Senior People and Talent Manager

Senior People and Talent Manager

Remote

Senior People and Talent Manager

Position: Full-Time

Location: This position offers remote work from Los Angeles/New York/Denver. Please be aware that applications from candidates residing outside of California/Denver/New York will not be considered.

Movement Strategy is looking for a Senior Manager, People & Talent to oversee recruiting and people operations across Movement Strategy and Newfangled Studios. You will report to the Director of People, and work closely with hiring managers, department leads, and the leadership teams at both agencies.

This is a two-sided role, and we want to be upfront about that. Reporting into the Director of People, roughly half your time will be spent in full-cycle recruiting in a creative, social-first environment where the best candidates aren't applying to job posts. The rest is the operational spine underneath everything, policy, compliance, leave administration, onboarding, and the programming that makes people want to stay. You'll go from drafting a leave policy to running a final-round debrief in the same afternoon. If that sounds energizing, keep reading. If it sounds like whiplash, this probably isn't the one.

The pace isn't steady either. You'll have stretches with several live searches running at once, and stretches where the work shifts almost entirely into HR and policy. If you like adjusting your own throttle and moving fluidly between two very different kinds of work, this is the job.

Movement Strategy creates content and campaigns for the world's most exciting brands. We win awards, make headlines, shatter engagement numbers and celebrate the journey along the way. It's why companies like Amazon, Crocs, Bravo and Airlab come to us again and again.

We're fully remote with hubs in New York, Denver, and LA, and a presence all across the US. We believe collaboration is what takes our work from good to great, and at times, even to legendary status. We champion diverse opinions and creativity in every department, and provide professional development and learning opportunities with the goal of helping you discover your best work today, and learn how to make it even better in the future.

Key Focus Areas

Talent Acquisition: 50%

• Run full-cycle recruiting across both agencies: intake, sourcing strategy, screening, interview coordination, offer, and close
• Partner with hiring managers to define what "creative excellence" looks like before the first resume - scorecards, interview plans, panel design
• Source actively for creative, strategy, paid media and account roles; build pipelines for the roles we hire repeatedly so we're not starting from zero each time
• Experience recruiting for roles where portfolio, book, or reel matters as much as resume, and you know how to evaluate that fairly
• You understand passive candidate dynamics in creative and social spaces, where the best people aren't job-searching and don't respond to a generic outreach template
• Own recruiting operations in Greenhouse: data hygiene, stage integrity, and reporting on time-to-fill, pass-through, and pipeline health
• Keep our process structured, consistent, and defensible, with documented rationale and equitable evaluation criteria
• Represent both agencies well to candidates, including the ones we don't hire

HR & People Operations: 40%

• Draft, update, and maintain policies and the employee handbook for two operating companies. You should be able to take a messy business need and come back with a clear, compliant draft that's ready for review, not a blank page and a list of questions
• Maintain multi-state employment compliance day to day, including wage and hour, classification, required notices, and postings, and partner with the EVP on the calls that need escalation
• Administer leaves and accommodations end to end, including the interactive process and the documentation that goes with it
• Manage the employee lifecycle across our systems, from onboarding to status changes, offboarding, and records, and keep data clean across both entities
• Support performance and engagement cycles, including review administration, survey deployment, and pulling the signal out of the results
• Build process where it doesn't exist yet and improve it where it's clunky

DEI & Culture Stewardship: 10%

• Serve as the internal thought partner on DEI, working alongside our fractional DEI partner to turn strategy into practice across both agencies
• Bring a real point of view. We want someone who can tell us where our practices fall short and push on it, not someone waiting to be told what the priorities are
• Build inclusive practice into how we hire and how we write policy, so it lives inside the work rather than running as a program on the side
• Ensure equitable access to development, opportunity, and recognition across both agencies

Qualifications + Key Focus Areas

Recruiting & Talent Acquisition

• Full-cycle recruiting experience in an agency, creative, or media environment, you understand how creative and social teams are built and what those candidates actually care about
• Experience recruiting for roles where portfolio, book, or reel matters as much as resume, and you know how to evaluate that fairly
• Comfort sourcing and engaging passive candidates in creative and social spaces, where the best people aren't job-searching and don't respond to a generic outreach template
• Fluency with an ATS, we use Greenhouse; comparable systems are fine

HR, Compliance & People Operations

• Working knowledge of multi-state employment law. You know what you know, you know what needs a lawyer, and you know the difference
• Demonstrated policy writing, bring examples, we'll ask about them
• Experience administering leaves and accommodations, including the interactive process
• Fluency with an HRIS, we use Rippling and Lattice; comparable systems are fine

Across Both

• 6+ years across HR and recruiting, with real depth on both sides. We're not looking for a recruiter willing to learn HR, or an HR generalist who's done a little sourcing
• Comfort working in an agency environment where priorities shift
• A substantive, current point of view on DEI in practice, not a philosophy, but specifics about what you've actually changed and what didn't work, and experience partnering with external advisors or consultants to move it forward

Nice to have

• Experience supporting a team through significant organizational change or integration
• Compensation analysis or leveling framework experience
• Experience mentoring at least one direct report
• Background in an agency that grew quickly or acquired

Ideal Qualities

• High energy, passionate, curious, confident, and tenacious in learning, coupled with the ability to navigate the nuances of different teams and disciplines across both agencies.
• Must communicate quickly and accurately, think quickly or improvise, and present confidently.
• You communicate directly and plainly. We don't do corporate-speak here, and neither should our policies.
• You hold confidence completely. You'll be in the middle of sensitive things constantly, and people need to know it lands nowhere.
• You can hold two speeds at once the urgency recruiting demands and the precision that policy and compliance work demands and you know which one a given moment calls for.
• Should be a nimble self-starter and quickly adjust to internal and external teams in an ever-changing environment; identify opportunity with bias to action.
• You're proactive and naturally curious about the digital and social space, constantly looking for opportunities to evolve the department and advance the work.
• You are passionate about the work you do and treat the teams you support as if their success were your own.
• Have a track record of success in building strong relationships, leading teams, influencing others, and navigating culture across two agencies.
• You have a diverse and inclusive perspective and can turn it into something concrete a changed process, a better panel, a policy that works for more people.
• You make others' jobs easier (no matter who they are or what they do).
• You create a positive and open environment, and people trust you with hard things.
• Your attention to detail is unmatched, especially where the stakes are compliance, an offer letter, or someone'