Senior Commercial Talent Acquisition Specialist
Sporty Group · EMEA
Preferred Location: Europe or ZA
Reporting to: Global Talent Acquisition Lead
About the role
We’re looking for a Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist to personally lead our most senior, complex and business critical searches while helping the wider Talent Acquisition team deliver at a higher standard.
Your remit will span our Commercial, Operations and Support functions. You’ll own a focused portfolio of priority searches, act as a trusted adviser to senior leaders and provide practical guidance to colleagues navigating challenging hiring requirements.
This is a hands-on player-coach role. Alongside delivering your own hires, you’ll help colleagues strengthen their search strategies, assessment judgement and stakeholder management. You’ll lead through expertise, coaching and influence, with success reflected in both the hires you deliver and the capability you build across the team.
What you'll be doing
Lead senior and business critical hiring
- Own end-to-end recruitment for senior leadership, specialist and business critical positions, including sensitive or confidential searches where required.
- Translate business priorities into clear hiring briefs, advising leaders on role scope, candidate profiles, seniority, location, compensation and assessment.
- Build and execute targeted search strategies, using talent mapping, direct sourcing and personalised engagement to reach senior and hard-to-find candidates.
- Lead kick-offs, calibration sessions and hiring discussions that clarify expectations, challenge assumptions and support timely, evidence-based decisions.
- Apply sound judgement when assessing leadership capability, relevant experience and transferable backgrounds, particularly where requirements are evolving.
- Manage complex offers, counter-offers and sensitive candidate conversations, maintaining trust and momentum throughout the process.
Coach colleagues and strengthen team delivery
- Provide regular, practical coaching through search reviews, candidate calibration and feedback on sourcing, assessment and stakeholder conversations.
- Help colleagues diagnose stalled searches, refine their approach and resolve difficult hiring challenges, building their confidence and independence.
- Support priority searches beyond your own portfolio, stepping in where your expertise can help unblock progress or improve outcomes.
- Partner with the Global Talent Acquisition Lead to prioritise critical hiring, identify capacity constraints and recommend where additional support or a change in approach is needed.
- Share effective practices and turn successful approaches into tools, guidance and ways of working that the wider team can use.
Improve recruitment performance
- Use recruitment data, market insight and candidate feedback to identify risks, explain trade-offs and recommend action across priority searches.
- Maintain accurate records and clear reporting in Greenhouse, giving stakeholders visibility of progress, blockers and next steps.
- Strengthen structured, inclusive assessment practices and ensure a thoughtful candidate experience, including for senior candidates navigating confidential moves.
- Lead practical improvements to sourcing, assessment, workflows and automation, demonstrating their impact on hiring quality, conversion, speed and candidate experience.
What you'll bring
- A strong track record of personally delivering senior, complex and business-critical hires across commercial and business functions, ideally within iGaming and/or FinTech.
- Experience leading targeted searches for leadership and director-level appointments, from initial scoping and market mapping through to offer acceptance.
- Demonstrated ability to operate as a player-coach: delivering your own recruitment portfolio while improving the judgement, capability and effectiveness of colleagues.
- Credibility with senior stakeholders, including evidence of constructively challenging requirements, influencing hiring decisions and navigating competing priorities.
- Strong hands-on capability in direct sourcing, candidate assessment, offer negotiation and closing.
- Commercial understanding and the ability to connect hiring decisions to business priorities, quickly building knowledge of unfamiliar functions or talent markets.
- Sound judgement and discretion when handling ambiguous requirements, sensitive appointments and complex candidate conversations.
- The ability to translate recruitment data and market evidence into clear recommendations and practical interventions.
- Significant hands-on experience using Greenhouse for workflow management, data quality, reporting and stakeholder visibility.
- Evidence of improving recruitment processes or tools. Experience with Greenhouse integrations, automation or other recruitment technology would be an advantage.
- High autonomy, accountability and a consistent commitment to inclusive, evidence-based and candidate-centred hiring.
What's in it for you
- Sporty is a remote first company in pursuit of sustainability
- A competitive salary + individual performance based bonuses every quarter
- 28 days annual leave
- Top of the line equipment
- Annual company retreats to provide great internal networking opportunities
If you're interested, we encourage you to apply! Every application is reviewed by a member of our team (AI is not used in our recruitment process), and we aim to respond within 72 hours.
*We are committed to maintaining a fair, secure and authentic recruitment process. Applications submitted using false, misleading or fraudulent information, including impersonated or fake profiles, will not be considered. Where reasonably necessary to protect the integrity and security of our recruitment process, we may verify a candidate’s identity and/or the accuracy of information provided during the recruitment process. Any such checks will be carried out in a proportionate and appropriate manner and in accordance with applicable data protection and employment laws.