Associate Director - Employer Branding

Associate Director, Employer Branding

Location: Bangalore / Hybrid

Practice: Globalization Excellence (GE)

Experience: 12-15+ years

About Globalization Excellence (GE)

Zinnov's Globalization Excellence (GE) practice helps leading enterprises design, build, scale, and run Global Capability Centers (GCCs). We combine advisory, managed services, and execution expertise to help clients build future-ready operating models that accelerate business growth, innovation, and talent transformation.

About the Role

We are looking for an Associate Director, Employer Branding to lead strategic client engagements and help scale Zinnov’s employer branding practice for GCCs.

This is a senior leadership role with accountability for client outcomes, portfolio governance, pod leadership, and practice growth. The Associate Director will balance strategic client leadership with building the offerings, capabilities, systems, partnerships, and commercial opportunities required to scale the employer branding practice.

Key Responsibilities

Employer Brand Strategy & Advisory

• Shape employer brand and EVP strategies linked to business priorities, talent needs, and GCC growth.
• Turn research, employee insight, and market intelligence into clear positioning and messaging.
• Advise GCC leaders, CHROs, and Talent Acquisition leaders on talent-market positioning and employer brand decisions.
• Translate strategy into practical roadmaps, programs, and measurable outcomes.

Talent Attraction & Employer Marketing

• Lead integrated talent-attraction campaigns across digital, social, events, partnerships, and communities.
• Build content and storytelling programs that improve awareness, consideration, and candidate conversion.
• Partner with Talent Acquisition to strengthen candidate experience and brand consistency across the hiring journey.

Communications, Content & Executive Visibility

• Develop narratives and content that demonstrate culture, careers, innovation, leadership, and business impact.
• Build executive visibility and thought leadership across reports, articles, videos, webinars, and industry forums.
• Maintain a clear and consistent employer brand across internal and external touchpoints.

Employee Advocacy & Internal Branding

• Design internal brand, culture, and change programs that reinforce the employee experience.
• Build employee advocacy programs that turn authentic employee stories into credible brand proof.

Partnerships, Insights & Measurement

• Build relationships with universities, talent communities, industry platforms, and specialist partners.
• Create measurement frameworks that connect employer brand activity to talent and business outcomes.
• Use performance data and market insight to improve programs and investment decisions.

Leadership, Ownership & Accountability

Client Leadership

• Own governance across the employer branding portfolio, covering delivery, quality, commercials, risk, and stakeholder confidence.
• Step into critical client situations, resolve issues, and guide high-stakes decisions.
• Lead senior client relationships and identify opportunities to deepen or expand engagements.
• Support new-client acquisition and launch engagements in new markets and locations.

Team Leadership

• Mentor senior pod leaders and hold them accountable for client outcomes, team performance, and delivery discipline.
• Identify the operational, process, and specialist support each pod needs to perform effectively.
• Build leadership depth, succession readiness, and consistent ways of working across the team.

Practice Building, Growth & Scale

• Own the practice roadmap, including growth priorities, investment areas, capability gaps, and measures of success.
• Identify client needs and market opportunities that can become new products, features, and service lines.
• Lead new offerings from concept and business case through pilot, adoption, and repeatable delivery.
• Build the methodologies, playbooks, templates, quality standards, and knowledge assets required to scale delivery.
• Strengthen practice operations through clear governance, capacity planning, project controls, and performance reporting.
• Build team capability through hiring, learning pathways, coaching, and access to specialist expertise.
• Identify and establish relationships with vendors, platforms, technology providers, and ecosystem partners that expand execution capability.
• Build the practice pipeline by leading solutioning, proposals, cross-account growth, and expansion into new clients, locations, and markets.
• Build market credibility through intellectual property, thought leadership, case studies, and industry participation.

Qualifications & Experience

• MBA, PGDM, or equivalent Master’s degree.
• 12–15+ years in employer branding, marketing, communications, consulting, or a related field.
• Strong track record in employer brand strategy, recruitment marketing, strategic communications, or related advisory services.
• Experience leading multiple accounts, senior stakeholders, commercial outcomes, and delivery governance.
• Proven experience building a practice, service line, product portfolio, or new business capability—including the operating model, team, processes, partnerships, and go-to-market approach.
• Exposure to business development, partner ecosystems, and new-market expansion preferred.

Key Competencies

• Employer brand and GCC advisory.
• Executive influence and client leadership.
• Portfolio governance and commercial acumen.
• Practice, product, and process building.
• Leadership development and mentoring.
• Storytelling and executive communication.
• Data-led decision-making and disciplined execution.

What Success Looks Like

• Clients achieve stronger employer brand positioning and measurable talent outcomes.
• Accounts run with predictable delivery, healthy commercials, controlled risk, and high stakeholder confidence.
• Pod leaders operate with greater ownership and stronger client and people leadership.
• The practice has a clear roadmap, scalable operating model, stronger capabilities, and reliable delivery systems.
• New offerings move from ideas to repeatable, revenue-generating solutions.
• The practice expands its client base, partner ecosystem, market credibility, and geographic reach.

Why Join Us?

This role offers the opportunity to shape employer brands for leading GCCs while building the capabilities, offerings, operating model, and market presence of Zinnov’s employer branding practice. It is suited to a leader who can deliver strong client outcomes and take ownership of scaling the business.