Talent Manager at Novastar Ventures

About the role

As Talent Manager you will support the fast growth of our portfolio companies, proactively helping them build innovative and relevant human capital systems. You will quickly unearth key talent challenges they face, propose fast and effective solutions and closely manage their implementation.
You will act as an advisor and a coach in your areas of expertise and build a network of proven and trusted talent service providers available to our companies when the needs arise. Success in your role will mean that our portfolio companies have the tools to create environments where exceptional talent thrives, and tackle talent challenges in fast and effective ways.
In addition, you will play a significant role in ensuring the creation and smooth running of the internal Novastar talent initiatives and systems, enabling us to build a highly skilled, committed and productive team.

Who we are looking for:

• You believe in the potential of ambitious entrepreneurs to transform millions of lives and are committed and eager to help shape this dream.
• You love the culture and dynamics of fast-growing organizations. Preferably you have been an entrepreneur in the past, have worked in a fast-growing organization, or are in constant contact with entrepreneurs. You understand how businesses work.
• You easily build rapport and relationships with ambitious entrepreneurs
• You believe in the power of driving change through people
• You have a proven track record in building impactful and efficient human capital solutions in any of the following areas; hiring, performance management, shaping culture, team dynamics, collaboration and communication, HR processes, coaching and talent development.
• You are a keen listener with great ability to “hear beyond the words”. You are naturally able to sense issues in a team and what individuals need
• You have the proven ability to create and execute results-oriented projects in a highly demanding environment and manage multiple projects at a time. You are known for your strong ability to make things happen
• You are able to monitor ongoing projects and produce regular reports to various stakeholders
• Past experience in selection of and managing service providers is an added advantage.
• You are able to build and maintain relationships with diverse stakeholders involved in a project and influence them towards achieving the common goal
• Your written communication is strong, including the ability to write project proposals
• You have a proven ability to quickly connect dots, see patterns, identify causes and propose impactful solutions
• You have at least 8-9 years of diverse work experience
• You have worked in East or West Africa and are conversant with local business practices
• You listen carefully and respectfully to differing views

Responsibilities

Your responsibilities will include

Define the talent management support strategy (10%)

• Lead in capturing and fully understanding the context of our portfolio companies’ talent related challenges
• From the analysis, create a talent management support strategy that will be prototyped over a period of time
• Maintain a spirit of experimentation and quick adaptation; capture learnings and failures, and effectively feed this back to the talent strategy development

Build a dynamic pool of talent service providers (20%)

• Develop a deep understanding of talent service providers in the different markets to gain clarity on; their expertise, value, differentiating factor, quality of delivery, and understanding of fast-growing businesses
• Dynamically adjust the list of providers as they leave and enter the market and we gain experience working with them
• Act as the matchmaker that efficiently connects our portfolio companies with the right talent providers. Advise the companies in selecting the best and most relevant provider based on their talent needs.

Help companies build and implement innovative talent management approaches (50%)

• Responsible for scoping, resourcing, managing, monitoring and reporting on individual talent related projects
• Ensure there are clear and relevant Terms of Reference (ToRs) for all engagements, and closely oversee delivery and assess quality of outputs
• Depending on your area of expertise, create, introduce and drive implementation of solutions that address specific talent challenges for individual portfolio companies
• Identify patterns of frequent talent challenges and design portfolio-wide scalable solutions
• Identify best practices within the portfolio and facilitate the sharing of these via workshops, meetups and other channels
• Continuously keep abreast of market trends, proactively gather learnings and share insights with the Novastar team and portfolio companies to ensure they continue developing and innovating their people strategies

Internal talent support (20%)

• Assist in developing the Novastar talent systems. Keep evolving the systems to ensure they stay relevant and valuable to our context
• Responsible for the effective implementation of the internal talent management and development processes. Ensure that the Novastar team has the support to implement the systems consistently
• Identify training and development opportunities for Novastar team members
• Be part of creating a structured Venture Associate program for young, smart individuals looking to gain experience in the venture and social enterprise world.