Talent Associate

The context: 

Across the developing world, more children than ever are in school – but they are not learning. A recent study estimated that less than 1% of school children in Sub-Saharan Africa attend a school where the teaching meets basic standards of quality. At Rising Academies, we’re changing that, and we want your help. Our mission is to create the best schools and the most powerful teaching and learning tools for the people that need it most. We’re one of the fastest-growing quality-focused education companies in Africa, and a Certified B Corp®. 

About us:

We own and operate our own great value private schools, partner with governments to improve the quality of public school systems, and use our content and technology to help other education providers. Founded in Sierra Leone in 2014, we provided emergency education to children kept out of school by the Ebola Epidemic before opening our first school in April 2015. Today, we serve more than 250,000 students across more than 900 schools in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana and now Rwanda.

Through great curriculum, intensive teacher coaching and actionable data, we help teachers and school leaders bring quality to every classroom. And we get results: show Rising students make more than twice the progress of their peers in comparable schools. In June 2024, one of our private schools in Sierra Leone - Rising Academy Waterloo - was shortlisted in the Top 10 for the World's Best School Prizes in the Overcoming Adversity category. Sierra Leone's Minister for Basic and Senior Secondary Education, Hon. Mr. Conrad Sackey, .

We have recently closed our and won a multi-year, multi-million dollar grant to accelerate the development of our digital ed-tech solutions for low-income students across the globe. Our ‘’ suite of digital tools already includes a school information system, school observation tool, chatbot tutor (Rori), accelerated learning program and teacher coaching app. This is just the start. We want to expand our range of digital products to help improve the quality of education for millions of students around the world. If you want to make a difference to the lives of teachers, students and parents, then we are the right place for you

About the role:

The Talent Associate position is a high impact role with responsibility for sourcing, assessing and delivering top talent for our teams. The ideal candidate will have experience in finding top technical and non-technical talent and will leverage market data and talent acquisition expertise to strengthen our hiring process. A core part of your role will be to support, guide and educate hiring managers in making high quality hiring decisions at Rising.

The Talent Associate will own the candidate experience by acting as a company ambassador to internal and external candidates. This is a fantastic opportunity for someone looking to grow their career in talent acquisition and management within a fast-paced and innovative environment.

The Talent Associate will:

• Proactively engage candidates through effective sourcing, pipeline building and continuously adopt new candidate engagement techniques to find the right talent for the right roles.
• Work with various hiring teams/managers to ensure all roles have clear, specific, and measurable scorecards and job descriptions before posting.
• Provide market intelligence and strategy expertise to hiring managers and key stakeholders to increase hiring results/outcomes for both technical and non-technical roles.
• Identify, screen, and pre-qualify candidates for all assigned roles through behavioural-based and technical interviewing techniques in line with Rising’s Hiring Principles and A-Method Standard.
• Collaborate with hiring managers and the people team to ensure all new joiners experience a smooth hand-off and a consistent and personalized onboarding.
• Support in analyzing talent reports by providing real-time insights and analytics of key hiring metrics to inform decisions and improvements.
• Promote and help establish Rising as a preferred and appealing employer brand for candidates and other key institutions.
• Ensure all candidates are provided with complete, accurate and inspiring information about Rising and ensure an exceptional candidate experience throughout the process.
• Mentor, train and guide internal team members on sourcing strategy, interviewing techniques and market data and to become masters of Rising’s A-Method.

Location and reporting:

This is a full-time fully remote or hybrid role. The Talent Associate reports to Rising’s Talent Manager. Candidate must be based on the African continent (GMT ± 3) or preferably in any of our country offices (Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia or Rwanda).

Application deadline: 

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, thus, we encourage interested and qualified candidates to apply as soon as possible. The target start-date for this role will be November 2024.

Qualifications and Experience:

• 2-4 years combined experience of both corporate (in-house) and agency recruitment in technical and non-technical recruitment.
• Strong talent acquisition and management experience across different settings is essential.
• Experience owning the full end-to-end recruitment cycle (from sourcing to offer) is required.
• Familiarity with the local talent market across various geographies on the African continent
• Strong track record of direct talent sourcing and pipelining techniques in previous roles. 
• Experience in understanding, embodying and promoting the message, culture and brand of the organisations you have recruited for.
• Experience in building and fostering relationships with stakeholders and advising them on hiring.
• Demonstrated subject matter expertise in utilizing creative sourcing resources and social media, including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc to find the right talent.
• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent level experience required.

About You:

• You are passionate about Rising’s mission and have the highest levels of integrity and trustworthiness.
• You have the ability to take direction and then drive work independently and autonomously.
• You have the ability to set and hit goals, timelines, support team members and deliver within deadlines.
• You can prioritize, well organized, have strong attention to detail to succeed in an environment with growing demands.
• You can build productive relationships and partner closely with the various hiring teams.
• You have passion for advancing the workforce with DEI in mind.
• You have strong working knowledge of both tech and non-tech hiring concepts and language.
• You are a strong communicator, including the ability to clearly articulate information and ideas orally and in writing; and communicate compellingly to impact and influence decision making.
• You are good at providing quality candidates at all levels of the organisation with a focus on sustained pipeline development.
• You have good sales aptitude with demonstrated ability to create compelling interest in both the position opportunity as well as the candidate.

Compensation and Benefits:

We offer a competitive salary and benefits package. We regularly benchmark our compensation against comparable businesses, social ventures and non-profits. 

Rising’s goal is to be transparent about salaries at all levels of the organisation and have a standard, global pay scale for all positions that is non-negotiable. 

The benefits we offer are built to have a strong added value on our staff’s well-being and we are excited to discuss this further with you in the process.

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Rising is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to providing a work environment that is inclusive and free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions are based on individual qualifications without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, national origin, family or parental status, veteran or disability status.

Rising is committed to creating a culture within the organisation, and its schools, that recognises the importance of safeguarding children and prioritising their rights and needs. We strive to uphold international safeguarding standards, and keep the safety and well-being of our students at the heart of what we do. All Rising employees are expected to abide by the Child Protection Policy, and to have the same level of commitment to protect children from harm. Safeguarding questions are part of every interview process and all Rising employees undergo reference checks before joining the organisation.