Location: London
Job Type: Full-time on site
Salary: 35000 - 45000 share options
About the role
If youve made it this far either the job title or Zen has caught your eye. I cant wait to tell you more about Zen but lets focus on the role first. Im looking for a new Talent Partner to join me. (Hi! Im Sandy People Lead at Zen )
Yes Im looking for the classic fast-moving high-volume delivery-focused recruiter and I genuinely mean it. Were scaling quickly partnering closely with every member of our senior leadership team and often hiring up to 30 roles at once. Pace matters. But this role goes beyond filling roles. Im looking for someone who brings urgency has solid experience in volume hiring and is excited to partner with senior leaders on more strategic business-critical roles too. Youll need to love the full talent lifecycle from early screening and references right through to offer calls closing cohorts and everything in between.
This isnt a heads down deliver role. Youll be spotting patterns challenging assumptions and feeding insights back into the business to influence how we hire who we bring in and how we continue to scale smarter over time.
About Zen
Zen Educate is a technology company that matches schools with temporary educator staff. Our mission is to change the world of education recruitment. Schools spend over $9bn a year on temporary educators with over $2bn per year of that spent on fees that take money out of the education system. By leveraging the latest technology we purpose built a platform that helps schools to pay less while educators earn more.
We want students to have access to the best education possible and we go the extra mile to find onboard match and coach incredible educators that deeply care about their students. We wake up every day on a mission to care more. We care more about our schools. And we care more about our educators.
This is your chance to make a difference and join a high growth tech startup on the ground floor. We are a collaborative company and the career growth opportunities are endless if you are someone willing to dive in be entrepreneurial and do whatever is needed to get the job done. We are passionate about learning and development and will invest in both your personal and professional growth.
We have recently raised our Series B funding of $37mil the largest round in European EdTech last year. This is an exciting opportunity to make a difference and be part of a high growth start-up that is expanding rapidly in the UK and US markets!
What the People team achieved last year
Were a small team that moves 2025 we successfully:
- Made 195 new hires and of course onboarded them
- Conducted and coordinated 1518 interviews
- Revamped our handbooks policies and processes to ensure 100% company compliance
- Delivered countless training sessions across People Operations and Talent upskilling leaders on how to interview offer reference and manage their people
- Developed our People Drumbeat with a regular cadence of employee engagement surveys and performance reviews across all of our regions
- Managed countless daily moments across onboarding offboarding documentation engagement and general team support
This is the momentum youll step into and help drive forward.
Who youll be working with
Youll report directly to Sandy Vo (thats me!) People Lead at Zen. My background is in agency recruitment across all types of hiring: volume permanent contractors as well as strategic exec level hiring. I now manage the Talent function at Zen as well as all of our HR and People Operations and I cant wait to coach you in everything I know. Were a small collaborative People team UK based but globally minded and were ready to support you as you grow and own your work.
What youll own
- You will run and own the Talent function at Zen utilising all the resources we have to ensure we continue to recruitment lifecycle for our UK and South Africa roles from job description to offer stage.
- Cohort and high volume hiring especially for educator / school facing and internal roles that grow in waves.
- Stakeholder partnership aligning with hiring managers and senior leadership to ensure fast focused hiring that is constantly evolving to your market insights.
- Proactively source network and maintain strong candidate pools.
- Act as the key communicator for candidates being responsive clear and empathetic at every stage.
- Own and actively manage our Glassdoor presence ensuring it accurately reflects the candidate and employee experience at Zen.
- Process improvement identifying gaps flag inefficiencies and suggest better ways of doing things.
Why youll love this role
Youll make an impact from day one helping us build and deliver an outstanding candidate and employee experience in the UK. On top of this youll be shaping the type of people we hire at Zen and ultimately the culture of our business as we work closely with Sandy who is committed to upskilling and empowering you. This is a high trust team and we love seeing people stretch and own new areas. Youll be doing work that matters supporting our mission to help schools and educators thrive while shaping the Talent function at a company thats scaling fast.
What Were Looking For
If the above reads a bit vague heres a breakdown of what Im looking for:
- Youve worked in fast-moving high-volume environments managing multiple roles simultaneously without compromising quality. Experience in agency recruitment is a plus but not essential.
- Youve partnered with senior leaders providing market insights spotting hiring patterns challenging assumptions and influencing hiring decisions.
- You love managing the full talent lifecycle from crafting job descriptions sourcing and interviewing to offer negotiation. You take ownership of your pipeline and see every stage through.
- You have experience using tools such as LinkedIn Recruiter to proactively source maintain candidate pools and build talent pipelines for current and future needs. You know how to attract top talent and engage them in a way that reflects the companys culture and values.
- You track recruitment metrics analyse patterns and provide actionable insights to improve hiring efficiency and candidate quality over time.
The interview process
Initial Screen (30 mins): With me! Ill be delving deeper into your experience and why youre interested in this role.
Meet the Team interview (1 hour): Opportunity to meet the People team. We work closely together and cover each other during busy periods. Theyll be asking you how you work - your approach priorities and ways you collaborate. At the same time this is your opportunity to learn more about them ask questions and gain insight into how we operate. Think of it as a two-way conversation where you are interviewing us just as much as we are getting to know you.
Meet the Hiring Managers (1 hour): Youll meet two of our key hiring managers where they will interview you for skillset and stakeholder management.
If you feel that there arent enough stages to give you insight into who we are were also happy to organise any additional conversations you think may be beneficial. And if youre curious about the role but still have questions before you put in an application Im happy for you to contact me directly here: emailprotected