Talent Acquisition Specialist

A shortlist has to be built for a role that closes in ten days, and the person who fills it will decide how the whole search goes. As Talent Acquisition Specialist at Dune Strategy, you will build that list, keep the pipeline straight, and make sure the right conversations happen with the right people.

About Dune Strategy
Dune Strategy is a management consulting firm based in Dubai, advising international investors, family groups and sovereign-linked entities on commercial decisions across the GCC. The firm keeps a deliberately small portfolio of active engagements so partners stay close to the work. Most of what the team produces is research and market intelligence for the people making the call, which makes hiring a central part of how the firm decides where that attention goes.

What you will do

• Run the early stages of live searches: write role briefs, post where the right candidates read, and screen CVs against what a partner asked for.
• Map the talent available for each mandate, tracking who sits where, who has moved recently, and who has worked on which kind of transaction.
• Keep the applicant tracking system clean and current, so a partner can open a search and see where it stands without asking.
• Schedule and confirm interviews across time zones, prepare briefing notes on each candidate, and follow up when responses are slow.
• Draft the shortlist summary a partner reads before an interview: background, gaps, questions worth asking.
• Track how each search is progressing and flag a thin pipeline before it becomes a problem.

What we are looking for

• Basic understanding of how recruiting works, from studies, an internship, a placement agency job or any other first experience in hiring.
• A good command of English, written and spoken. Most of the job is writing clearly to people you have not met.
• Care with details: names, dates, titles and availability all matter, and one wrong line in a shortlist costs credibility.
• An organised way of working. You will hold several searches at once and each one moves at a different speed.
• Discretion. You will read and discuss sensitive information about candidates and about the firm's mandates.
• Willingness to learn the sectors the firm hires into, and to ask a partner a direct question when the brief is unclear.

Helpful background

• Any coursework or reading in finance, economics, business or politics.
• Arabic, or another language used by candidates across the region.
• Experience in a small firm or a start-up, where you handled whatever came in that day.
• Prior research work of any kind: a thesis, a market study, a database you built yourself.
• Familiarity with an applicant tracking system or a sourcing tool.

What we offer

• A permanent, full-time role, worked remotely from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
• Direct contact with partners who stay in the hiring conversations instead of delegating them downward.
• Exposure to how firms in the region assess people for research, advisory and investment work.
• A small team, which means your shortlists get read and your suggestions get an answer.
• Room to grow into candidate assessment and search strategy as the firm's needs widen.

What success looks like
After a year, you will run a briefing on your own: a partner names a role, and you come back with a shortlist, a read on the market and a view on where the search will be difficult. You will spot the commercial call early, noticing when a candidate's experience does not match what the mandate needs, and say so before the interview stage. Partners will trust you with a counterparty, so you can speak to a senior candidate directly and come back with something useful. You will also know which channels produce candidates in this market and which only fill a folder.

Working at Dune Strategy
You will work remotely from Dubai, with partners based in the same city, so conversations are frequent and usually short. Expect to write a lot and to read closely: a shortlist note, a candidate summary, a market map of who is available and where they sit.
The firm keeps a small portfolio of active engagements, so hiring gets the same attention as the client work. You will see the reasoning behind each decision, including the ones that go against the obvious choice.