As Head of Allocations at Human Made, you have responsibility for the smooth and effective allocation of project management and engineering team members to both client and internal projects, balancing the conflicting requirements of resources and workload from the client services, project management, and growth teams with appropriate team members available.
You are the first point of contact for anyone who requires an Engineer or Project Manager on a project from the first stages of project estimation and pitching to allocating the specific team members required to deliver the project. You will work with Sales & Accounts Managers, Project Managers, and members of the Engineering Team to identify projects’ current resourcing needs and properly allocate Engineers and PMs. You should have an ongoing awareness of who is coming up for rotation and who has leave scheduled. Gaps in resource requirements should be highlighted and addressed in advance. You should be able to deal with any ad hoc requests, knowing when to allocate new resources and when other solutions are more suitable.
You should work with Engineers and PMs to ensure that they are briefed on the project to which they are allocated and have any resources they need for onboarding. You should maintain an ongoing awareness of upcoming leave and ensure that team members are properly communicating their time off. You should work with Engineers and Project Managers to ensure their ongoing satisfaction with projects, including maintaining an awareness of their learning goals, their work preferences, and their project experience, and attempt to allocate them in a way that meets their personal goals.
You are responsible for the allocations process, ensuring that it is smooth and meets the needs of the client services team. You should document that process, making adjustments as necessary and communicating any changes to the team. As a key member of the Client Services team, you should work closely with team members to ensure the smooth running of all projects, maintaining an ongoing awareness of competing needs and balancing priorities to achieve company goals. Resource requests should be properly managed and communicated back to the company on a regular basis. It’s important that you track costs, retain an ongoing awareness of budgets and timeline, and work with the team to monitor finances.
You will work with the Hiring Team to identify short and long-term needs, and to plan ahead for people coming on for trial. This includes helping the Hiring Team to identify suitable projects for trialists that will let them best demonstrate their skills. You are responsible for identifying areas where the company can make use of freelancers, and for vetting and onboarding those freelancers.
As a member of the Operations Team, you should contribute to the ongoing smooth running of the company. You should be an excellent communicator, be responsive to competing needs and demands, and able to maintain an overview of the complex and changing dynamics of client services work.
Skills
- Excellent interpersonal skills, with the ability to deal with all people at all levels and care for their welfare
- Be able to manage your own priorities and the competing priorities of the rest of the company
- Be flexible in your approach, able to deal with ad hoc and unexpected requests
- In-depth knowledge of client services work and project management methodologies
- Thorough attention to detail and able to navigate between high level processes and day-to-day details
- Good organisational skills
- Able to define and oversee processes that are fit-for-purpose
- Be able to communicate across cultures and display good people skills
Responsibilities
- Manage the allocation schedule using appropriate agency tools across departments on a daily basis.
- Work with the Engineering, Project Management, and Sales & Accounts Teams to ensure that all projects are properly allocated
- Define, document, and communicate the allocations process
- Be the first point of contact for anyone in the company who requires engineering or project management work
- Play an active role in the Client Services team
- Manage long-term planning of projects and deal with ad hoc requests
- Track costs and assist the Finance Director and Business Operations Manager to produce reports and budgets
- Participate in hiring calls and discussions about long and short-term hiring needs
- Identify areas where freelancers are required, and vet and onboard those freelancers.
Relationships
Reports to: CEO
Works with: Engineering team, Client Services Team, Growth Team, Operations Team