Job Title: Head of Recruitment

Location: Central London

Salary: £Negotiable depending on experience

Leading international law firm are looking for a Head of Recruitment to join their London team. You will be leading the development and execution of a talent acquisition strategy designed to support the organisation’s expansion, as well as managing lateral recruitment and long-term workforce planning initiatives, ensuring the business continues to attract and secure high-calibre legal professionals and business support personnel.

Key Duties:

• Design and implement recruitment initiatives that support the firm's long-term business objectives and expansion.
• Collaborate with executive and departmental leaders to forecast talent requirements and develop proactive workforce plans.
• Provide insight into market conditions, talent trends, compensation benchmarks, and competitive hiring practices within the sector to inform strategic decision-making.

• Direct and develop a geographically dispersed recruitment function, fostering a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Support team growth through ongoing coaching, skills development, and career advancement opportunities.
• Allocate resources effectively to ensure recruitment delivery remains aligned with changing business priorities and hiring volumes.

• Manage the end-to-end recruitment of senior legal professionals, including partners, counsel, and experienced associates.
• Partner with practice leaders and key stakeholders to define hiring requirements, role specifications, and candidate success profiles.
• Build and maintain productive relationships with external search partners and specialist recruitment providers across relevant jurisdictions.
• Oversee the recruitment of business services professionals across functions such as finance, technology, human resources, compliance, and risk.
• Provide strategic oversight of early-career recruitment programmes, including graduate, trainee, and internship pathways.

• Enhance the organisation’s position as an employer of choice.
• Champion a seamless and engaging candidate journey, ensuring a consistently positive experience throughout the recruitment process.

The successful candidate will be liaising with senior leadership to provide strategic guidance on talent matters, strengthen the organisation’s reputation as an employer of choice, and drive recruitment practices. A key focus of the position is building sustainable talent pipelines and delivering an exceptional hiring experience in a highly competitive market.

It is essential that you have a solid background leading recruitment within a legal or professional services environment, and proven experience recruiting senior legal talent. You must also have excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills at senior level.

Fantastic opportunity for a recruitment manager looking for a step up in responsibility and take on a strategic role. Excellent benefits + bonus.

McKinlay Law endeavour to contact all successful candidates within 24 hours. However, due to the volume of applications that we receive, we are not able to respond to every candidate individually. If you have not heard from us within 24 hours your application has been unsuccessful and we have not retained your details.