02 Oct
|
tbk Creative
|
London
02 Oct
tbk Creative
London
Role Overview
Company: tbk Location: London, Ontari(hybrid)
Type: Senior, full time
Salary: $80,000 t$110,000
We are hiring one person town how tbk finds people, grows them, and tells the market what we do. It is a senior role, it is new, and you would build it in AI from the first week.
Our team makes our clients better. This role makes tbk better.
The big picture
tbk is an AI-first agency on a mission tbe the firm other groups rely on tgrow with confidence. For the last twyears our leadership team has been rebuilding what we do: new services, new delivery models, new processes tested directly with clients. AI has completely changed our game. We are shipping faster than we ever have. Every project runs differently from the last one, on new tools, with our people building AI agents of their own tdthe work alongside them. This is a new world, tsay it lightly, and it is never going back tthe way we did it before.
What we are excited about is what it frees up. More time on performance strategy, more time with clients, more growth. That is what we always wanted tbe spending our days on.
What is hard is everything underneath. Our treasured, predictable checklists dnot apply any more. Our processes and some of our software are well out of date. Sour senior people are in the rebuild, retooling the whole company for an AI-first world, and that is where their hours go.
As you can see, HR is what got squeezed in this new reality.
Give it about twmore years and we come out the other side with delivery that is smooth and predictable again. Getting there is on our senior team. They are rebuilding the services, the processes and the tools while still running client work, and that is where every spare hour goes.
Which is why nobody has been pointed at us. Talent and comms sits with those same leaders, each carrying a piece of it between client deadlines. Our team has held the client experience together while the systems around them were taken apart and put back together, and they have earned better than that. Swe are hiring one person ttake talent and comms whole and build it properly.
And yes, you would have at least one AI agent of your own, for talent and for comms, running your day alongside you from your first week.
The role
Own talent and communications for tbk: find and hire the people, help them build careers here, and put our work in front of the market. You report tMelissa McInerney, our CEO and founder, with twhours a month and the room tbuild this your way. Everyone else here is pointed at client service, delivery and automation. You are pointed at us. tbk is your client.
You would be building it from scratch, in AI
This role is new. Npredecessor, nplaybook, nsystem waiting for you tinherit, which means the shape of it is yours tdecide. It alsmeans you are the architect. tbk’s whole people function gets built in AI and you are the one building it. The agents that source and screen. The repository that holds our policy and our performance records. The workflows that keep documentation current without anyone chasing it. We are asking you tbuild something better than the HR software you would otherwise buy, the way the rest of this company already builds.
You would start with a budget, an employment lawyer on retainer, a CEO whwants this built, and a team whhave been waiting a long time for someone whose whole job is them.
We will be straight with you about the pace. Our senior team is deep in the rebuild and their hours are spoken for, syou would be working with a lot of independence from your first week. The person whloves this job is the one whsees a blank page and starts filling it.
What you would own
- Recruiting and the talent pipeline. Three tfour hires a year, and we want them found rather than advertised for. Direct outreach on LinkedIn, real relationships across this market, a candidate CRM that becomes something we own. You run the whole thing: sourcing, screening, coordinating, offers, onboarding.
- The AI build. Agents, skills and workflows for talent and comms, built by you and shared with the rest of the team. This is not a side project. It is how the function runs.
- Candidate experience. Every person whapplies here hears back. Everyone we interview hears an outcome within 45 days.
- Our story. Twwebsite case studies a month and three social posts a week, plus our community and giving programme. This is the largest single block of your week. You manage the production. Our creative and web people dthe making. You interview the team, gather what you need, write it, and drive it through tpublished. It is alswhat makes recruiting easier, sales easier, and the whole place prouder.
- Awards. Choosing the right ones, writing the submissions, and entering far more of them than we dtoday.
- The client review programme. Google, Clutch, and the channels that count, run with a cadence and an owner.
- Our reputation as a place twork. You’ll own how tbk shows up online as an employer, and respond twhat people say about us thoughtfully.
- The team’s experience. A monthly one-on-one with every person here, confidential, about workload and career and whatever they need tsay. Then a quarterly read back teach manager on how their team is doing, anonymised, sour managers get something most agency managers never get.
- The annual review cycle. Calendar, templates, calibration across managers, completion. Every person here gets a proper review, on time, every year.
- Documentation and the performance file. Every craft conversation recorded within 48 hours, in a repository you design, sa conversation from eight months agis there when somebody needs it.
- Compliance and policy. Employee handbook, policy, and employment agreements reviewed quarterly with our counsel. You stay current on Ontariemployment standards and you know when tcall the lawyer.
- Manager coaching. You run the training that lifts how feedback gets given and recorded here. Part of the job is making parts of the job unnecessary.
- Community. Our charitable giving and community programme is yours tshape.
- The scorecard.
A weekly and monthly talent and comms scorecard tleadership, severyone can see what is moving.
What you dnot own:
Twthings stay with our managers, on purpose.
- The quality of the team’s work. Managers decide whether somebody’s work is good, because they are the ones whcan. You make sure the conversation happened, was clear and kind, and is on file.
- Billable client work. The day this role picks up a client deadline is the day the people work starts slipping, swe are protecting it from the start.
- Design and build. You own what our story says and when it ships. Our creative and web people make it.
What success looks like
Week 1. You have met every person here, an hour each, nagenda beyond listening. You are intthe systems, the agreements, the last year of reviews, and the AI stack the rest of the team runs on. Week 2. The one-on-one cycle is on calendars. You are pulling baselines: tenure, applicants per posting, where our reviews stand, where leadership hours are going.
By week 4.
- Your first AI skills and agents are shipped and in the team’s hands.
- The HR repository that will live in AI is planned and architected.
- Your first website case study is published and the social cadence has started, three posts a week.
- Community and giving requests have an owner and a route through, which is you.
- Your first award submission is picked and underway.
- Every applicant waiting on us has an answer, and your first direct outreach is live.
By month 2. The content cadence holds without reminders. The candidate CRM is built and structured, with consent language right from the first outreach and your agents reading and writing tit. The compliance work is scoped as a project with an end date. By 6 months.
The talent and comms AI stack is running. Sourcing, screening, drafting, review responses and documentation, all on agents you can open up and explain t
- anyone here.
- Handbook rewritten and acknowledged by every employee. Employment agreements reviewed with counsel, tw- quarters running.
- Annual review cycle designed, scheduled, templates in managers’ hands. First quarterly team feedback report delivered t- every manager. Feedback and documentation training delivered t- all people managers.
- Award shortlist agreed and the first submissions in.
- Client review programme live across our priority channels.
By 12 months. Every role filled with three qualified finalists t
- choose from, out of a pipeline you built.
- Every applicant heard back.
Every interviewed candidate given an outcome inside 45 days.
- 24 case studies published, 12 awards entered, 3 shortlists or wins.
- Annual reviews completed and on file for every person, inside the cycle window.
- Our employer reviews answered and climbing.
- Our managers are measurably better at feedback because of how you coached them.
- The function runs on AI you architected, and you’re focussed on innovative new programs at tbk.
Whyou are
- You build with AI at an expert level. This function gets built in AI from the first week, and you are its architect. You are already making agents, workflows and prompts that dwork you used tdby hand, and you can open one up and explain how it is put together. Everybody here works this way. Our developers, our strategists, our marketers, all of them.
- People confide in you. Our team will look forward ttheir time with you and leave feeling better than when they came in. This can’t be taught, and you likely already know it about yourself. People have always trusted you with things they don’t tell anyone else.
- The same person doesn’t bring you the same problem twice. That’s how we know the coaching worked. When someone’s workload feels unmanageable, their manager is unclear, or their career has stalled, you help them move. Three months later, they’re somewhere better. Listening is where it starts. The real work is finding solutions that are right for the person and right for tbk.
We share the realities of our market and our business openly, syou’ll be working with the full picture. Holding that balance well takes creativity, good judgment and the confidence tfind answers others might miss.
- You have grown leaders. People you developed are running things now. That might be from a senior seat inside a company. It might be from running an agency or a studiyourself and finding the part you loved most was building the team. If that’s you, this role puts that work at the centre of what you do.
- You like a performance conversation, and the paperwork that makes it stick. You help people see where they are, where they want tbe and how tget there, then you write it down sthe plan holds.
- You invest in your growth every year. For the past 10+ years, you’ve always had something on the go: a course, a certification, a designation, a coach. We’ll fund your development here, and we want someone whwas already doing it on their own.
- You write well. Job ads that get replies, case studies people finish, award submissions that win. If writing is a chore for you, this is not your role.
- You build relationships by instinct. You know people, and people know you.
- You are detail obsessed where it counts. The small print in contracts. Compliance.
- You want tbuild something. This function is small today and will not stay that way.
And the rest of what makes this a fit: 5+ years in HR, people, or talent roles, including at least 2 where the function was yours trun. Agency, studi
- or startup experience counts double here, whether you did HR inside one or ran one yourself.
- Full-cycle recruiting experience, with direct sourcing and outreach at the centre of how you fill a role. Working knowledge of the Ontari- Employment Standards Act,
human rights obligations, and what belongs in an employment agreement and what belongs in policy documents.
Experience owning an annual review or performance cycle end t- end. A body of writing you can show us. Case studies, award submissions, internal comms, careers content, anything where you had t- make something sound worth caring about.
- Something you have built with AI that you can walk us through in the last 3 months.
- Discretion that holds under pressure. People will tell you things, and the whole role depends on them being right to. The confidence tspeak up early. When you can see a better way, we want thear it from you first, while there is still time t- act on it.
Helpful, not required. CHRP or CHRL, or working toward one.
Experience building a candidate CRM or ATS from scratch. Award submission writing. Running a review programme on Google or Clutch. Recruitment marketing. Supporting a team through a period of significant change.
You dnot need a specific degree or corporate HR experience at scale. Small and hands-on beats large and specialised here. You alsdnot need every bullet above. If you are strong on people, writing and AI and lighter on the compliance side, apply and tell us where the gaps are. We have an employment lawyer on retainer and we would rather back you on the technical side than compromise on the human one.
What you can expect from us
We’re a flat team with few layers, and everyone owns a piece of the client outcome. That means we can move in days, not months. Bring us a problem and you’ll get an answer fast. If it’s no, we’ll tell you why. If it’s yes, you’ll see this team make it happen within a week.
The people you’ll grow are worth it. They’re specialists whlove the industries they serve and lead their fields in performance and AI. Some are still learning tsit in front of clients. Your job is tkeep them growing. Ours is tclear the road when something gets in the way.
Whthrives here
Seven values decide whthrives at tbk:
- Relentlessly curious. You ask why like a kid, until you hit the golden nugget. You gand find out.
- We grow on purpose. Growth here is deliberate, for you and for the people beside you. Somebody is significantly better because you are on their team.
- Unstoppable. You keep going when it gets hard. The answer is never no. It is always how.
- Candid and kind. You say the hard thing directly, and warmly. Clarity is kindness.
- Client obsessed. We move mountains for the leaders whtrust us. Their goals are written down and we know them by heart.
- Own it, lead it. You carry things tdone, without being asked. Ownership here is the outcome, never the task list.
- Always better. Good is the enemy of better. The second version is better because of you.
How we work
Full time, at least 37.5 hours a week. Yes, as an agency we dlog time sit’s important t
- be comfortable with performance logging. Hybrid, based out of our downtown London, Ontari- office, with one day onsite each week. Versatile schedule with root hours of 10:30 t- 3:00.
- Four Friday afternoons off in the summer. Benefits package. Vacation, health and dental, and a learning budget we expect you t- spend. An 18-year-old, profitable, award-winning agency with trusted national clients and room t- build something bigger. Our stack includes HubSpot, Claude, ChatGPT, Google and Slack. It changes quick, s- being comfortable with ongoing change is part of the job.
How tapply
Send us your CV, a writing sample, and a cover letter written for us. For the sample, something you already wrote is fine and preferred. A case study, an award submission, a careers page, an internal memyou were proud of. We would rather read real work than something written for us.
For the cover letter, one page is plenty. We would love tstart the conversation around these four topics:
- How dyou know you are good with people? Not what you would say about yourself. What keeps happening that tells you it is true.
- Somebody you grew. A person whis further along because of you, and what you did.
- What have you built with AI? An agent, an automation, a workflow, a skill, a prompt you reuse. Tell us what it does, what it replaced, and what you would build next if you had the time.
- What you would want tknow about tbk before saying yes.
Use AI thelp you write it if that is how you work. We do. Just make sure what lands in our inbox sounds like you, because that is the job. The process, syou can plan for it:
- Apply with your custom cover letter and writing sample.
- A 30-minute call with Melissa. Not a test. A conversation about what you would want tbuild here.
- A 90-minute working session. You will see a real brief in advance and we will work through it together.
- A conversation with our team. You would be talking with our senior leadership team, the people you would work closely alongside.
- Offer.
Melissa McInerney CEO & Chief Creative Officer, tbk
“Thanks for your interest in a career with tbk. Everyone who’s employed here pushes the boundaries of what is possible. Each of us are committed tbeing better than we were yesterday, solving real business challenges with technology, strategy, and creativity. I invite you tjoin our team of smart, driven problem solvers.”
Our Hiring Process
As an employer of choice, tbk aims tbe welcoming and transparent in our candidate selection process.
We thank all applicants for their interest; however, only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.
Equal Opportunities:
tbk is an equal opportunity employer that values diversity. We dnot discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital, veteran, or disability status.
tbk values diversity and is committed tcreating an inclusive work environment. We provide equal employment opportunity for all applicants and employees. We dnot discriminate based on any legally-protected class or characteristic. Employment decisions are made based on qualifications, merit, and business needs. If you need assistance or accommodation due ta disability, please let your recruiter know.
📌 Head of Talent and Communications (London)
🏢 tbk Creative
📍 London