<aside> 👉🏻 Hands-on People and Talent leader specialising in hiring diverse talent internationally. Expert in creating sustainable people strategies and processes to fit strategic and commercial goals. Proven success in leading and coaching highly effective teams and teaching interviewing best practices. Over the last few years specialising in creating a great and authentic and performant company culture and identity in a remote/hybrid environment.

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Experience

05/2023 - Present → People Lead

Focaldata - London, UK (Market Research AI start-up)

Joined the business to create the People function from scratch and improve performance, retention and hiring quality. Reported to the COO.
Created an interview process that raised the hiring bar and increased the probation passing rate from 50% to 80% while maintaining a great positive experience with offer acceptance rate of 89%.
Established policy and process around key People functions like performance management, culture championing, continuous feedback etc.
Implemented an interim ATS and an HRS (CharlieHR and Teamtailor) with a permanent move to Rippling.
Scaled the team sustainably from <20 to over 50.
Hired Senior and AI/ML Engineers as well as PhD candidates in technical and research roles.
Managed all benefits and payroll, including the rollout and management of a private health insurance plan.
Worked with the CEO and COO on how to propagate a culture of innovation and candour with existing and new employees, maintaining our company identity.
Advised CEO and all senior leadership in all employment matters including performance-related dismissals, employee and candidates negotiations etc.
Created all processes and policies for a well-functioning People function including performance management, benefits, payroll, promotions, talent planning and employee relations.
Implemented an ATS and a careers page as well as an HRS.
In the interim managed the company’s finance operations - AP, AR, P&L reporting and board reporting during a time of 2-3x revenue growth month-on-month.

11/2021 - 10/2022→ Head of People & Talent

Hofy - Remote (remote workforce equipping start-up) reason for leaving - role was made redundant

Created the People and Talent functions from scratch to sustainably scale up the organisation. Brought the company to 110+ people from less than 30. Reported to the CEO
- Talent
Onboarded an embedded external team to start with. Subsequently offboarded them and hired an internal global team of 4 to cover the next phase of growth. Personally covered the Tech and Product hiring in the interim.
Overhauled the interview and assessment process, training and content so that we get interviews for insight rather than just process.
Leading employer marketing through an employer branding roadmap with content and events scheduled.
Designed the talent planning, development and succession policy and process.
Created a starter DEI strategy which boosted the number of female employees to 39% from less than 20%.
Launched the US market - both in-office and fully remote fully compliant with the labour laws of 12 states including New York and California.
- People and People Ops
Worked with the founders to distil the mission and values to create an EVP and subsequent branding earning us the first awards for “Tempo Best Startups”, “Flexa Industry Award” and “Quartz Best Companies for Remote Workers”.
Created a new seamless flow between candidate experience, onboarding, employee experience and offboarding covering the entire employee lifecycle.
Launched a new HRS and ATS (Bob and Greenhouse respectively) to better control the growth using data-driven decisions.
Created mechanisms and onboarded tools for compensation benchmarking.
Created performance management tools and frameworks for 1:1s, annual reviews and mid-year check ins to improve our oversight of performance, recognise high achievers and timely offboarding of underperformers.
Created an internal levelling matrix to provide career paths and development opportunities for each team.
Coached functional leaders on both Talent and People-related matters including things like raising the talent bar, maintaining team cohesion and performance, org structure and succession planning as well as offboarding.
Created three pillars of L&D strategy - leadership, business skills and technical the former two of which is to be led by the People and Talent Team.
Worked with Legal and Finance on funding round due diligence report, GDPR requirements and other projects.
Secured a visa sponsorship license for the company.
Made sure that the People and Talent team’s operations are in line with SOC2 and ISO27001 requirements in prep for the company pursuing those certificates.

05/2021 - 11/2021 → Head of Talent

Aula - Remote (EdTech Start-up) reason for leaving - company dissolved

Was brought on to create a total Talent function, to turn things around and make the growth more sustainable at this remote-first start-up. Despite the short tenure, I realised many improvements to the People and Talent processes.
Rolled out a Recruiting-As-A-Product framework.
Implemented talent planning and a clear 5-week hiring plan from opening to offer, reducing TTH to less than 40 days.
Diversified the sourcing strategy with communities, content and personalised outreach.
Overhauled the assessment process for both tech and non-tech roles challenging notions and ensuring they are fit for the roles and not just assessments for the sake of it.
Implemented a more effective interview process and style that was able to effectively screen people in or out more predictably across the pipeline.
Advised on People and People Operations initiatives in the absence of an HR Generalist, including things like:
- Better cross-team collaboration initiatives
- Culture-building exercises in a remote environment
- Employee experience improvement and tenure recognition
Launched an EVP exercise to re-evaluate the culture, way of working and the way that is communicated to the world.
Created a Discord community for Aula to bring a fully distributed remote team closer together.

10/2019 - 04/2021 → EMEA Recruiting Lead

Twitch - London (global live-streaming service) reason for leaving - headhunted

Led the EMEA Recruitment team of three, owning the strategy and prioritisation for the function, during a period of record hyper-growth. The team and I recruited for tech and non-tech roles. Led APAC recruitment in the interim.
Launched 3 new markets – Italy, Spain and Poland for Twitch.
Re-worked the global interviewing process to better fit the scale-up in the EMEA region, reviewing both interview content and stages.
Rolled out a consultative approach to recruiting for the region as it grows to support newer hiring managers.
Set up a workgroup with Twitch and Amazon HR and comp to work on projects including:
- Compensation benchmarking
- Implementation of new roles as part of talent planning
- Talent management, mapping and planning
- Diversity and inclusion training
Advised on changes in standard contracts with our Amazon counterparts.
Wrote up and recorded training sessions on international recruiting for US-based colleagues – focus on GDPR.
Reduced agency usage from 50% to zero.
Reduced TTH by 25% over 2020 by overhauling the way we batch and present candidates.
Hired all of 2020 headcount by end of Jun 2020
Improved conversion ratio from 20 RPS per placement to 12.

08/2018 - 10/2019 → Global Talent Acquisition Specialist

Worldpay - London (global Fintech company) reason for leaving - Twitch

Hands-on leadership of recruitment teams for Developers within the tech team and the strategy eCommerce division for roles across the US, EMEA and APAC.
Stakeholder management – from mid-management to SLT.
Overhauled the working relationship between hiring management and recruitment
Decreased TTH by 5% in 2018, with of another 10% for 2019.
Sourcing and screening candidates from ad response and active headhunting, via various platforms including GitHub, Hired.com and HackerRank.
Managing interviews, testing and closing offers.
Consulted on the creation of a standard basic interview process for the eCommerce division as well as potential scope for modifications per role and function.
Advised on general talent attraction strategies across all divisions.
Management of external partners (platforms and agencies).
Coached interview techniques to new line managers to fit the Worldpay style of interview and in line with Worldpay values.
Worked with HR in creating internal Talent Pools and succession lines.
Created an external Talent Pool for the divisions I oversee.
Collaborate with Pay and Reward to advise on the current state of the market and whether our pay scale reflects reality.
Talent Acquisitions and the eCommerce division, decreasing external agency usage from 60% to zero.
More Experience