Early Talent Advisor

Are you passionate about early talent and providing a high-end support service to graduates and apprentices? Looking for a role where no two days are the same?

At National Highways, we’re looking for an Early Talent Advisor to join our Early Talent team on a 12-month fixed term contract. 

Working with a large-volume caseload of early talent colleagues across the business, you’ll manage the day-to-day early talent programmes, acting as a subject matter expert for your areas whilst working closely with external partners (i.e. training providers) and supporting colleagues at various levels of the business. 

As well as this, you’ll play a key part in designing, developing and managing early talent programmes that build the critical skills our business needs, supporting the growth and long-term capability of our workforce whilst helping to nurture and retain future talent. Although you won’t be responsible for recruiting to our early talent programmes, you’ll be the lead for your areas on registering and onboarding your new starters with training providers. 

But that’s not all, you’ll project lead on high-profile projects which can vary from our Early Talent Awards, Early Talent Conference, CEO Challenge amongst other continuous improvement projects which will help to develop the Early Talent function, providing better engagement and outcomes for our early talent colleagues on programme. 

This role will be worked on a hybrid basis, with a minimum of two days per week in our Snowhill, Birmingham office.

• Design early talent solutions that are focused on attracting, retaining and developing talent across specific early talent programmes.


• Manage end to end early talent programmes on a day-to-day basis being the subject matter expert in your area. 


• Work with third party suppliers on the delivery of early talent initiatives, managing suppliers to ensure delivery against KPI’s.


• Develop internal and external communications and guidance to support the early talent strategy as well as supporting employees and line managers with the early talent process.


• Ensure data integrity, keeping all data sources up to date. Identifying any issues with data, seeking to correct errors and manage reporting and designing new reports in collaboration with other areas of HR.

About you.

• Proven experience managing end to end early talent programmes such as graduates, apprenticeships, internships or work experience initiatives. Preferably for a large multi-site employer.


• Working knowledge of apprenticeship programmes and apprenticeship levy funding, including supporting the administration or coordination of levy-funded training.


• Demonstratable experience coordinating projects and working with external suppliers to deliver early talent initiatives and programmes successfully.


• Proven expertise of building excellent stakeholder management skills with the ability to build strong relationships with stakeholders, providing guidance and support across the business and with external partners.


• Highly organised, proactive and solutions-focused, with strong attention to detail and the ability to manage multiple priorities while delivering an excellent learner and stakeholder experience.

About us.

Here at National Highways, we manage and improve England’s motorways and major A roads, helping our customers have safer, smoother and more reliable journeys. Our priorities are safety, customers and delivery, and at the core of this, are our values of passion, integrity, safety, teamwork and ownership.

Our HR directorate includes a wide range of services to support our people to be the best they can be, and to enable the organisation to achieve its goals and objectives.

We're fully committed to making National Highways a great place to work. We want an inclusive culture where our people feel informed, motivated, engaged - and always reaching for high levels of performance.

Through our People Strategy we're also building our company's resilience, making it better prepared for the future - and we're always striving to improve our day-to-day services.

External candidates will be offered a starting salary at the lower end of the pay scale, while current employees will be appointed in accordance with our established pay policy.

We are committed to creating a diverse environment and welcome applicants from all backgrounds.