Job description

About Shortlist

Welcome to Shortlist! We’re building a better way to hire, combining the best of tech, data, and human touch to provide executive search and talent technology services across Africa, India, and 20+ countries globally. We have two primary business lines: We offer executive search services to help clients find and hire senior managers and C-suite executives, and an innovative tech-based "Talent Drive" offer to power large-scale recruitment campaigns (campus hiring, internship programs, etc.) for volume hiring, using our in-house recruitment tech platform. Shortlist launched in 2015 in India and 2016 in Kenya, and to date we have worked with 700+ companies, engaged with over 1,500,000+ professionals, and made 3,000+ placements. 

We believe in the power of great teams to change the world, and have a significant focus on working with employers across the social impact and philanthropic sector, including dozens of leading social enterprises, NGOs, and foundations. This emerges from the founding team’s longstanding careers in social enterprises and impact investing, and is embodied in our founding and unwavering mission to “unlock professional potential.” We are also a values-driven culture, which you can read more about here, here and here.

We are growing quickly, and we’re now looking for exceptional leaders to grow our Talent Drives team, to be based in Nairobi, Kenya. We are currently seeking a Program Director, Talent for Clean Energy, to lead one or more programs to support green jobs programs across Africa and promote more gender equitable hiring practices in the clean energy sector.

Accelerating Talent and Jobs in Clean Energy

This position would lead one or more programs funded by major global donors to mobilize talent for the clean energy sector across Africa, create job opportunities and subsidized “work experiences” for youth, and ensure greater representation of women in labor value chains across the sector. 

We repeatedly hear from clean energy sector leadership that hiring and talent is the #1 barrier to the scaling up of the clean energy sector. This is compounded by the fact that women continue to be significantly under-represented across the clean energy value chain. Over the last three years, Shortlist has been leading work to identify and place high potential youth into clean energy jobs across Africa, and now we are looking to expand the program more broadly and in some new directions. We are considering a more aggressive expansion of job creation targets, more deliberate focus on rural jobs via innovative talent partnerships, more creative use of tech to scale, and more focus on improving diversity, equity & inclusion (DE&I) policies and practices across the clean energy sector. 

Key Responsibilities | Program Director

• Stakeholder and Funder Management: Ensuring close collaboration and alignment with funders and other relevant stakeholders on program design and priorities, and providing thoughtful reporting and communication on status and achievements. This will include preparing data-driven and well-written reports with the program team.
• Partnerships for Talent Sourcing: Identifying and executing partnerships with grassroots and regional organizations and individuals who can help source relevant talent for the program. We will need to go beyond just posting to job boards to attract the right talent, and expect to need to partner with  a range of NGOs, training organizations, and other companies with broad networks to share these job opportunities with their members.  
• Managing complex projects: Managing multiple internal and external relationships with employers, clients, and team to creatively address issues as they arise and execute to project timelines and deliverables. This will mean thinking creatively about how to deploy technology and team to achieve our impact targets in the most efficient way possible.
• Team management: Helping build and leading a team of recruitment specialists who will implement much of the ground-level work. Critically, this will require you to support the team to solve day-to-day challenges and keep motivation and morale high.

Who you are

• You have a background in consulting, project management, operations, or similar types of roles. Prior experience in recruitment, job placement, or employability programs strongly preferred. 
• You have a track record of achievement in forging global and regional strategic partnerships in service of ambitious program deliverables.
• You have experience managing numerous internal and external stakeholders,  particularly global donors, funders and philanthropic partners.
• You have a track record of executing complex programs with resourcefulness, creativity and excellence. 
• You have managed a team and love helping unlock the professional potential of your teammates.
• Likely 8-12 years of professional experience, though we don’t believe age dictates ability to contribute. 
• Aligned with Shortlist's values, but also eager to be a culture add rather than just a culture fit; diversity of all kinds welcome.