Talent Acquisition Manager at ACORN PLMS PTY LTD – Canberra, Australian Capital Territory

About ACORN PLMS PTY LTD

At Acorn PLMS, we are on a mission to transform the corporate learning experience. Our cutting-edge Performance Learning Management System (PLMS) software is powered by AI and designed to ensure that what people learn directly contributes to their exceptional performance in business. Corporate performance and learning needs a revolution, and Acorn PLMS is the antidote. We are the only solution that guides learners step by step to master the specific capabilities required for their roles, ultimately accelerating organisational performance.

We are open to individuals based in Sydney or Canberra, Australia – this is an in-office role.

About the role

The Talent Acquisition Manager is an experienced recruiter and strategic partner responsible for attracting, engaging, and hiring exceptional talent across Acorn. You’ll own the end-to-end recruitment process — from sourcing and proactively identifying high-quality candidates through to offer management and onboarding — ensuring a seamless, inclusive, and high-quality candidate experience. Operating with autonomy, you’ll partner with hiring managers and senior leaders to shape talent strategies, advise on market trends, and ensure we continue to build a diverse and high-performing team. As a senior individual contributor, you’ll optimise recruitment processes, and champion Acorn’s employer brand in the market.

Key Responsibilities

Manage full-cycle recruitment for roles across multiple teams, ensuring timely, quality, and values-aligned hires. Partner with business leaders to forecast hiring needs and develop targeted sourcing strategies. Build and maintain strong talent pipelines through proactive sourcing, including targeted LinkedIn outreach, referrals, and channel experimentation to attract top talent as we scale Lead structured interview processes and coach hiring teams to ensure a fair and inclusive candidate experience. Build and maintain a strong talent pipeline for future growth areas. Champion Acorn’s employer brand by delivering a consistent, engaging narrative in all candidate communications. Analyse recruitment data and metrics to assess performance, identify trends, and recommend process improvements. Collaborate with the People Experience team to ensure smooth transitions from recruitment to onboarding. As we grow, mentor and support junior recruiters or hiring coordinators, sharing best practices and tools. Contribute to broader People & Culture projects, including workforce planning, DE&I initiatives, and EVP development.

Required Experience

5–8 years of experience in talent acquisition or recruitment roles, ideally within fast-paced SaaS or tech environments. Previous recruitment agency experience preferred Proven success managing end-to-end recruitment processes across a variety of technical and commercial functions. Highly self-directed and able to operate independently with minimal oversight, bringing structure, momentum, and ownership to the recruitment function. Proactive, solutions-oriented mindset with a strong bias toward action - continuously identifying opportunities to improve hiring outcomes and candidate experience. Experience recruiting across multiple regions (Australia and Canada preferred), with flexibility to collaborate across time zones and occasional overlap in working hours. AI-first and systems-oriented, constantly looking for ways to improve, automate, and scale hiring workflows while maintaining a high-quality candidate experience. Strong understanding of sourcing strategies, recruitment marketing, and employer branding. Demonstrated ability to partner with senior stakeholders and influence hiring outcomes. Experience using applicant tracking systems (ATS – we use Rippling) and recruitment analytics tools. Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and negotiation skills. Familiarity with diversity, equity, and inclusion principles and their application in recruitment.

5 Key Capabilities

The best part… we use Acorn for Acorn. We believe in the power of our Managers and Staff being aligned on the 5 capabilities needed for each role, and the level that we expect for any given role, using our Acorn AI tool to streamline this consistently across our business. The 4 levels comprise Foundational, Developing, Proficient, and Advanced.

Here are the 5 capabilities for our Talent Acquisition Manager to give you an idea of what the role entails, and the level we are looking for from it:

Capability-Aligned Assessment & Selection: Design and deliver capability‑aligned assessment and selection to make fair, compliant, and predictive hiring decisions that improve quality of hire, candidate experience, and time to productivity. Proficiency Level – Proficient: At the proficient stage, you lead capability-aligned assessment. You convert frameworks into structured interviews and work samples, securing hiring buy-in and compliance. Your iteration improves fairness, predictive validity and time-to-productivity. Hiring Manager Partnership & Interviewer Enablement: Build partnerships with hiring managers and enable interviewers to align role expectations and deliver high-quality, timely and fair hiring that meets business needs. Proficiency Level – Advanced: At the advanced stage, you co-own outcomes with managers. You co-design roles and interviews, build scorecards and bias-aware training, mentor recruiters, refining with data. Hiring is faster, fairer and capability-aligned. Process Improvement & ATS/HR Tech Integration: Optimise talent acquisition processes and integrate HR technology to ensure reliable, compliant data and accelerate hiring while reducing rework. Proficiency Level – Proficient: At the proficient stage, you lead improvements to ATS/HR workflows and automations. You map and prioritise evidence‑based fixes with HRIS, drive adoption, ensure compliance, mentor peers, reduce time‑to‑hire and rework. Recruitment Funnel Analytics & Performance Optimisation: Analyse and optimise the recruitment funnel to improve conversion, time to hire, quality of hire and cost while safeguarding candidate experience and fairness. Proficiency Level – Advanced: At the advanced stage, you lead funnel analytics and experiments to improve conversion, quality and cost. You set KPIs, link hiring to goals, coach teams, protect candidate experience and equity. Talent Market Intelligence & Strategic Sourcing: Apply talent market intelligence to identify, engage, and pipeline scarce talent to improve quality of hire, shorten time‑to‑fill, and inform workforce planning. Proficiency Level – Advanced: At the advanced stage, you turn labour and competitor data into hard-to-fill sourcing. You improve pipelines and tools, coaching ethical, inclusive practice. Insights shape workforce plans and improve hires.

Why Join Acorn PLMS?

This is a unique opportunity to join a rapidly growing global SaaS company redefining corporate learning. You’ll have the autonomy to shape our brand and marketing strategy at scale while working with a passionate, high-performing executive team. At Acorn, you’ll be part of a culture that values innovation, impact, and learning – and where your work directly drives the success of millions of learners worldwide.

Location

We are open to individuals based in Sydney or Canberra, Australia We are an office-first company, meaning we work from our local offices the majority (if not all) of the time. We want to create cool stuff with great people, and we know from experience that is best done through daily moments like the coffee run, walk to grab lunch, or quick huddles. Being able to capitalise on this is key to our ongoing success and a large part of the reason we can work at the pace we do. Please note candidates will need to be in commuting distance to our office based in Sydney CBD or Canberra CBD.

Our Recruitment Process

Acorn is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone feels valued and respected. We are an equal opportunities employer and welcome applications from all qualified candidates. We aim to ensure that our recruitment process is fair and accessible to everyone and encourage candidates to request any accommodations needed during the application or interview stages.

About Working at Acorn

Acorn is the hub for learning and performance for over 3 million active learners globally. The work you do — whether that’s writing lines of code, designing the layout of a dashboard, or talking to customers — helps real people grow not just professionally, but personally. In the space of 10 years, we’ve grown to a global platform in the heart of many major organisations’ ecosystems. There’s still so much more to do, and we need people who are keen to help us journey into the next phase on board! And since we’re still growing, there’s so much you can learn on that journey with us. To find out more about life at Acorn, our Values and working with us, check out our website at https://acorn.works and see our Life At Acorn video here! https://youtu.be/2BGUk-n3FrQ?si=U_sS1Y5ZSP0tNtZW

Compensation

One of our core values is transparency and we believe in being upfront with candidates throughout the recruitment process, to make sure expectations are aligned.

This role sits within a salary range of ($91,5k - $130,5k) + 12% superannuation contribution, commensurate with experience and qualifications.

The pay range for this role is:91,500 - 130,500 AUD per year(AU)