Recruit the people who change children's lives
At London Early Years Foundation (LEYF), we're proud to be London's best-rated nursery group. As a social enterprise, we're on a mission to give every child the best start in life – and that starts with the people we hire.
This isn't just a recruiter role. It's for someone who has led recruitment teams, built inclusive hiring processes, made robust decisions, and knows how to drive operational excellence. Whether it's developing our high-performing team, coaching and upskilling interviewers, or delivering your own hires for our central office – this role is about making sure our recruitment runs brilliantly, every day.
As our Senior Recruitment Manager, you'll lead the operational delivery of recruitment – hiring around 400 roles a year across our 40+ nurseries and central office. You will have day to day people management responsibilities for a capable team of recruiters, build strong relationships, be regarded as a credible partner across the organisation, and make sure our hiring is timely, inclusive and high quality.
You'll bring deep experience across attraction, selection and onboarding – and know how to build processes that work. You'll be confident leading ED&I-focused recruitment projects, and bring ideas, energy and ownership to everything you do.
You understand that great recruitment doesn't stop at offer – and will focus on hiring people who stay and thrive.
In a sector where there's a national shortage of qualified early years educators, every high-quality hire counts. The people we recruit (for nursery and central office) directly impact how many children we can care for and educate – and how well we deliver on our mission to give every child the best start in life.
This is a brilliant opportunity to shape how we recruit – from helping roll out a new selection framework, building ED&I measurement, reporting and measuring recruitment metrics, to delivering interviewer training that raises the bar across our nurseries and teams.
Examples of what you'll be doing
* Lead and support a team of capable recruiters – coaching, developing and ensuring high performance
* Oversee the end-to-end recruitment process for all nursery and central office roles
* Personally deliver recruitment for approximately 20–30 central office roles annually
* Own our agency preferred supplier list ensuring value alignment, performance, relationships and strong return on investment
* Take the lead on projects e.g. create a structured interviewer training programme and support the new selection framework roll out
* Lead ED&I focused recruitment initiatives and track progress
Top things you'll need... (but check our website for the full brief)
* Be a seasoned empathetic, in-house team manager with proven ability coaching and leading a good-sized team
* Have previous success of operational excellence across high-volume, multi-site hiring at all levels (entry to exec)
* Bring hands-on experience of designing and delivering robust, scalable recruitment
* Know how to build inclusive recruitment processes from the ground up – and have done so in a complex or high-volume environment
* Be unflappable under pressure and skilled at managing challenging conversations with colleagues
* Be adaptable with the agility to respond to competing priorities
* Work at pace, quick-thinking, and confident making smart calls – while knowing when to seek input
Why you'll love it here
* Be part of something bigger: we hire brilliant people to ensure children get the best start
* Be part of a team that moves fast, thinks big and backs our people – we love what we do and here to win in a challenging market
* Real flexibility with hybrid working between home, nurseries and our central office
* Save on childcare: 70% nursery discount for your children or grandchildren
If you're a brilliant recruitment manager who wants your work to matter – we'd love to hear from you. Apply online (so you get to tell us why you want to work for us) We're reviewing applications and progressing people through assessments as they come in – so don't wait too long