Job Summary

Lead and shape the Talent Acquisition strategy for China, partnering with business and HR leadership to build future‑ready talent pipelines that enable sustainable, profitable growth.

This role goes beyond delivery execution. It is accountable for workforce and talent strategy, leadership and critical hiring, and positioning Talent Acquisition as a strategic advisor in one of the Bank’s most dynamic and highly regulated markets. The role leads a hybrid operating model (in‑country, GBS, and external partners), drives digital and data‑driven transformation, and ensures strong governance, risk management, and regulatory compliance in all hiring activities.

About the Team / Function

The Talent Acquisition (TA) function is a core enabler of the Bank’s growth and transformation agenda. It:

• Partners with business and HR to translate strategy into workforce and hiring plans.
• Delivers leadership, niche, and volume hiring through a hybrid model (country TA, GBS, and strategic vendors).
• Provides market and talent intelligence to inform business decisions on growth, location strategy, skills, and succession.
• Drives innovation in sourcing, assessment, and candidate experience using digital tools and AI‑enabled solutions.
• Ensures all hiring activity aligns with the Bank’s risk, conduct, and regulatory standards, particularly in the China market.

Within this context, the China TA Lead plays a pivotal role in:

• Shaping the country TA agenda with Country Management and HR.
• Acting as the primary TA escalation and decision point for senior and critical roles.
• Representing China in the Global TA leadership community and contributing to global best practice and design.

Skills and Experience

Experience

• Proven experience leading Talent Acquisition in a large, complex, international organisation, ideally within financial services.
• Demonstrated experience managing Talent Acquisition across multiple entities, jurisdictions, or business units
• Strong track record in leadership hiring and executive search, including advising senior stakeholders (EXCO level or equivalent).
• Experience in designing and executing workforce and talent strategies at country or regional level.
• Experience operating in a matrix organisation with multiple stakeholder groups and geographies.
• Experience leading change and transformation within TA or HR, including digital and operating model change.

Skills & Capabilities

• Strong commercial acumen, with the ability to link talent decisions to business strategy, financial performance, and risk.
• Advanced stakeholder management and influencing skills, with credibility at senior leadership levels.
• Strong analytical and data literacy skills; able to interpret talent and market data and translate it into insights and actions.
• Leadership capability to build, develop, and engage a high‑performing TA team.
• High level of integrity, judgement, and risk awareness, particularly in a regulated financial services environment.

Role-Specific Technical Competencies

Strategic Workforce & Talent Planning

•    Ability to design and implement country level workforce and talent strategies aligned to business plans and market dynamics.
•    Competence in build vs. buy vs. deploy decision making, including internal mobility and redeployment.

Leadership & Critical Hiring
•    Expertise in executive search methodologies, including market mapping, talent pipelining, and senior candidate assessment.
•  Experience managing end to end processes for senior, niche, and critical roles, including succession considerations and diversity objectives.

Talent Intelligence & Analytics
•    Proficiency in using TA and HR data (e.g., pipeline metrics, market intelligence, competitor analysis) to inform strategy and decisions.
•    Ability to create clear, insight driven reports and narratives for EXCO and senior stakeholders.

TA Operating Model & Process Excellence
•    Experience designing and managing hybrid TA operating models (in country, GBS, RPO/agency partners).
•    Knowledge of TA process design, SLAs, governance frameworks, and performance measurement (e.g., time to hire, quality of hire, cost).

Digital, AI & Skills-Based Hiring
•    Familiarity with digital sourcing tools, applicant tracking systems, and AI enabled sourcing/screening solutions.
•    Understanding of skills based hiring, assessment approaches, and how to integrate them into selection processes.

Risk, Governance & Regulatory Compliance (China)
•    Working knowledge of China employment and regulatory landscape relevant to hiring (including CBIRC related requirements) and internal policy frameworks.
•    Ability to identify, mitigate, and escalate risks related to hiring processes, data, vendor management, and candidate handling.

People Leadership & Coaching
•    Capability to lead, coach, and develop TA professionals to strengthen advisory, market insight, and data driven decision making skills.
•    Ability to build a culture of accountability, collaboration, customer centricity, and continuous improvement within the TA team

About Standard Chartered

We're an international bank, nimble enough to act, big enough for impact. For more than 170 years, we've worked to make a positive difference for our clients, communities, and each other. We question the status quo, love a challenge and enjoy finding new opportunities to grow and do better than before. If you're looking for a career with purpose and you want to work for a bank making a difference, we want to hear from you. You can count on us to celebrate your unique talents and we can't wait to see the talents you can bring us.

Our purpose, to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity, together with our brand promise, to be here for good are achieved by how we each live our valued behaviours. When you work with us, you'll see how we value difference and advocate inclusion.

Together we:

• Do the right thing and are assertive, challenge one another, and live with integrity, while putting the client at the heart of what we do
• Never settle, continuously striving to improve and innovate, keeping things simple and learning from doing well, and not so well
• Are better together, we can be ourselves, be inclusive, see more good in others, and work collectively to build for the long term

What we offer

In line with our Fair Pay Charter, we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing.

• Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance, with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations.
• Time-off including annual leave, parental/maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 months maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum.
• Flexible working options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns.
• Proactive wellbeing support through Unmind, a market-leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global Employee Assistance Programme, sick leave, mental health first-aiders and all sorts of self-help toolkits
• A continuous learning culture to support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual and digital learning.
• Being part of an inclusive and values driven organisation, one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions and geographies - everyone feels respected and can realise their full potential.