The Talent Acquisition Partner, MENA – Emiratisation, plays a pivotal role in enabling Standard Chartered’s growth ambitions by delivering high-quality, inclusive and commercially focused hiring outcomes across assigned businesses. The role partners closely with business leaders, HR stakeholders and specialist teams to shape demand, build targeted sourcing strategies and manage the end-to-end recruitment process for internal, external, local and cross-border hires. A core priority is to actively support Emiratisation across all businesses by strengthening UAE National talent pipelines, improving hiring readiness, accelerating selection decisions and ensuring fair, transparent and merit-based consideration of local talent in line with business priorities, local market requirements and the Bank’s values.

Key Responsibilities

•  The Talent Acquisition Partner - Emiratisation will deliver a trusted, consultative recruitment service that helps businesses attract, select and onboard the right talent at pace while strengthening the Bank’s local workforce strategy. The role will be accountable for creating business-aligned hiring plans, improving candidate and stakeholder experience, managing risk and control requirements, and embedding Emiratisation as a consistent consideration across workforce planning, sourcing, assessment, offer management and onboarding.

Strategic Talent Advisory

•  Build trusted relationships with business and HR stakeholders to understand workforce plans, hiring demand, critical capability gaps and local talent priorities. Translate business strategy into practical resourcing plans that balance speed, quality, cost, internal mobility, market intelligence and Emiratisation outcomes.

Hiring Delivery and Business Partnership

•  Lead effective Resourcing Strategy Meetings with hiring managers to clarify role requirements, success criteria, assessment approach, market constraints and target timelines.

•  Develop compelling, inclusive sourcing strategies across internal mobility, direct sourcing, referrals, talent communities, agencies and other approved channels, with targeted plans for UAE National talent where relevant.

•  Manage each requisition end to end, ensuring timely candidate shortlists, interview coordination, stakeholder updates, feedback discipline, offer management and onboarding handover.

•  Challenge and advise hiring managers constructively on role design, selection criteria, market availability, compensation positioning and decision-making pace to improve hiring outcomes.

•  Represent the Bank as a strong employer brand ambassador, ensuring every candidate interaction is professional, inclusive, timely and aligned to Standard Chartered’s values.

•  Work with HR and Reward partners to shape competitive and appropriate offer recommendations, supporting candidate conversion while maintaining governance and internal equity.

Emiratisation and Local Talent Impact

•  Actively support Emiratisation priorities across all businesses by building strong UAE National talent pipelines, improving market mapping and increasing visibility of local talent for current and future roles.

•  Partner with business leaders and HR stakeholders to identify roles suitable for UAE National hiring, ringfenced opportunities, development pathways and accelerated hiring actions where appropriate.

•  Ensure fair, consistent and merit-based consideration of UAE National candidates while helping hiring managers assess transferable skills, potential and trainability alongside role-specific requirements.

•  Track Emiratisation hiring progress, risks, dependencies and bottlenecks, escalating decisions or interventions needed to maintain momentum and protect committed outcomes.

Processes, Systems and Continuous Improvement

•  Use recruitment systems accurately and consistently to maintain audit-ready requisition, candidate, approval and offer records.

•  Analyse dashboards, reports and hiring MI to monitor funnel health, channel effectiveness, time-to-fill, candidate conversion, diversity indicators and Emiratisation progress.

•  Identify and implement improvements that simplify hiring, reduce delays, improve candidate quality and strengthen stakeholder accountability.

•  Collaborate with country, regional and offshore resourcing colleagues to ensure consistent service delivery, clear hand-offs and shared ownership of hiring outcomes.

Risk, Governance and Conduct

•  Ensure recruitment activity is delivered in line with applicable policies, approvals, screening standards, conduct expectations and local regulatory requirements.

•  Maintain strong control discipline across requisition approvals, candidate selection, interview feedback, offer approvals, vendor engagement and documentation.

•  Proactively identify hiring risks, process gaps and decision delays, escalating early with clear options and recommended actions.

•  Support a culture of fair hiring, inclusion and transparency by ensuring decisions are evidence-based, consistently documented and aligned to the Bank’s values and Code of Conduct.

•  Deliver reporting and metrics to agreed standards, enabling effective business reviews, risk oversight and Emiratisation governance.

Stakeholder Engagement

•  Build credible, collaborative relationships with business heads, hiring managers, HR partners, Reward, Screening, Onboarding, legal and compliance stakeholders, vendors and candidates to deliver seamless hiring outcomes.

•  Create strong alignment across stakeholders on Emiratisation priorities, hiring commitments, candidate readiness and decision timelines.

Skills and Experience

Must-have Skills

•  Candidate Screening

•  Candidate Sourcing

•  Effective Communication

Other Skills

•  HR: Policy, Standards & Procedures

•  Brand Management

•  Human Resources Consulting

•  Staffing, Hiring and Selection

Motivations

•  A candidate that thrives in a fast-paced environment

•  A candidate that is passionate about Emiratisation 

•  A candidate wanting to build a collaborative career in Human Resources

Qualifications

•  Recruitment project management, ideally within a complex, regulated and matrixed organisation.

•  Demonstrated ability to partner with senior stakeholders, challenge constructively and influence hiring decisions using market insight, data and sound judgement.

•  Experience developing sourcing strategies, managing multiple recruitment channels and delivering against hiring targets across varied functions and levels.

•  Good understanding of UAE talent market dynamics, Emiratisation priorities and approaches to building sustainable UAE National talent pipelines.

•  Strong candidate management, offer management and stakeholder communication skills, with the ability to create a positive and inclusive candidate experience.

•  Experience of sourcing, engaging and ultimately hiring UAE Nationals.

•  Comfortable working with high volumes, specialist roles and competing priorities while maintaining quality, pace and control discipline.

•  Strong experience in Talent Acquisition, Resourcing, HR delivery or 

•  Able to use recruitment systems, dashboards and MI to manage delivery, identify risks and support continuous improvement.

•  Experience hiring across banking, financial services, technology, wealth management, operations or corporate functions would be advantageous.

•  Relevant HR, recruitment or talent qualifications would be beneficial.

•  Arabic language skills highly desirable.

•  English essential, Arabic preferred