Director of Talent Management

Independent consumer journalism only works if the people who test, investigate, and publish can do their best work. This role builds the talent system that turns a mission into consistent performance: clearer expectations, stronger managers, and careers people choose to stay for. You will be measured by whether the organization can staff its priorities, develop its leaders, and keep scarce expertise without losing its standards.

Performance Objectives

• Set a multi-year talent plan that closes critical skill gaps in journalism, testing, research, product, and data within the first two planning cycles.
• Install a performance system managers actually use, so goals, feedback, and development conversations are timely, fair, and tied to published outcomes.
• Build succession coverage for pivotal roles, with named successors and development plans for at least the top leadership and specialist seats.
• Raise manager capability so new people leaders can hire well, coach directly, and handle performance issues without defaulting to HR.
• Reduce avoidable attrition in hard-to-replace roles by diagnosing exit drivers and fixing the practices that cause them.
• Create equitable access to stretch work, sponsorship, and promotion, and report progress with evidence the leadership team can act on.
• Partner with executives to staff major initiatives before launch, not after vacancies stall the work.

Environment & Resources

You will report to the senior people leader and sit with executives who set editorial, research, and operating priorities. The team includes talent partners and specialists in learning, performance, and workforce planning; you will shape its mandate and capacity. You will have access to people data, engagement results, and the authority to redesign programs that do not change behavior. Budget is set annually against workforce priorities, with room to pilot tools before scaling them.

Essential Qualifications

• A track record leading talent, performance, or leadership development in a knowledge organization of similar scale.
• Evidence you have built succession and workforce plans that leaders used to make staffing decisions.
• Experience coaching senior managers through hiring, feedback, and performance decisions, not only designing the process.
• Fluency with people analytics sufficient to separate signal from survey noise and recommend a next action.
• Judgment in a mission-driven, expert culture where credibility matters as much as process.
• Clear writing and facilitation skills; you can get a skeptical leadership team to a decision.

Role Selling Points

• Work where rigor is the product: testing, research, and journalism set a high bar for how talent decisions are made.
• Shape practices across a nonprofit publisher that serves members, not shareholders.
• Influence both specialist careers and the leadership bench, not a single program.
• Join a growing organization that still expects independence, plain language, and proof.

Call to Action

If you have built talent systems that changed how leaders hire, develop, and keep people, apply with a short note on one outcome you owned and how you measured it.