About the Role\n\nThe Head of Recruitment provides strategic and operational leadership for recruitment across WWF International. The role is accountable for designing, leading and continually strengthening a global, inclusive, and future-focused recruitment strategy, ensuring the organisation attracts, selects and appoints talent aligned to WWF’s mission, values, diversity goals and long-term workforce needs.\n\nOperating with a high level of autonomy, judgement and influence, the role partners closely with senior leaders, P&C colleagues and external partners to ensure recruitment enables organisational effectiveness, equity, and sustainability.\n\n### Key Responsibilities\n\n#### Strategic Leadership & Governance\n* Define and lead WWF International’s global recruitment strategy, ensuring alignment with organisational strategy, workforce planning, DEI priorities and budgetary considerations.\n* Act as the senior expert and thought partner on recruitment matters, advising Executive Leadership, Directors and senior stakeholders on complex hiring decisions, workforce risks and talent market dynamics.\n* Establish, oversee and continuously improve recruitment policies, standards, governance frameworks and decision-making processes across the Network.\n* Ensure recruitment practices are ethical, transparent, bias-aware and compliant with WWF policies and relevant employment legislation.\n\n#### Operational Oversight & Delivery\n* Oversee and ensure the quality assurance end-to-end recruitment for roles across all levels, including senior leadership and executive appointments, in collaboration with the recruitment team and wider P&C colleagues & stakeholders.\n* Develop an interview training programme for all hiring managers and coach them in recruiting techniques and best practices – i.e. LinkedIn profiles building, candidate pipeline building, talent spotting, interviewing and assessments. Provide escalation support and direct leadership on high-risk, high-impact or highly complex recruitments, including executive searches, critical roles and sensitive appointments.\n* Manage relationships with executive search firms and strategic recruitment vendors, ensuring value for money and quality delivery.\n* Partner with Finance and senior leaders to ensure recruitment decisions reflect sound cost management, organisational design considerations and long-term workforce sustainability.\n\n#### People Leadership\n* Lead, develop and coach the recruitment team, fostering a high-performing, service-oriented and values-driven function.\n* Build capability within the team around inclusive hiring practices, stakeholder management, data-driven decision making and strategic workforce thinking.\n* Set clear priorities, performance expectations and development pathways for direct reports.\n* Own all hiring processes - setting high standards within the team for speed and quality hiring of talent and work with internal P&C colleagues and stakeholders in delivering a seamless onboarding process for all joiners regardless of location.\n\n#### Diversity, Equity & Inclusion\n* Champion gender equity, diversity and inclusion throughout all recruitment processes, ensuring diverse candidate pipelines, panels and decision-making.\n* Monitor, analyse and report on recruitment-related diversity data and KPIs, identifying risks and driving continuous improvement.\n* Act as a credible challenger to leaders when bias, risk or misalignment with WWF values is observed.\n\n#### Stakeholder Partnership & Advisory\n* Partner closely with senior leaders, Hiring Managers, Network P&C teams and P&C Department to align recruitment with organisational needs.\n* Partner with the broader P&C community and stakeholders to create diverse candidate pools, launch innovative initiatives to attract and retain talent, and run recruitment campaigns that boost candidate engagement.\n* Represent Recruitment as a strategic function within wider People & Culture and organisational initiatives.\n\n#### Systems, Data & Continuous Improvement\n* Oversee Canopy recruitment module, guiding the development and enhancement of recruitment systems, processes, and workflows to improve the experience for both candidates and hiring managers, via (HRIS Canopy, ATS, and LinkedIn modules).\n* Analyse recruitment metrics and use market insights, data, and analysis to improve WWF International's recruitment process. Use labour market data to guide strategy, spot trends, and address talent gaps proactively.\n* Drive innovation and continuous improvement in candidate experience, employer branding, onboarding and recruitment effectiveness.\n* Contribute to broader People & Culture projects and initiatives as required.
