Early Careers Lead – APAC

ARUP SINGAPORE PRIVATE LIMITED; Singapore; On-site; SGD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Arup is seeking an Early Careers Lead to drive regional delivery of the global framework in APAC with focus on embedding standards, coaching recruiters, and collaborating with senior leaders.

The role emphasises building talent pipelines, innovating sourcing strategies, and managing full-cycle recruitment for early careers programs in the region.

Qualifications

• Experience delivering early careers recruitment across APAC.
• Ability to embed global processes regionally.
• Strong stakeholder management and change management.
• Leadership experience in building recruitment teams.
• Experience with employment branding strategies.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills.

Responsibilities

• Embed and operationalize Arup’s global early careers strategy within the region, ensure consistent application of global standards while adapting for local regulations, cultural expectations, and market dynamics.
• Lead, coach, and develop a team of early careers recruiters, fostering a high-performance and collaborative culture.
• Drive innovative sourcing strategies leveraging technology, social media, and data analytics.
• Own demand fulfilment by overseeing the full-cycle recruitment for early careers programs, ensuring compliance with local regulations and global standards.
• Oversee the summer intern program and intern conversion process within the region, ensuring ROI and strong graduate pipelines.
• Monitor recruitment metrics through regular reporting to regional and global leadership to understand effectiveness and improve outcomes.

Skills

Leadership

Recruitment

Stakeholder management

Data analytics

Employer branding

Digital sourcing

Tools

Taleo

Oracle

Job description

Joining Arup

Arup’s purpose, shared values and collaborative approach has setus apart for over 80 years, guiding how we shape a better world.

The Opportunity

The Early Careers Lead is responsible for regional delivery of the global Early Careers framework, embedding consistent standards, coordinating campaign activity, coaching recruiters, and supporting continuous improvement.The role ensures the Early Careers strategy and programmes are embedded into local contexts while remaining consistent with global objectives and standards.

Key responsibilities include owning the design and execution of strategies to attract, engage, and hire top early-career talent across their assigned region while being a key partner to the business and senior leaders. This is acritical role in embedding and operationalising the early careers recruitment framework.

Responsibilities will include the following:

Global Strategy Implementation

• Embed and operationalize Arup’s global early careers strategy within the region, ensure consistent application of global standards while adapting for local regulations, cultural expectations, and market dynamics.
• Play a leading role in Early Careers workstreams to develop and evolve the global framework including but not limited to; technology, demand, assessment and programmatic approaches.
• Work with People Partnering teams and business leaders to forecast demand to ensure timely delivery of talent pipelines.

Team Management

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of early careers recruiters, fostering a high-performance and collaborative culture.
• Allocate work, set priorities, and ensure consistent delivery standards across all recruitment activity. Establish ways of working that support collaboration, continuous improvement, and a positive team culture.
• Alongside Global Early Careers Operations Leader, work with the RPO to ensure a strong relationship with the RPO team and ensure smooth delivery of key campaigns.

Future-Focused Candidate Attraction

• Drive innovative sourcing strategies leveraging technology, social media, and data analytics.
• Build strong relationships with universities, professional organizations, and diversity partners to expand talent pools.
• Represent Arup at campus and in-office events, conferences, virtual fairs, and industry forums to strengthen our employer brand.
• Build and maintain early career talent pipelines to ensure a strong and consistent pool of candidates.
• Partner with EDI teams to embed and uphold inclusive practices to source diverse early careers talent.

Recruitment Operations & Delivery Excellence

• Own demand fulfilment by overseeing the full-cycle recruitment for early careers programs, ensuring compliance with local regulations and global standards, ensure an exceptional candidate journey from application through onboarding.
• Implement relevant process improvements to reduce time-to-offer and enhance efficiency.
• Oversee the summer intern program and intern conversion process within the region, ensuring this return on investment, building a key graduate talent pipeline.

Data & Insights

• Monitor recruitment metrics through regular reporting and end of season reviews to regional and global leadership to understand effectiveness of processes, refine strategies and improve outcomes.
• Stay up to date with market trends, competitor activity and innovations, bringing in external thought leadership.

Measures of Success

Delivery of overall regional campaign aligned to core KPIs including;

• Candidate Experience – time to offer, time in process and feedback
• Fulfilment – delivery against forecasted demand
• Harmonisation – successful embedding of global processes and ways of working
• Return on Investment – demonstrating value in attraction activities, cost per hire and intern conversions
  

At Arup, you belong to an extraordinary collective – in which we encourage individuality to thrive. Our strength comes from how we respect, share and connect our diverse experiences, perspectives and ideas.

You will have the opportunity do socially useful work that has meaning – to Arup, to your career, to our members and to the clients and communities we serve.

Is this role right for you?

The ideal candidate will have experience in delivery of earlyc areers recruitment seasons across APAC countries. They will demonstrate passion and energy to embed a new early careers model, within their respective region, while also being globally aligned;

• Strategic thinker with a passion for innovation in recruitment
• Strong stakeholder management skills, particularly focused on change management and embedding new ways of working.
• Team leadership and experience of building and developing a team of recruiters.
• Expertise with using ATS’ and digital sourcing tools (Taleo and/or Oracle a plus). Ideally you will have experience with an ATS implementation
• Proven experience building early careers talent pools.
• Experience in developing and implementing employment branding strategies
• Excellent communication and presentation skills with the ability to translate global plans into defined regional actions for stakeholders
• Ability to manage multiple priorities across regions in a fast-paced environment.
• Experience of operating in a global or matrixed organisations and/or the Engineering & Consulting industry
• Understanding of regional trends in early careers hiring and future skills. It would be preferred if the candidate has familiarity with technical roles and disciplines and associated college/university student trends