Early Talent Strategy Manager

RBS; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 85,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Job summary

RBS is seeking an Early Talent Strategy Manager to lead the enterprise-wide approach to graduates, interns, and apprenticeships. You’ll shape standards and guardrails for early talent pathways, aligning them with strategic workforce plans and external partnerships.

You will influence HR leaders on investment decisions, programme design, and market insights to optimise conversion, retention, and cost-to-hire outcomes, in a hybrid work setting.

Qualifications

• Deep expertise in shaping enterprise-wide early talent strategies.
• Strong understanding of labour market trends and future workforce needs.
• Ability to link early careers investment to measurable business outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Manage the enterprise early talent strategy across graduates, interns, and apprenticeships programmes.
• Lead apprenticeship strategy, levy utilisation, and external partnerships.
• Provide strategic guidance to HR partners and leaders on early talent investments.

Job description

Join us as an Early Talent Strategy Manager

• We’ll look to you to manage the enterprise early talent strategy, building future-ready talent pipelines aligned to our strategic workforce needs across our graduate, intern, and apprenticeships programmes
• Influence and lead the enterprise-wide apprenticeship strategy and external ecosystem, maximising levy utilisation, and managing key external partnerships
• This is an opportunity to make a lasting impact by leading the graduate and intern strategy across attraction, university engagement, recruitment, and development
• This is a full-time, hybrid position so you’ll work from home some of the time, coming into the office at least two days per week to collaborate closely with your colleagues

What you’ll do

As an Early Talent Strategy Manager, you’ll manage the enterprise-wide strategy, standards, and guardrails for all early talent pathways, including interns, apprentices, and graduates. You’ll ensure these pathways integrate seamlessly with wider talent ecosystem and strategic workforce plans, strengthening the overall talent pipelines and building future skills. By setting clear definitions, minimum criteria, and programme design principles, you’ll also drive consistency, quality, and commercial discipline across all early talent programmes.

Alongside this, you’ll provide strategic challenge and guidance to human resources business partners and leaders on early talent investment decisions, supporting choices on which programmes to create, expand, reduce, or close.

In addition, you’ll focus on:

• Ensuring the early talent experience strengthens development outcomes, boosts conversion and retention, and builds a high-performing alumni community
• Aligning early talent investment and programme focus with strategic workforce priorities, future skills needs, and critical talent pipelines
• Maintaining deep market insight and managing relationships with industry bodies, government groups, and education and training partners, representing the bank in key forums
• Developing enterprise-level insights and benchmarking to inform strategy and measure programme effectiveness across conversion, retention, performance, diversity, and cost-to-hire outcomes
• Optimising our Apprenticeship Levy investment, aligning it with our commercial ambitions and driving high-quality programmes that build future skills while delivering measurable value to the business

The skills you’ll need

We’re looking for someone with deep expertise in shaping enterprise-wide early talent strategies, including graduate programmes and apprenticeships. A strong understanding of labour market trends and future workforce needs is also essential, enabling you to anticipate how critical roles will evolve.

In addition, you’ll need:

• Knowledge of apprenticeship policy, funding models, and levy utilisation, with the ability to optimise pipeline effectiveness
• Experience working with universities, government groups, industry bodies, and education partners to establish strong external relationships and generate valuable market insight
• A strong analytical and commercial mindset, with the ability to link early careers investment to measurable business outcomes
• Experience leading multi-functional end-to-end graduate and intern strategies, including designing attraction, recruitment, and development approaches to build future leadership pipelines

Hours

35

Job Posting Closing Date:

Job Posting Closing Date is not yet published.

Ways of Working:Hybrid