Ben Symonds Email & Phone Number

Albi, Occitanie, France

Overall responsibility for; HR and business management for GOPA France; all employee recruitment support and processes; developing and maintaining a Hybrid Work Policy; employee career development pathways and company branding efforts in key markets.

Toulouse Area, France

• Working with clients to staff both internal employee teams and external proposal/project (EU, FCDO, USAID and ADB) positions globally focussing on high-level long-term positions and contracts.
• Contracted to analyse a company’s client proposals and identified key areas of improvement focussing on consistency of messaging, responding fully to client brief and quality of offer.
• Designed and led a project to map the S.E. Asia energy market for a US based client interested in USAID funded projects, identifying key stakeholders, movers and players and highlighting key contacts to target.
• Providing management support to internal HR functions for a variety of consultancies focussing on stakeholder engagement internal brand identification, employee relations, and process development.
• Created a social media strategy to target networks and markets - focussing on international development - using tools like Google Analytics, Hootsuite, and Trello.
• Speaker at industry events and webinars (e.g. Recruiting International Experts for Donor FundedProjects - DevelopmentAid, Feb 2022) on best practice in recruitment, international development talent attraction and.

London, Brussels, Beijing, Delhi And Bangalore

• Led recruitment support across Europe and Asia, with corporate offices in the UK, Belgium, India and China.
• Responsible for the overall performance of the team across the region, overseeing a team of 7.
• Led the development and implementation of an effective recruitment process, adaptable to specific markets and responsive to business needs.
• Responsible for talent attraction strategies and brand awareness efforts in diverse markets.
• Main recruitment resource for company's international development team, planning and identifying high-level Team Leader type hires.
• Managed a recruitment specific budget.

London, Greater London, United Kingdom

• Ultimately responsible for building the recruiting capacity of the Afghanistan, Middle East and North Africa (AfMENA) team.
• Designed, implemented and enforced a process aiming for fewer recruiting and contracting errors and reduced time to mobilisation.
• Designed and led a training needs analysis (TNA) to identify areas of the recruitment process (sourcing, contracting, advertising etc.) where the team might be weak.
• Created individual recruitment training plans for Project Managers in the team and designed and led training.
• Created guidance for all areas of recruitment covered by the TNA (how-to guides, visual and easy to digest).
• Mediated relations between the AfMENA team and the HR team on issues relating to HR – e.g. disputes over systems and processes.

London, United Kingdom

• Managed recruitment for proposals and projects– position identification, interviewing, negotiation, contracting and start-up.
• Stakeholder management experience working with hiring managers, European Delegations, evaluation committees and internal senior management.
• 100% direct source rate for high-quality candidates for donor funded proposals on recruitment websites that are both business and development focused (LinkedIn, Devex, Assortis etc.) using targeted Boolean search.
• Involved in corporate projects working on; how DAI manages its candidate pipeline; how our contracting process could be improved which resulted in a new contracting process for the entire company.
• Organisation et mise en œuvre des campagnes de recrutement pour les projets de développement international de l’entreprise (Afrique subsaharienne et Asie)
• Proche collaboration avec les clients du secteur public (Gouvernement britannique et la commission Européenne).

London, United Kingdom

• Created proposals for EC funded framework contract requests covering; BENEF LOT 1 (Rural Development), BENEF LOT 6 (Environment), BENEF LOT 7 (Governance and Home Affairs), BENEF LOT 10 (PSD), and COM LOT 1 (All sector.
• Directly sourced and selected experts and tailored their CVs, put together budgets and worked with experts to produce technical proposals and reports.
• Acted as face of company to European Delegations across the world, fielding requests for information and proposals.

London

• Responsible for all job advert posting needed by the EC, DFID and project management teams on a variety of websites/social media relating to International Development (LinkedIn, Devex, ReliefWeb etc.).
• Screened all candidates applying for specific EC funded proposals and led recruitment drives for the EC team such as those for technical writers and experts.
• Responsible for the first interview over the phone, acting as company point of contact before passing successful candidates on to the proposal’s lead recruiters.
• First point of contact in London office for; recruitment enquiries from candidates; communication from contracted websites; and recruitment enquiries from internal staff, providing total management of the.

Bachelor Of Arts (B.A.), Spanish, 2:1

Activities and Societies: Varsity football.

Filología Hispánica

Spanish, Communication And History A-Levels