruitment Team, ensuring operational recruitment requirements are delivered effectively across all UK locations.
- Partner with hiring managers to define recruitment strategies, role requirements, and hiring plans.
- Ensure an excellent candidate experience throughout the recruitment lifecycle.
- Support managers in making consistent and effective hiring decisions.
- Manage relationships with recruitment agencies and external suppliers.
- Monitor supplier performance, recruitment costs, service levels, and candidate quality.
- Identify opportunities to increase direct hiring and reduce agency spend.
- Manage relationships and spend with advertising providers.
- Partner with business leaders to identify current and future workforce requirements.
- Develop and maintain talent pipelines for critical and hard-to-fill roles.
- Support succession planning and internal mobility initiatives across the business.
- Identify opportunities to attract, develop, and retain key talent.
- Contribute to workforce planning activities that support business growth and operational performance.
Recruitment Technology & Reporting
- Oversee the effective use of recruitment systems, including the ATS platform.
- Monitor recruitment metrics, including time-to-hire, quality-of-hire, agency spend, and vacancy fulfilment.
- Produce recruitment and talent insights to support business decision-making.
- Drive continuous improvement through effective use of recruitment data and technology.
- Act as a trusted advisor to operational leaders, hiring managers, and HR colleagues on recruitment and talent matters.
- Promote dnata Catering UK as an employer of choice through proactive attraction strategies and talent initiatives.
- Build relationships with external organisations, educational institutions, and industry networks to strengthen future talent pipelines.
- Identify opportunities to improve recruitment processes, talent attraction strategies, and workforce planning activities.
- Champion best practice across recruitment, talent management, and candidate experience.
- Support diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives across all hiring activity.
Skills, Knowledge and Expertise
Experience
- Significant experience in recruitment, talent acquisition, or talent management within a multi-site or operational environment.
- Proven experience managing end-to-end recruitment across professional, specialist, and operational roles.
- Experience of market mapping.
- Experience leading or managing a recruitment team.
- Experience developing talent pipelines, workforce planning initiatives, or succession plans.
- Experience managing recruitment agencies and external suppliers.
- Experience within a similar industry, high volumes and seasonal hiring.
- Experience in working within a highly regulated business with high security vetting and compliance checks.
- Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills.
- Ability to operate strategically while remaining hands-on and delivery-focused.
- Strong leadership, coaching, and people management capability.
- Commercial awareness and experience managing recruitment budgets or agency spend.
- Strong analytical skills with the ability to use data to drive decisions and improvements.
- Excellent communication and relationship-building skills.
- Experience using Applicant Tracking Systems and recruitment technologies. Pinpoint knowledge is desired.
- Ability to analyse recruitment and workforce data to improve hiring outcomes.
- Experience with Pinpoint ATS or a similar platform would be advantageous.
- Proactive and solutions-focused.
- Collaborative, resilient, and adaptable.
- Customer-focused with a strong service mindset.
- Passionate about attracting, developing, and retaining talent.
- Comfortable operating in a fast-paced, evolving environment.
Benefits
What's in it for you?
- An opportunity to be part of the Emirates global family.
- Free breakfast, lunch and dinner on site
- Free tea and coffee
- Simply health Plan
- Refer a Friend Scheme
- Discounted gym membership at over 2000 gyms nationwide
- Cycle to Work Scheme
- Opportunity to enhance your learning through our inhouse apprenticeship programme
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