Assistant Director

About the Job:

The Assistant Director, Talent Management Experience Design for Career & Talent Planning owns the end-to-end design, execution, and continuous improvement of enterprise processes and experiences that empower employees to invest in their growth and strengthen the talent pipeline required to sustain and accelerate business performance.

This role is committed to the employee-facing experience, designing and curating an ecosystem that empowers individuals to explore career possibilities, set meaningful development goals, and track progress against a personalized growth plan that is integrated into the flow of work. The role also ensures these processes and experiences are effective, scalable, and aligned with business priorities, talent strategy, skills development, and the organization’s culture and behaviors.

By leveraging talent data, skills insights, fit-for-purpose technology, and AI-enabled tools, this role ensures career and development experiences do not live in isolation by connecting them to talent review and calibration processes and agile succession approaches. In doing so, it makes individual growth aspirations visible to the organization, continuously informs leadership pipelines with real-time development data, and enables talent readiness to be assessed and acted upon with consistency and rigor.

Partnering closely with HR Business Partners and key stakeholders, the Assistant Director brings fresh perspectives to complex talent challenges, influences across functions and leadership levels, and translates people data and business insights into experience designs that reduce critical talent risk, strengthen organizational resilience, and create the conditions for both individual fulfillment and enterprise growth.

What You'll Do:

Enterprise Talent Process Ownership

• Own the end-to-end design of the enterprise career, talent review & succession philosophy and processes, including: career planning, development planning, continuous career & development conversations, talent review & calibration, succession planning, and skill development.
  • Own the enabling technology experience and requirements for these processes (e.g., Development Plans, Talent Card, Talent Marketplace, Gigs, Career Hub, career navigation tools, etc.).
• Ensure talent processes are practical, leader and employee-friendly, and aligned with enterprise talent philosophy, business needs, and culture.
• Accountable for supporting delivery of these talent processes through developing clear guidance, materials, draft communications, and readiness support for HR Business Partners, leaders, and employees.
• Providing day-to-day support and management of processes, including escalated technical inquiries, issue coordination, and follow-through with HR stakeholders.
• Utilize talent analytics and relevant success metrics to assess the effectiveness of cycles, monitor adoption, gather insights for continuous improvement, and track progress and outcomes.

Continuous Improvement

• Lead retrospectives and synthesize quantitative and qualitative feedback to identify opportunities to simplify and strengthen these talent processes.
• Translate insights into clear recommendations and design enhancements that improve clarity, consistency, impact, and the employee, leader, and HR experience.

Stakeholder Partnership & Enablement

• Serve as a primary point of contact for HR on enterprise talent management processes. Strengthens knowledge management for HR Services and HR business partners.
• Provide consultation, guidance, and problem-solving support related to process execution, interpretation, and application.
• Develop and deliver enablement materials (e.g., toolkits, job aids, FAQs, talk tracks, training, etc.) to support consistent enterprise adoption.
• Creates automated and scalable self-service support through AI tools to quickly surface accurate guidance for employees, leaders and HR, reducing the day-to-day support requests.
• Partners with the HR Advisory team to brainstorm and enable Career Center consultations related to career development and talent review & succession, including career planning and development action guidance.
• Partners with HR Technology and Talent analytics to modernize and scale our talent management practices through fit-for-purpose tools, digital workflows, enhancements, and data-informed capabilities.  

What Experience You'll Bring:

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Organizational Development, or a related field required
• Graduate degree strongly preferred

Experience

• 6–8 years of experience in talent management, organizational effectiveness, or related HR disciplines with a focus on high-impact, enterprise talent processes
• Demonstrated experience leading enterprise-wide talent management processes (e.g., career development, talent reviews, succession planning, and skills)
• Experience partnering with HR Business Partners
• Experience leveraging Workday as a process owner to drive mature, scalable talent management processes and insights.

Skills & Capabilities

• User-Centered Design Process: Designs products, services, and experiences that are tailored to the needs, preferences, and behaviors of the end-user.
• Customer Centricity: Applies a customer first mindset to design and continuously improve solutions, systems, processes, and services that support enterprise strategy, impact critical business outcomes, and drive organizational success.
• Stakeholder Relationship: Organizes, influences, monitors, and improves relationships with key stakeholders; systematically identifies stakeholders and analyzes their needs and expectations to support in planning and decision making while implementing various tasks to engage with them.
• Cross Functional Partnering & Planning: Facilitates collaboration, communication, coordination, and planning with individuals and teams from different functions within the organization, and who have different areas of expertise, to achieve common goals.
• Consulting: Connects with stakeholders to understand and gain specific information to help resolve customer problems in a given domain. Communicates effectively intent to customers, solicits customer requirements, utilizes domain knowledge and collaborates with the right stakeholders.
• Executive Presence: Builds and maintains an authentic personal brand, inspiring and motivating people to pursue a desired outcome by sharing a clear vision and demonstrating confidence, professionalism, self-awareness and trust with business stakeholders.
• Business Influence: Collaborates, communicates and influences direct reports, stakeholders, and other business functions based on understanding of the marketplace, organizational needs, and the client as a people manager.
• Change Management: Acts as an advocate for change as well as identifying gaps/issues that should be addressed to deliver optimal client/field experiences. Leads change management, when driving technology or process improvements, applying relevant change acceleration, risk mitigation, and stakeholder management methodologies and best practices. Analyzes business trends and current state to develop a case for change that aligns with business strategy. Implements plans and strategies to manage organizational and behavioral changes by aligning leaders and engaging impacted stakeholders.
• Adaptive Communication: Formulates strategies to be used to convey complex information about services, products, systems, or processes to targeted audiences; communicates and liaises between technical and non-technical audiences.
• Learning Agility & Critical Thinking: Pursues learning and obtains knowledge continuously in relevant fields, methods, or technologies in current and future practices; continuously utilizes critical thinking to identify opportunities, execute solutions, and measure impact to constantly improve existing practices and processes based on feedback, lessons learned, and market trends.
• Strategic Thinking: Uses critical thinking and knowledge of business demand to plan, design, prioritize and execute high impact initiatives and programs.
• Analytical Thinking: Organizes and compares various aspects of a situation to comprehend and identify key or underlying complex issues through the use of quantitative data and analysis; leverages strong business acumen, problem solving, and interpersonal skills to think critically about situations from multiple perspectives and consistently seeks ways to improve processes.

#LI-Remote, #LI-Hybrid

Compensation Range:

Pay Range - Start:

$108,160.00

Pay Range - End:

$162,240.00

Geographic Specific Pay Structure:

Structure 110:

$118,960.00 USD - $178,440.00 USD

Structure 115:

$124,400.00 USD - $186,600.00 USD

We believe in fairness and transparency. It’s why we share the salary range for most of our roles. However, final salaries are based on a number of factors, including the skills and experience of the candidate; the current market; location of the candidate; and other factors uncovered in the hiring process. The standard pay structure is listed but if you’re living in California, New York City or other eligible location, geographic specific pay structures, compensation and benefits could be applicable, click here to learn more.

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Northwestern Mutual is an equal opportunity employer that welcomes talented individuals of all backgrounds. We are committed to creating and maintaining an environment in which each employee can contribute creative ideas, seek challenges, assume leadership and continue to focus on meeting and exceeding business and personal objectives.