Change your career, change lives

The Open University is the UK’s largest university, a world leader in flexible part-time education combining a mission to widen access to higher education with research excellence, transforming lives through education. We offer anyone anywhere the power to learn and together we’ve already helped over 2 million students to realise their ambitions. This pioneering spirit and open ethos still drive all that we do today.

For our students, our employees, and through our research, we represent a world where possibilities are endless, and the future is open. Find out more about us and our mission by watching this short video (you will be taken to YouTube by clicking this link).

About the Role

Proactively delivering a high-touch, responsive, inclusive and innovative end-to-end recruitment service, you will act as a trusted recruitment partner to hiring managers and stakeholders across the University. You will provide expert advice and insight on talent attraction, assessment, selection and hiring, supporting the recruitment of diverse talent and helping to build the organisational capacity and capability required to deliver the University's strategic objectives.

Working collaboratively with colleagues across People Services and the wider organisation, you will use market insight, data and innovative sourcing approaches to identify, engage and attract talent, whilst championing inclusive recruitment practices and an exceptional candidate experience.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide professional and expert advice and support with a wide range of recruitment-related topics and activities. Examples include: candidate attraction, pre-screening and engagement, utilising social media and direct sourcing, pipelining, redeployment, assessment methods, vetting, inclusive hiring, systems and processes, compliance, data and insight, and market and technology trends.
• Successfully manage multiple innovative recruitment campaigns and projects.
• Understand the strategic objectives and priorities of the organisation and work in collaboration with People Business Partners and senior managers to develop an understanding of future workforce plans, aligning recruitment activity to positively impact organisational success.
• Actively seek opportunities to act as a brand ambassador and promote our employee value proposition, both online and in person. This includes having an active recruiter presence on LinkedIn, attending job fairs and professional networking events, all with the objective of providing candidates with an understanding of the organisation, its employee value proposition and brand, and encouraging employee advocacy.
• Engage with outsourced suppliers and partners, ensuring contracted services are effectively delivered and seeking to secure best value for the organisation.
• Ensure our customers are at the heart of all we do. Provide a high-touch service, seeking opportunities for continuous service improvement by utilising technology to simplify and automate processes and improve data and insight capabilities. Work in an open and collaborative way with colleagues to share best practice and ensure consistency of high-quality service delivery.
• Build recruitment capability across the organisation through coaching, guidance, training and sharing of best practice.
• Design and advise on robust, inclusive and evidence-based assessment approaches that enable effective selection decisions.

Skills, Knowledge, Experience & Behaviours

• Significant experience delivering end-to-end in-house recruitment within a complex organisation, acting as a trusted subject matter expert and strategic recruitment partner.
• Experience of improving inclusive hiring practices, including successfully leading campaigns targeting underrepresented groups.
• Up-to-date knowledge of employment law relating to recruitment and pre-employment vetting, including requirements specific to the nations of the UK.
• A passion for customer service excellence and utilising opportunities to learn, adapt and improve service provision.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills with the proven ability to:
  • Develop and maintain beneficial working relationships and manage the expectations of multiple stakeholders.
  • Act professionally and confidently in informing and influencing stakeholders and colleagues.
  • Create concise, high-quality written work including reports, guidance, presentations and workflows.
  • Facilitate training.
• Proven ability to manage constantly changing workloads, multiple tasks and competing priorities with little supervision, escalating issues where appropriate to maximise team resource capability.
• Demonstrates adaptability, professionalism and sound judgement when managing competing priorities, organisational change and challenging situations.
• Proven ability to work collaboratively in a team environment, sharing knowledge, listening to and building on the ideas of others, and offering support and development.
• Confident with data analysis, using it to produce insight, inform strategy and monitor performance.
• Considerable experience using applicant tracking systems and Microsoft 365 applications to manage recruitment activity, analyse data and support service delivery.
• Demonstrable success in proactively identifying, engaging and converting talent through direct sourcing, networking, talent pooling and relationship building.

Support with your application

If you have any questions, or need support or adjustments relating to your application, the recruitment process, or the role, please contact us on 01908 541111 or email careers@open.ac.uk quoting the advert reference number.

What's in it for you?

At The Open University, we offer a range of benefits to recognise and reward great work, alongside policies and flexible working that contribute towards a great work life balance. Get all the details of what benefits we offer by visiting our Staff Benefits page (clicking this link will open a new window).

Flexible working

We are open to discussions about flexible working. Whether it’s a job share, part time, compressed hours or another working arrangement. Please reach out to us to discuss what works best for you.

It is anticipated that a hybrid working pattern can be adopted for this role, where the successful candidate can work from home and the office. However, as this role is contractually aligned to our Milton Keynes office it is expected that some attendance in the office will be required when necessary and in response to business needs. We’d anticipate this to be on average once per month however during the completion of your induction and training for approximately your first month, you may be required to be in the office more often than this, we'd anticipate this to be on average once per week during this initial period.

Next steps in the Recruitment process

We anticipate that interviews for this role will be taking place online via Microsoft Teams during the week commencing 29 June 2026. 

Early closing date notification

While most roles will remain open until the advertised closing date, applications may be reviewed on an ongoing basis. In some cases, vacancies may close earlier if a sufficient number of suitable applications have been received and equality impacts have been appropriately considered. All roles will remain advertised for a minimum of one week before any early closure is implemented.

If you have started an application or were in the process of applying when the advert closed, we encourage you to get in touch. We are committed to understanding individual circumstances and can offer further support where needed, including reasonable adjustments for applicants with protected characteristics.

How to apply

To apply for this role please submit the following documents:

• CV
• A personal statement of up to 1000 words. You should set out in your statement why you are interested in the role and provide examples of where your skills and experience meet the criteria for this role as detailed above within the job description.

You can view your progress and application communications when you are logged into our recruitment system. Please check your spam/junk folders if you do not receive associated email updates.