People & Talent Lead

About the role

People & Talent Lead | £50-£55k | Permanent | Hybrid/London | Amazing benefits package You run talent at Hire Space. You hire well, you help line managers hold a high bar on their teams, and you make sure the admin and office run themselves in the background. This is a hands-on, operator-first role - your wins show up in who we hire, who we keep, and how quickly we can do both. You own three things, in priority order: Talent acquisition - the pipeline, the process, the hires themselves Performance management - holding line managers accountable for running their teams at a high bar, and giving them the tools and cover to do it Office & people ops - the workplace works, the admin runs itself, the business doesn't trip over itself Roughly: 50% hiring, 25% performance management, 15% office & workplace, 10% people ops, comp and reporting. Hire Space is seeking a hands-on, commercially minded and highly motivated Head of Finance to lead our finance function as we scale our events marketplace. This is a pivotal opportunity for a high-performing Head of Finance, or "step-up" experienced Financial Controller or Finance Manager looking to take full ownership of a finance department. You will not just be "keeping the score" - you will be the operational backbone of the business. You will manage the flow of funds between corporate bookers and venue partners, oversee complex commission structures, and work directly with our Tech and Operations teams to automate and improve our financial infrastructure. You will also be responsible for mentoring and developing an existing part-qualified Finance Manager, helping them complete their studies and grow within the business. 1. Talent acquisition Full-cycle hiring for every role in the business, end-to-end Competency frameworks and interview scorecards for every role - hiring decisions are evidence-based, not gut-feel Direct sourcing and headhunting for senior and critical hires; own the outreach, build a referral engine Screen candidates so line managers only see the top of the pile Run the candidate experience end-to-end - scheduling, comms, status - using automation and AI-assisted tooling (ATS workflows, AI interview notes, LLM-drafted JDs and outreach sequences) Retrospective every bad hire and every final-stage rejection. Fix the process upstream. Build a targeted employer presence in the events-industry talent pool, leaning on the Growth team's network and industry knowledge 2. Performance Management Run quarterly 9-box grid reviews across the whole team, with clear board-level reporting Operate an "Up or Out" policy for the bottom quadrants - you coach managers through the conversation; they own the call Hold line managers accountable for running 30/60/90 probation reviews with real pass/fail gates. No surprise reviews. Swift exits when the bar isn't met. Work with managers to define minimum standards for every role - zero ambiguity on what "good" looks like Build cadence for recognising strong performance - specific, public, tied to real outcomes. People who smash the bar should know they did, and so should the rest of the team. Feed performance data into payroll for bonus cycles Spot-check payroll and comp outputs; Finance owns payroll, you sanity-check 3. Office and Workplace Own the London office as a working environment: space, layout, suppliers, kit, the things that make people want to be there Execute the hybrid / in-office policy - attendance patterns, visibility, logistics Onboarding logistics: a new hire's first day should feel designed, not improvised 4. People Ops & Comp Automate the admin: holiday, sickness, attendance, onboarding and offboarding checklists. If you're doing it manually twice, build the workflow. Run a regular team engagement survey as a retention signal - tight, consistent, and useful. The output is a handful of clear actions, not a 40-slide deck. Bi-annual benefits benchmarking against market; flag gaps, recommend changes Support Finance on headcount forecasting and comp modelling Keep our policies and process up to date; flag complex employment law or ER matters to our external employment counsel and the C-suite rather than trying to resolve them solo AI Acceleration - how you work, across everything. You are expected to use AI to scale your output. Concretely: CV screening and shortlisting, interview note-taking and summarisation, onboarding sequence automation, performance review prep, policy drafting, comms at volume. We want to see workflows you've built. 3-6 years in a People / Talent role at a scale-up or fast-moving business; you've owned hiring end-to-end Track record of performance management that actually moves people - not just documents underperformance Fluent with AI tooling. You've built workflows with AI, not just tried the demo Systems thinker. You automate, templatise, and build once. You dislike manual repetition. Comfortable being the only People hire in the business - no team below you, you're the one driving it Strai

Your Match

How well this role fits your profile.

Company Intel

What employees say

Worked at Hirespace? Share your experience