Senior Director, Talent Acquisition

- United States - VWR International; Radnor (Delaware County); On-site; USD 400,000 - 580,000; Full time

Job summary

Avantor is seeking a senior leader to own and elevate the global talent acquisition function. You will shape strategy, operating model, metrics, and people to attract leaders and high-impact talent across regions and business units.

You will lead a global team delivering recruiting across the Americas, Europe, and AMEA, setting performance expectations and partnering with the ELT to align workforce planning, hiring forecasts, and budgets.

Responsibilities

• Define and implement the global TA strategy and operating model across regions and business units.
• Lead, coach, and develop TA leaders and teams; establish goals and succession plans.
• Partner with ELT, HRBPs, and Finance on workforce planning, hiring forecasts, and TA budget.

Job description

The Opportunity

This role owns Avantor's global talent acquisition function: the strategy, operating model, metrics, and people that bring leaders and talent into the company. It is also Avantor's executive recruiter, personally leading VP and above searches and searches for key value creating roles below the VP level.

The person in this role leads a global team that delivers recruiting across regions and business units. Success depends on setting clear performance expectations, utilizing metrics, and managing partners to deliver with quality and speed.

This role connects TA activity to talent management outcomes: the quality of hires, the strength of the leadership bench, internal mobility, and the capabilities Avantor needs for Revival, its company-wide transformation. It also raises the quality of assessment and selection across the enterprise.

Key Responsibilities

• TA strategy, operating model, and leadership
  • Set the global TA strategy and operating model across the Americas, Europe, and AMEA and across business units, balancing global standards with regional and business needs.
  • Lead, coach, and develop the TA leaders and their teams; set clear goals, hold the team accountable for results, and build a succession plan and career paths within TA.
  • Partner with the ELT, business leaders, HR Business Partners, and Finance on workforce planning, hiring forecasts, and TA budget and resource allocation.
• TA metrics and performance management
  • Define, set targets for, and monitor a TA scorecard covering speed (time to fill, time to offer), quality (quality of hire, hiring manager and candidate satisfaction, new hire retention and early performance), cost (cost per hire, agency spend, cost avoidance), pipeline health, and quality of slates.
  • Review results with regional and business unit leaders on a regular cadence, diagnose gaps, and drive corrective action and accountability.
  • Report TA results, insights, and risks to the leadership, and use workforce and market data to inform business decisions.
• Process improvement and TA operations
  • Review end-to-end recruiting processes and standardize, simplify, and improve them to increase quality, speed, candidate experience, and compliance across regions.
  • Oversee TA operations, including the applicant tracking system, candidate CRM, recruiting analytics, reporting, and shared service center support.
  • Set the approach to AI and automation in recruiting, including written usage standards, human review of decisions, fairness monitoring, and safeguards against candidate fraud and identity misrepresentation.
• Connecting TA to talent management outcomes
  • Align TA priorities with talent management priorities, including succession plans, leadership bench strength, critical capabilities, and Revival transformation needs.
  • Build proactive external pipelines and market maps for critical and succession sensitive roles, and benchmark external talent against internal successors.
  • Drive an internal first approach with Talent Management, including internal mobility, boomerang and alumni hiring, and referral programs.
  • Partner with Talent Management and Total Rewards on competency models and success profiles so hiring criteria reflect what drives performance at Avantor.
• Assessment and selection quality
  • Set enterprise standards for selection, including structured, competency and skills-based interviewing, interview guides, scorecards, and hiring manager training.
  • Select, validate, and govern assessment tools, including Hogan (HPI, HDS, MVPI), and ensure they are used consistently, fairly, and in line with legal requirements.
  • Conduct or oversee executive assessments for external finalists and deliver clear, evidence based hiring recommendations to hiring leaders.
  • Measure how well selection methods predict success, using quality of hire data, and refine them over time.
• Executive recruiting
  • Personally lead full cycle searches for VP and above roles globally, and for key value creating roles below VP (such as commercial, operations, technical, and transformation leaders), from role definition and market mapping through offer and close.
  • Advise the ELT and business leaders on executive talent markets, compensation expectations, and hiring decisions, with absolute discretion on confidential and replacement searches.
  • Structure and negotiate complex executive offers with Total Rewards, including sign on, equity, buyouts, and relocation.
  • Maintain the executive candidate CRM and alumni network in line with global data privacy requirements.
• Vendor management and cost avoidance
  • Manage the search firm and contingent workforce partner portfolio, including sourcing, fee negotiation, contract terms, performance reviews, and renewal decisions.
  • Lead the contingent workforce strategy and ensure it is coordinated with permanent hiring plans, and track agency spend and cost avoidance against standard retained and contingent fees.
  • Manage the TA budget and prioritize spend on the sources and tools with the most