Early Career Talent Acquisition Lead

Location Designation: Hybrid - 3 days per week 

Be part of a dynamic team shaping the future of talent at New York Life. As part of Human Resources, you'll contribute to a comprehensive strategy that attracts, develops, and retains top talent. Whether it's identifying future leaders, crafting engaging learning experiences, or fostering a vibrant workplace culture, your work directly empowers individuals and fuels the company's growth. Join us and play a vital role in making New York Life a destination employer for generations to come.

Position Overview:
New York Life is seeking an experienced and dynamic Early Career Talent Acquisition Lead to help shape, scale, and execute our early career recruiting strategy, with a primary focus on internship hiring and early career full-time roles. This high-impact individual contributor role will partner closely with the Head of Programmatic Recruitment to drive recruiting excellence, operational consistency, and an exceptional candidate experience across the early career talent lifecycle.

The successful candidate will be passionate about attracting top student and emerging talent, building long-term campus and candidate relationships, creating engaging recruiting experiences, and using data and technology to improve outcomes. This role will collaborate closely with hiring managers, HR business partners, recruiters, business program managers, university partners, and internal ambassadors to support the recruitment, selection, offer, onboarding, and conversion of future interns and early career talent.

This role will also serve as a key operational leader by driving recruitment reporting, dashboard development, market insights, process governance, and continuous improvement. As the early career function continues to evolve, this role offers the opportunity to grow into people leadership while helping build a best-in-class early talent recruiting engine for New York Life.

What You'll Do:

1. Recruiting Strategy & Execution:
• Co-own the development and execution of New York Life’s early career recruiting strategy for internship and early career full-time hiring.
• Own full-cycle recruitment activities for assigned internship and early career roles, including sourcing, screening, interview process support, offer coordination, onboarding partnership, and conversion tracking.
• Create and execute talent pipeline strategies through targeted outreach, campus partnerships, digital engagement, and year-round candidate nurturing.
• Drive consistency across recruiting processes, interview practices, selection tools, and candidate experiences.
• Design and manage multi-channel engagement campaigns to promote the New York Life brand on college campuses through social media, live events, virtual events, and recruiting platforms.
2. Campus Engagement & Relationship Management:
• Build and foster relationships with key stakeholders, including HR business partners, hiring managers, recruiters, business program managers, college and university representatives, student organizations, and career centers.
• Lead and oversee the college and university engagement strategy, ensuring the appropriate balance between virtual and in-person recruitment efforts.
• Represent New York Life at campus recruiting events, networking opportunities, conferences, and student engagement programs to strengthen employer brand awareness.
• Build and nurture long-term student talent communities, maintaining engagement with high-potential candidates before, during, and after formal recruiting cycles.
• Partner with business leaders, former interns, employee ambassadors, and program alumni to strengthen New York Life’s campus presence and create authentic candidate touchpoints.
3. Cross-Functional Collaboration:
• Partner closely with recruiters to ensure consistent execution of early career recruiting strategies and hiring processes.
• Collaborate with the Head of Programmatic Recruitment on recruiting strategy, operational planning, stakeholder alignment, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Partner with the Early Career Program Management team to support an exceptional Summer Internship Program experience.
• Coordinate with hiring teams, HR partners, and program stakeholders to support intern onboarding, engagement, performance feedback loops, and intern-to-full-time conversion planning.
4. Selection & Assessment Process:
• Partner with hiring managers to define selection criteria, assessment tools, structured interview guides, and interview processes for interns and early career full-time roles.
• Ensure selection practices are consistent, streamlined, fair, compliant, and effective in identifying high-potential candidates.
• Support interviewer enablement and process governance to promote a consistent candidate and hiring manager experience.
5. Event Management & Candidate Experience:
• Plan and execute recruitment events such as on-campus events, virtual networking sessions, information sessions, interview days, and student-led engagement opportunities.
• Ensure smooth logistics and a professional, engaging experience for all event participants.
• Coach and guide candidates through the recruiting process, including helping them understand role expectations, interview steps, and program opportunities.
• Use candidate feedback and event insights to continuously improve engagement, communication, and overall experience.
6. Technology, Data Management & Reporting:
• Leverage recruiting technology, applicant tracking systems, campus platforms, CRM tools, digital campaigns, and emerging AI-enabled recruiting practices to create efficient and scalable recruiting processes.
• Develop and maintain recruiting dashboards and reporting to measure hiring performance, pipeline health, event ROI, source effectiveness, offer acceptance, conversion rates, candidate experience feedback, and recruiting effectiveness.
• Partner directly with recruiters and stakeholders to provide insights, reporting, and recommendations that improve recruiting outcomes.
• Monitor key performance indicators and identify trends to drive continuous improvement.
7. Market Intelligence & Continuous Improvement:
• Monitor early career recruiting trends, competitor activity, student preferences, campus market dynamics, and university recruiting best practices.
• Use market insights and recruiting data to recommend enhancements to sourcing strategies, campus partnerships, event strategy, candidate communications, and selection processes.
• Identify opportunities to simplify, standardize, and improve early career recruiting processes as the function continues to scale.

What You'll Bring:

• Bachelor’s degree in human resources, business, communications, or a related field preferred.
• 5+ years of experience in campus recruiting, university relations, early career talent acquisition, or related recruiting experience.
• Proven success developing and executing recruiting strategies for internship, entry-level, or rotational programs.
• Experience managing full-cycle recruiting activities and partnering with stakeholders across the hiring lifecycle.
• Experience building relationships with academic institutions, student organizations, career centers, business leaders, and internal stakeholders.
• Strong understanding of candidate engagement, campus branding, event execution, and early talent pipeline development.
• Proficiency using recruitment tools, applicant tracking systems, campus recruiting platforms, CRM tools, and data analysis for reporting and decision-making.
• Experience creating recruiting dashboards and presenting data-driven insights to influence decisions and improve outcomes.
• Ability to monitor market trends, translate insights into recommendations, and continuously improve recruiting practices.
• Exceptional communication, presentation, interpersonal, project management, and organizational skills.
• Demonstrated ability to influence without direct authority and drive alignment across multiple stakeholders.
• Interest and demonstrated potential to grow into people leadership over time.
• Ability to travel seasonally for campus events, conferences, and recruiting programs as business needs require.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Previous experience managing or partnering closely with internship programs in a corporate environment.
• Experience supporting intern onboarding, engagement, performance feedback processes, or intern-to-full-time conversion planning.
• Experience with employer branding, campus marketing, social media recruiting campaigns, or digital candidate engagement strategies.
• Experience using campus platforms, CRM functionality, automation, or emerging recruiting technology to support scalable recruiting processes.
• Knowledge of the financial services industry or related sectors.

Pay Transparency

Salary Range: $100,000-$128,000 

Overtime eligible: Exempt 

Discretionary bonus eligible: Yes 

Sales bonus eligible: No 

Actual base salary will be determined based on several factors but not limited to individual’s experience, skills, qualifications, and job location. Additionally, employees are eligible for an annual discretionary bonus. In addition to base salary, employees may also be eligible to participate in an incentive program.

Our Benefits

We provide a full package of benefits for employees – and have unique offerings for a modern workforce, including leave programs, adoption assistance, and student loan repayment programs. Based on feedback from our employees, we continue to refine and add benefits to our offering, so that you can flourish both inside and outside of work. Click here to discover more about our comprehensive benefit options or visit our NYL Benefits Site.

Our Commitment to Inclusion
At New York Life, fostering an inclusive workplace is fundamental to who we are and how we serve our communities. We have a longstanding commitment to creating an environment where individuals can contribute their best and succeed together. This foundation is rooted in our core values of humanity and integrity, ensuring that every employee feels valued and supported. By embracing a broad range of perspectives and experiences, we achieve greater success and fulfill our promise of providing financial security and peace of mind to families across all communities. Click here to learn more about New York Life’s leadership in this space.​

Recognized as one of Fortune’s World’s Most Admired Companies, New York Life is committed to improving local communities through a culture of employee giving and volunteerism, supported by the Foundation. We're proud that due to our mutuality, we operate in the best interests of our policy owners. To learn more about career opportunities at New York Life, please visit the Careers page of www.NewYorkLife.com.

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Job Requisition ID: 94398