Head of Talent and Communications

Role Overview

Company: tbk
Location: London, Ontario (hybrid)
Type: Senior, full time
Salary: $80,000 to $110,000

We are hiring one person to own how tbk finds people, grows them, and tells the market what we do. It is a senior role, it is new, and you would build it in AI from the first week.

Our team makes our clients better. This role makes tbk better.

The big picture

tbk is an AI-first agency on a mission to be the firm other groups rely on to grow with confidence. For the last two years our leadership team has been rebuilding what we do: new services, new delivery models, new processes tested directly with clients.

AI has completely changed our game. We are shipping faster than we ever have. Every project runs differently from the last one, on new tools, with our people building AI agents of their own to do the work alongside them. This is a new world, to say it lightly, and it is never going back to the way we did it before.

What we are excited about is what it frees up. More time on performance strategy, more time with clients, more growth. That is what we always wanted to be spending our days on.

What is hard is everything underneath. Our treasured, predictable checklists do not apply any more. Our processes and some of our software are well out of date. So our senior people are in the rebuild, retooling the whole company for an AI-first world, and that is where their hours go.

As you can see, HR is what got squeezed in this new reality.

Give it about two more years and we come out the other side with delivery that is smooth and predictable again. Getting there is on our senior team. They are rebuilding the services, the processes and the tools while still running client work, and that is where every spare hour goes.

Which is why nobody has been pointed at us. Talent and comms sits with those same leaders, each carrying a piece of it between client deadlines. Our team has held the client experience together while the systems around them were taken apart and put back together, and they have earned better than that. So we are hiring one person to take talent and comms whole and build it properly.

And yes, you would have at least one AI agent of your own, for talent and for comms, running your day alongside you from your first week.

The role

Own talent and communications for tbk: find and hire the people, help them build careers here, and put our work in front of the market.

You report to Melissa McInerney, our CEO and founder, with two hours a month and the room to build this your way. Everyone else here is pointed at client service, delivery and automation. You are pointed at us. tbk is your client.

You would be building it from scratch, in AI

This role is new. No predecessor, no playbook, no system waiting for you to inherit, which means the shape of it is yours to decide.

It also means you are the architect. tbk’s whole people function gets built in AI and you are the one building it. The agents that source and screen. The repository that holds our policy and our performance records. The workflows that keep documentation current without anyone chasing it. We are asking you to build something better than the HR software you would otherwise buy, the way the rest of this company already builds.

You would start with a budget, an employment lawyer on retainer, a CEO who wants this built, and a team who have been waiting a long time for someone whose whole job is them.

We will be straight with you about the pace. Our senior team is deep in the rebuild and their hours are spoken for, so you would be working with a lot of independence from your first week. The person who loves this job is the one who sees a blank page and starts filling it.

What you would own

• Recruiting and the talent pipeline. Three to four hires a year, and we want them found rather than advertised for. Direct outreach on LinkedIn, real relationships across this market, a candidate CRM that becomes something we own. You run the whole thing: sourcing, screening, coordinating, offers, onboarding.
• The AI build. Agents, skills and workflows for talent and comms, built by you and shared with the rest of the team. This is not a side project. It is how the function runs.
• Candidate experience. Every person who applies here hears back. Everyone we interview hears an outcome within 45 days.
• Our story. Two website case studies a month and three social posts a week, plus our community and giving programme. This is the largest single block of your week. You manage the production. Our creative and web people do the making. You interview the team, gather what you need, write it, and drive it through to published. It is also what makes recruiting easier, sales easier, and the whole place prouder.
• Awards. Choosing the right ones, writing the submissions, and entering far more of them than we do today.
• The client review programme. Google, Clutch, and the channels that count, run with a cadence and an owner.
• Our reputation as a place to work. You’ll own how tbk shows up online as an employer, and respond to what people say about us thoughtfully.
• The team’s experience. A monthly one-on-one with every person here, confidential, about workload and career and whatever they need to say. Then a quarterly read back to each manager on how their team is doing, anonymised, so our managers get something most agency managers never get.
• The annual review cycle. Calendar, templates, calibration across managers, completion. Every person here gets a proper review, on time, every year.
• Documentation and the performance file. Every craft conversation recorded within 48 hours, in a repository you design, so a conversation from eight months ago is there when somebody needs it.
• Compliance and policy. Employee handbook, policy, and employment agreements reviewed quarterly with our counsel. You stay current on Ontario employment standards and you know when to call the lawyer.
• Manager coaching. You run the training that lifts how feedback gets given and recorded here. Part of the job is making parts of the job unnecessary.
• Community. Our charitable giving and community programme is yours to shape.
• The scorecard. A weekly and monthly talent and comms scorecard to leadership, so everyone can see what is moving.

What you do not own:

Two things stay with our managers, on purpose.

• The quality of the team’s work. Managers decide whether somebody’s work is good, because they are the ones who can. You make sure the conversation happened, was clear and kind, and is on file.
• Billable client work. The day this role picks up a client deadline is the day the people work starts slipping, so we are protecting it from the start.
• Design and build. You own what our story says and when it ships. Our creative and web people make it.

What success looks like

Week 1. You have met every person here, an hour each, no agenda beyond listening. You are into the systems, the agreements, the last year of reviews, and the AI stack the rest of the team runs on.

Week 2. The one-on-one cycle is on calendars. You are pulling baselines: tenure, applicants per posting, where our reviews stand, where leadership hours are going.

By week 4.

• Your first AI skills and agents are shipped and in the team’s hands.
• The HR repository that will live in AI is planned and architected.
• Your first website case study is published and the social cadence has started, three posts a week.
• Community and giving requests have an owner and a route through, which is you.
• Your first award submission is picked and underway.
• Every applicant waiting on us has an answer, and your first direct outreach is live.

By month 2. The content cadence holds without reminders. The candidate CRM is built and structured, with consent language right from the first outreach and your agents reading and writing to it. The compliance work is scoped as a project with an end date.

By 6 months.

• The talent and comms AI stack is running. Sourcing, screening, drafting, review responses and documentation, all on agents you can open up and explain to anyone here.
• Handbook rewritten and acknowledged by every employee.
• Employment agreements reviewed with counsel, two quarters running.
• Annual review cycle designed, scheduled, templates in managers’ hands.
• First quarterly team feedback report delivered to every manager.
• Feedback and documentation training delivered to all people managers.
• Award shortlist agreed and the first submissions in.
• Client review programme live across our priority channels.

By 12 months.

• Every role filled with three qualified finalists to choose from, out of a pipeline you built.
• Every applicant heard back. Every interviewed candidate given an outcome inside 45 days.
• 24 case studies published, 12 awards entered, 3 shortlists or wins.
• Annual reviews completed and on file for every person, inside the cycle window.
• Our employer reviews answered and climbing.
• Our managers are measurably better at feedback because of how you coached them.
• The function runs on AI you architected, and you’re focussed on innovative new programs at tbk.

Who you are

• You build with AI at an expert level. This function gets built in AI from the first week, and you are its architect. You are already making agents, workflows and prompts that do work you used to do by hand, and you can open one up and explain how it is put together. Everybody here works this way. Our developers, our strategists, our marketers, all of them.
• People confide in you. Our team will look forward to their time with you and leave feeling better than when they came in. This can’t be taught, and you likely already know it about yourself. People have always trusted you with things they don’t tell anyone else.
• The same person doesn’t bring you the same problem twice. That’s how we know the coaching worked. When someone’s workload feels unmanageable, their manager is unclear, or their career has stalled, you help them move. Three months later, they’re somewhere better. Listening is where it starts. The real work is finding solutions that are right for the person and right for tbk. We share the realities of our market and our business openly, so you’ll be working with the full picture. Holding that balance well takes creativity, good judgment and the confidence to find answers others might miss.
• You have grown leaders. People you developed are running things now. That might be from a senior seat inside a company. It might be from running an agency or a studio yourself and finding the part you loved most was building the team. If that’s you, this role puts that work at the centre of what you do.
• You like a performance conversation, and the paperwork that makes it stick. You help people see where they are, where they want to be and how to get there, then you write it down so the plan holds.
• You invest in your growth every year. For the past 10+ years, you’ve always had something on the go: a course, a certification, a designation, a coach. We’ll fund your development here, and we want someone who was already doing it on their own.
• You write well. Job ads that get replies, case studies people finish, award submissions that win. If writing is a chore for you, this is not your role.
• You build relationships by instinct. You know people, and people know you.
• You are detail obsessed where it counts. The small print in contracts. Compliance.
• You want to build something. This function is small today and will not stay that way.

And the rest of what makes this a fit:

• 5+ years in HR, people, or talent roles, including at least 2 where the function was yours to run. Agency, studio or startup experience counts double here, whether you did HR inside one or ran one yourself.
• Full-cycle recruiting experience, with direct sourcing and outreach at the centre of how you fill a role.
• Working knowledge of the Ontario Employment Standards Act, human rights obligations, and what belongs in an employment agreement and what belongs in policy documents.
• Experience owning an annual review or performance cycle end to end.
• A body of writing you can show us. Case studies, award submissions, internal comms, careers content, anything where you had to make something sound worth caring about.
• Something you have built with AI that you can walk us through in the last 3 months.
• Discretion that holds under pressure. People will tell you things, and the whole role depends on them being right to.
• The confidence to speak up early. When you can see a better way, we want to hear it from you first, while there is still time to act on it.

Helpful, not required. CHRP or CHRL, or working toward one. Experience building a candidate CRM or ATS from scratch. Award submission writing. Running a review programme on Google or Clutch. Recruitment marketing. Supporting a team through a period of significant change.

You do not need a specific degree or corporate HR experience at scale. Small and hands-on beats large and specialised here. You also do not need every bullet above. If you are strong on people, writing and AI and lighter on the compliance side, apply and tell us where the gaps are. We have an employment lawyer on retainer and we would rather back you on the technical side than compromise on the human one.

What you can expect from us

We’re a flat team with few layers, and everyone owns a piece of the client outcome. That means we can move in days, not months.

Bring us a problem and you’ll get an answer fast. If it’s no, we’ll tell you why. If it’s yes, you’ll see this team make it happen within a week.

The people you’ll grow are worth it. They’re specialists who love the industries they serve and lead their fields in performance and AI. Some are still learning to sit in front of clients. Your job is to keep them growing. Ours is to clear the road when something gets in the way.

Who thrives here

Seven values decide who thrives at tbk:

1. Relentlessly curious. You ask why like a kid, until you hit the golden nugget. You go and find out.
2. We grow on purpose. Growth here is deliberate, for you and for the people beside you. Somebody is significantly better because you are on their team.
3. Unstoppable. You keep going when it gets hard. The answer is never no. It is always how.
4. Candid and kind. You say the hard thing directly, and warmly. Clarity is kindness.
5. Client obsessed. We move mountains for the leaders who trust us. Their goals are written down and we know them by heart.
6. Own it, lead it. You carry things to done, without being asked. Ownership here is the outcome, never the task list.
7. Always better. Good is the enemy of better. The second version is better because of you.

How we work

• Full time, at least 37.5 hours a week. Yes, as an agency we do log time so it’s important to be comfortable with performance logging.
• Hybrid, based out of our downtown London, Ontario office, with one day onsite each week.
• Flexible schedule with root hours of 10:30 to 3:00.
• Four Friday afternoons off in the summer.
• Benefits package. Vacation, health and dental, and a learning budget we expect you to spend.
• An 18-year-old, profitable, award-winning agency with trusted national clients and room to build something bigger.
• Our stack includes HubSpot, Claude, ChatGPT, Google and Slack. It changes fast, so being comfortable with ongoing change is part of the job.

How to apply

Send us your CV, a writing sample, and a cover letter written for us.

For the sample, something you already wrote is fine and preferred. A case study, an award submission, a careers page, an internal memo you were proud of. We would rather read real work than something written for us.

For the cover letter, one page is plenty. We would love to start the conversation around these four topics:

1. How do you know you are good with people? Not what you would say about yourself. What keeps happening that tells you it is true.
2. Somebody you grew. A person who is further along because of you, and what you did.
3. What have you built with AI? An agent, an automation, a workflow, a skill, a prompt you reuse. Tell us what it does, what it replaced, and what you would build next if you had the time.
4. What you would want to know about tbk before saying yes.

Use AI to help you write it if that is how you work. We do. Just make sure what lands in our inbox sounds like you, because that is the job.

The process, so you can plan for it:

• Apply with your custom cover letter and writing sample.
• A 30-minute call with Melissa. Not a test. A conversation about what you would want to build here.
• A 90-minute working session. You will see a real brief in advance and we will work through it together.
• A conversation with our team. You would be talking with our senior leadership team, the people you would work closely alongside.
• Offer.

Melissa McInerney
CEO & Chief Creative Officer, tbk

“Thanks for your interest in a career with tbk. Everyone who’s employed here pushes the boundaries of what is possible. Each of us are committed to being better than we were yesterday, solving real business challenges with technology, strategy, and creativity. I invite you to join our team of smart, driven problem solvers.”

Our Hiring Process

As an employer of choice, tbk aims to be welcoming and transparent in our candidate selection process.

We thank all applicants for their interest; however, only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.

Equal Opportunities:

tbk is an equal opportunity employer that values diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital, veteran, or disability status.

tbk values diversity and is committed to creating an inclusive work environment. We provide equal employment opportunity for all applicants and employees. We do not discriminate based on any legally-protected class or characteristic. Employment decisions are made based on qualifications, merit, and business needs. If you need assistance or accommodation due to a disability, please let your recruiter know.