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Talent Manager
Job Description
Location: Marylebone, London
Type: Permanent
Work model: Hybrid, 4 days in Marylebone studio
Reports to: VP, Operations
About Us – Crafting Visionary Creativity.
CLOSER is a creative company continuously crafting how humans both understand the world and experience it. Home to the world’s most skilled practitioners in immersive world building and creative craft, we operate three businesses at the centre of the modern consumer economy.
CLOSER Studios – End-to-end services to realize narratives, environments and cultural moments that shape how brands appear in the world and how consumers experience them.
CLOSER Experiences – A platform creating immersive environments, installations and managing cultural venues where brands engage audiences physically and emotionally.
CLOSER Brands – A platform for launching and scaling consumer companies through structured joint ventures with Fortune 100 companies.
While the primary focus for this role is within CLOSER Studios, all employees have the opportunity to support our various businesses where needed or desired.
The Role
As Talent Manager you will source, place, and champion the creative talent that brings CLOSER's work to life. From spotting the next great Art Director or 3D Designer to giving a returning collaborator the warmest possible welcome back, you will be on the front line of maintaining our position as home to the world's most skilled practitioners in immersive world building and creative craft.
This role is as much about people as it is about process. You will build genuine, lasting relationships with a network of exceptional creative and production talent, lead the search for new voices across contract and permanent hires, and make sure our talent experience at CLOSER — from a first conversation to a leadership promotion — feels considered, professional, and human.
You will work closely with Operations and Creative leadership, acting as a trusted advocate for talent inside the business and a compelling ambassador for CLOSER outside it. This is a genuine talent-first role for someone who loves discovering brilliance, nurturing careers, and building a studio's reputation as an incredible place to work.
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Responsibilities
Talent Acquisition & Network Building
- Lead the search for outstanding contract and permanent creative and production talent, using your network, instinct, and curiosity to spot potential collaborators before anyone else does.
- Build and champion CLOSER's talent network, becoming the person the studio turns to whenever a project needs the right person near or long term.
- Grow CLOSER's profile in the market - promoting live roles, general callouts, and the studio's culture across LinkedIn and beyond to attract talent that might not otherwise come looking.
- Take ownership of every application that comes through the door, ensuring every candidate - successful or not - has a positive, respectful experience with CLOSER.
- Shape a shortlisting and interview process that gives creative leadership genuine choice, while keeping momentum and pace for the business.
Relationship & Career Management
- Build long-term, trusted relationships with friends of the house and contract talent, staying close to their career progression and bringing them back to CLOSER at the right moments.
- Be a consistent, human point of contact for talent throughout their time with CLOSER, permanent or contract - someone who makes people feel genuinely valued, not just booked or employed.
- Champion talent internally, ensuring creative and production leads know the strength and range of the network available to them.
Onboarding & Offboarding
- Own the full onboarding and offboarding journey for permanent and contract talent at CLOSER.
- Make a new collaborator’s first day feel like the start of something good - clear on their role, their position within the organization, the resources available to them, our ways of working and values.
- Manage NDAs and contracts with precision and care for both permanent hires and contractors, protecting CLOSER and our talent alike.
- Handle leavers with the same care as new starters - managing exits, access removal, and final logistics smoothly and respectfully, whatever the reason someone's moving on.
- Create a returning-contractor experience that feels like a welcome back, reintroducing people to the studio, its people, and its ways of working with warmth and clarity.
- Partner with Legal and IT to keep onboarding and offboarding smooth behind the scenes, even when the process itself may be complex.
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Skills & Experience
- Proven experience in a talent acquisition, recruitment, or freelance management role within a creative agency, studio, or comparable environment.
- A genuine passion for discovering and nurturing exceptional creative talent, with an instinct for who will thrive at CLOSER.
- An existing network across freelance creative and production disciplines, or a demonstrated ability to build one quickly.
- Experience working with global fashion, luxury, or premium lifestyle brands and/or talent that has been successful in those environments.
- Experience managing the practicalities of employment and contract engagement - contracts, NDAs, and compliance - without losing sight of the human experience behind them.
- Excellent relationship-building and communication skills, with the warmth and consistency to make talent want to come back.
- Confident stakeholder management, comfortable representing talent's interests to creative leadership and Legal alike.
- Highly organised, with the attention to detail that complex contracting and compliance work demands.
- Calm, proactive, and energised by a fast-moving creative environment with multiple live conversations at once.
- Proficiency with Google Workspace, Slack, and LinkedIn Recruiter or equivalent sourcing tools.
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