Ever wondered what a career with the Talent Acquisition team at Reed Talent Solutions (RTS) looks like?

Well, you’ll be forgiven for thinking that this team recruit for internal vacancies across our RTS business, however that’s not the case.

So, what do they do then?

The RTS Talent Acquisition team are responsible for hiring and retaining the best talent for our clients. Working to attract, engage and onboard candidates, offering full candidate life cycle. Working closely with the candidate through the end-to-end recruitment process from initial application, interviews and their first day. 

Reed Talent Solutions (part of the Reed Group) deliver bespoke, outsourced recruitment contracts to both local and national organisations across the UK. Working with a range of public and private sector clients, RTS provide recruitment solutions to suit the needs of the client. 

Steve Clark, Talent Acquisition Manager for RTS works on contracts for the Greater London Authorities (GLA) including: Transport for London (TFL) and recently Steve and his team were invited by the client to see for themselves exactly the types of roles they recruit for and to understand the culture at TFL further.

Being able to see their contractors in action gave the team a valuable insight into what they do. It was also a great opportunity to experience a Hidden London tour hosted by TFL!

“Talent acquisition for me is being able to deal with a forever changing landscape of volume and specialisms. You become a specialist of people. It is a wonderful and an undervalued quality within our world.”

Steve shared some of the highlights of working within the Talent Acquisition team for RTS.
 
“You learn to work with anyone from an administrator up to a head of and everything in between. You are constantly needing to adapt your communication style and approach. The roles we deal with are short term temp, long term and permanent. We basically cover everything. I think that makes us lucky because the variety allows us to become such a more well-rounded talent specialist.  
 
Reed Talent Solutions has placed huge emphasis on continuous improvement, and you can feel this for yourself being part of the RTS community. We are a purpose lead business and have upskilled in areas such as diversity, inclusion and belonging as credible specialists due to the training that has been provided by RTS, but also through our diversity working groups. The proactive and organic nature of our EDIB initiatives where the bottom up and top-down activity meet is inspiring to me both personally and professionally.

I am super proud of the work we do in the EDIB space, launching programmes such as the Menopause café and the policies we have in place to support people from all walks of life.”

Steve

Steve’s career began in RTS seven years ago, initially starting as a consultant but was quickly promoted to a Team Leader role. Like many at Reed and RTS Steve’s career flourished and has since been promoted to a Talent Aquisition Manager, this coincided with a move that would take him from Manchester to London and the rest as they say is history!

This year was a personal highlight for Steve as he was nominated and attended the annual Reed High Achievers awards

Steve and his team were nominated and won the High Achievers Award, alongside the Account Management Team, for Account of the Year, for our work across the GLA contract. Historically, Account of the Year has usually been won by the account management team.

“I think with the GLA specifically, the direct sourcing team and the account management team work extremely well together. It is a massive collaborative effort. The relationships between us are really strong. It’s just going from strength to strength.

To be recognised as part of a key part of the account success and winning account of the year was a huge honour. I wasn’t expecting to have attended high achievers. I felt very lucky because I was mixing with some of the legends of Reed, people who I have admired for years but have never had the pleasure of being in the same room with. It was great to sit down or dance with them and hear more about their successes and their journey within Reed. I want to be there again next year. I want to continue to push, develop, and grow myself and the team.” 

With all this knowledge, Steve knows a thing or two about what makes someone successful in RTS.

“They’ve got to be fearless. Due to the variety of roles, levels of seniority, skill set and experience we deal with, you’ve also got to be adaptable.

My team work with screening, the accounts team, clients and candidates, you’ve got to be able to build relationships to a high level with all those different areas. Being collaborative is vital as well as being a strong communicator and extremely resilient. It’s also important to be open and honest.

You’ll never be more supported than you are with a career in RTS. We have a huge amount of training and development on offer for our co-members, whether that’s a self-service style of learning, trainer lead or something more bespoke. The culture within RTS is that of likeminded individuals that are striving for success for our customers and for one another. We have a passion for innovation and celebration, both areas I believe we do really well in.”

What’s next? 

“We’re constantly growing and evolving in terms of the new clients and business that we’re winning, with a big focus around private sector, engineering and utilities. 

Public sector has been our bread and butter, but there’s incredible opportunities in our pipeline at the moment. It is great to see the broad range of opportunities we are in contention for across utilities and engineering. 

We’re constantly looking at the diversification of the products that we offer in RTS such as recruit, train, deploy and Talent Advisory to name a couple. We’re recognising that recruitment isn’t just a one size fits all and we’re really championing the products we offer, and we’ve got some really credible people in the business that have delivered those types of solutions. So, let’s promote them! 

There’s a push on us as individuals to be responsible for cross selling, bringing in leads and encouraging us to have conversations with our existing clients. That’s really exciting! We’re becoming a lot more accountable and expected to promote those solutions a lot more, which is going to help us win more business not only within our existing client base, as well as new ones. 

In terms of my team that’s constantly looking to continuously improve. You know that old phrase better never stops, applies towards every day. Maximising our exposure across the contract.” 

“It’s a good place to be and it’s just getting better. I am always incredibly proud to say I work for RTS.”

If you are interested in working in an ever-evolving, robust team in Reed Talent Solutions then check out the current vacancies on our career’s website by clicking here.

By Natasha Chan

Attraction & Engagement Specialist