Talent Acquisition Specialist

Dubai/Abu Dhabi

AED 15,000 per month

• The role will manage recruitment activity across teachers, middle leaders, senior school leaders and selected corporate positions, working closely with School HR teams, Principals, SLT members and hiring managers
• Manage day-to-day recruitment activity for assigned vacancies from approved requisition through to offer and confirmed joining
• Recruit across teachers, middle leadership, senior school leadership and Central Office positions
• Proactively source candidates through LinkedIn Recruiter, ATS platforms, education job boards, referrals, direct approaches, professional networks and other relevant channels
• Review applications, conduct initial screening interviews and prepare suitable candidate shortlists
• Coordinate interviews between candidates, Principals, SLT members and other hiring managers
• Ensure interview feedback is obtained promptly and follow up consistently with interviewers to keep recruitment processes moving
• Maintain regular communication with candidates throughout the recruitment process
• Coordinate reference checks, documentation, offer discussions and handover for onboarding
• Manage multiple vacancies simultaneously and ensure recruitment deadlines are met
• Support the annual teacher recruitment cycle
• Build pipelines for recurring and difficult-to-fill teaching positions, including specialist and regulated subject areas
• Proactively identify potential middle leaders, Vice Principals, Principals, Heads of School and other senior education leaders
• Maintain relationships with strong candidates even where an immediate vacancy may not exist.
• Develop familiarity with the different recruitment requirements of British and American curriculum schools
• Maintain a live UAE education talent map, with particular focus on Dubai and Abu Dhabi
• Track relevant talent across competitor schools and education groups. Maintain an up-to-date leadership map covering Principals, Vice Principals, Heads of School and key middle leadership positions
• Build and regularly refresh candidate pipelines for critical and recurring vacancies.
• Maintain records of previously interviewed candidates, strong runners-up and other potential future hires
• Use LinkedIn Recruiter, ATS databases and direct networking to identify and engage passive candidates
• Keep the Director of Human Resources informed of relevant talent movement and candidate availability in the market
• Stakeholder management and school partnership
• Recruitment Tracking and weekly reporting

 Criteria:

• Strong sourcing capability – ATSs, education job boards, direct sourcing, headhunting and building candidate pipelines
• Ability to develop and maintain live talent maps across UAE schools and education groups, particularly for recurring and difficult-to-fill positions
• Strong stakeholder management skills
• Comfortable managing multiple vacancies end-to-end, from sourcing and screening through interviews, offer negotiation before final handover to schools for onboarding
• Excellent spoken and written English, Arabic would be an advantage but isn’t essential
• Experience in teacher recruitment and ideally some exposure to middle/senior leadership hiring from the education sector or someone with the same experience from a specialist education recruitment agency who wants to go in-house. Good understanding of the UAE K–12 education landscape, particularly Dubai and Abu Dhabi, including familiarity with KHDA and ADEK requirements
• A key requirement of the role is strong recruitment execution: proactively sourcing candidates, maintaining live talent pipelines and market maps, screening candidates, coordinating interviews and feedback, maintaining accurate vacancy trackers and ensuring recruitment activity moves forward efficiently
• A relevant bachelor’s degree in HR, Business Administration or a related discipline.
• 4–5 years’ experience in talent acquisition of education professionals
• Strong experience in direct sourcing, market mapping, talent pipelining and headhunting
• Hands-on experience using multiple ATS platforms, LinkedIn Recruiter and other recruitment tools
• Must currently reside in the UAE

Please respect the criteria requirements and only apply if you meet these as you will not be considered if you do not. We thank you for your application, however due to the high volume of candidate applications, we only accept online applications in the first instance. Shortlisted candidates will be contacted, however if you are not successful on this occasion, your CV will be stored on our database but to make sure you do not miss out, keep checking our website, follow us on Twitter and follow our Sapphire Recruitment LinkedIn page.