Internal Talent Marketplace Recovery Leader — Industrial Automation

The mandate

The platform launched with high registration but now recommends generic projects, overlooks plant-based engineers and allows managers to block moves informally. Skills data are self-declared, opportunity sponsors close postings outside the system, and women and shift workers receive fewer viable matches. The programme director departed after adoption metrics concealed low placement and completion rates.

The nine-month assignment begins within three weeks and covers trust recovery, two enterprise matching cycles, operating-control proof and permanent-leader induction. An opportunity creation, employee nomination, manager hold, algorithm change, match, acceptance, completion or return is a governed event. Six weeks are protected for handover; no extension will cover general talent-management operations.

Exit requires a complete opportunity population, evidence-ranked skills profiles, transparent eligibility, bounded manager holds, explainable matching, equitable access tests, accepted mobility terms, outcome measurement and two cycles meeting quality thresholds. The successor must adjudicate an unseen cross-site move involving scarce plant competence and an expiring manager hold before accepting authority.

The interim may suspend unreliable recommendation rules, reject off-platform placements from success reporting, require sponsors to publish complete opportunities, impose hold-expiry controls, redirect €18 million of authorised recovery funding and replace temporary workstream leads. Business executives retain staffing and release decisions; employees choose applications; privacy and employee-relations authorities retain their statutory responsibilities.

Redundancy selection, performance management, pay decisions, collective bargaining, immigration advice and enterprise HR-platform replacement remain outside scope. The leader may require fair and documented mobility decisions but cannot compel an employee to move or a manager to accept a candidate. Algorithmic precision will not be improved by harvesting unapproved behavioural data.

Why this seat is open

The marketplace optimised visible activity while informal power still determined access to meaningful work, and the departing leader could not convert registrations into trusted movement. Temporary authority must repair opportunity truth, matching evidence and manager behaviour through live cycles, then prove the system can run without personal escalation.

What you will own

• Reconcile advertised, informal, filled, cancelled and completed projects, rotations and permanent openings across business units.
• Set evidence standards for employee skills, aspirations, availability, location, clearance and development objectives.
• Redesign matching to expose reasons, confidence, missing evidence, eligibility and human decision ownership.
• Govern manager holds with named rationale, expiry, appeal, workforce-risk escalation and aggregated fairness review.
• Compare access, match, acceptance, completion and subsequent movement across site, shift, gender and role populations.
• Command scenarios involving an off-platform fill, scarce-skill hold, misleading profile and cross-border project.
• Transfer two controlled cycles and an unseen cross-site decision to the permanent marketplace leader.

Candidate qualifications

• Held enterprise internal-mobility or talent-marketplace authority across engineering and manufacturing workforces.
• Recovered low-trust matching systems where manager hoarding and off-platform placements distorted reported adoption.
• Governed skills evidence, explainable recommendations, opportunity quality, hold rules and employee choice.
• Diagnosed unequal access across plants, shifts, demographics and job families without automating selection decisions.
• Worked with privacy, employee relations, workforce planning and technology teams across binding governance constraints.
• Completed durable succession through live matching cycles and a difficult cross-site scarce-skill case without personal escalation.

Non-negotiables

• Available within three weeks for full-time Berlin leadership and six European site residencies.
• Direct recovery of an operating internal talent marketplace is required; platform implementation alone is insufficient.
• No undisclosed relationship may involve the marketplace vendor, assessment suppliers, staffing firms or works councils.
• Will not compel movement, decide performance or pay, bypass employee choice or use unapproved behavioural data.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe a marketplace whose registration success concealed poor mobility outcomes.
2. 49 words maximum. How did you constrain manager holds without ignoring genuine operational risk?
3. 49 words maximum. Which cross-site matching event must the permanent leader command before handover?