Dylan Stark

Position Held: Senior Talent Acquisition Partner

Overview: Brought on to kick-off a period of hyper growth and lead recruitment across both Creative and

Business functions. Managed full-cycle recruitment across all departments before transitioning to focus

exclusively on owning creative hiring.

• Led full-cycle recruitment for a diverse portfolio of creative roles, including Graphic Designers, UI/UX Designers, Product Designers, Design Directors, Project Managers, and Creative Directors, across global regions (EMEA, Africa, LATAM, North America)
• Managed business-side hiring for roles in Sales, Customer Success, Marketing, and Digital during initial 4-month ramp-up, demonstrating cross-functional agility.
• Optimized recruitment operations by migrating from Excel to Pinpoint ATS, and later to Lever, significantly enhancing pipeline visibility, workflow automation.
• Owned job distribution strategy across ATS, LinkedIn, and company career pages to maximize visibility and align with employer branding goals.
• Continuously refined hiring workflows and introduced scalable process enhancements to elevate candidate experience and reduce friction across the funnel.
• Acted as a strategic talent advisor to hiring managers and senior stakeholders—supporting workforce planning, providing interview calibration, and championing hiring manager enablement.
• Developed data-driven sourcing strategies and led talent mapping initiatives across LATAM, EMEA, Africa, and Asia to build diverse, high-quality pipelines.
• Owned the full stage candidate journey—conducting all first-round interviews, reviewing applications and portfolios, managing communications through to offer stage, and providing tailored preparation and coaching at each step to ensure a seamless, high-class experience.
• Mentored and enabled new recruiters—delivering onboarding, creative knowledge sharing,

workflow training and process intervention support during high-volume periods.

Key Achievements:

• Designed and operationalized new creative hiring workflows, improving time-to-hire, interview consistency, and candidate satisfaction across global pipelines.
• Averaged 15–18 hires/month for 14 consecutive months during peak hyper-growth, consistently delivering against aggressive targets across creative verticals.
• Reduced average time-to-offer for recurring creative roles from 45 to 30 days through targeted process redesign and proactive pipeline management.
• Successfully balanced the hiring needs of a department spanning multiple disciplines while delivering real-time hiring insights and headcount planning support to leadership.
• Consistently exceeded monthly and quarterly KPIs, including sourcing efficiency, pipeline conversion, and candidate satisfaction metrics.

Position Held: Recruitment Consultant: Creative, Communication & Digital

Job Overview: Head hunted by MCG (a creative and digital recruitment firm in the UAE) to handle

creative recruitment across the GCC & Middle East. I partnered with Global agencies to handle their

hiring needs.

• Sourced talent globally and successfully positioned Dubai as a destination opportunity—guiding candidates through the full hiring lifecycle, from application to onboarding and throughout their probation period.
• Acted as a strategic bridge between candidates and HR teams, ensuring smooth integration and long-term retention.
• As regional expertise deepened, expanded remit to include recruitment for advertising, PR, client-side, and government relations sectors.

Key clients included:

-Global Creative Agencies: Ogilvy, BBDO Dubai, MCN etc

-PR Agencies: Weber Shandwick, Impact Porter Novelli

Reason for Leaving: Company downsized due to Covid-19.

Position Held: Recruitment Consultant - Creative & Digital

Job Overview: Hired to handle recruitment for the Creative & Digital areas across South Africa. That later

expanded into Africa, Europe and North America.

• Joined a specialist agency with a global footprint in advertising, tech, and digital recruitment, initially supporting key accounts with mid-level creative and client services roles (Art Directors, Copywriters, Digital Designers, Account Managers, etc.).
• Quickly progressed to managing senior-level mandates and expanding reach into international markets, including Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa.
• Played a pivotal role in the launch of the Amsterdam office—spent 2 weeks on-site to embed operations and build direct relationships with European clients.
• Delivered end-to-end recruitment across Africa (South Africa, Ghana, Kenya) and Europe (UK, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Romania, France, Germany), tailoring strategies to regional talent landscapes.
• Successfully placed talent across global network agencies such as:

-WPP: VMLY&R, Ogilvy, Wunderman Thompson, AKQA, GroupM

-Publicis Groupe: Saatchi & Saatchi, BBDO, Digitas, Leo Burnett

As scope grew, managed a 70/30 role split:

-70% Advertising & Digital: Full-spectrum recruitment for creative, strategy, and client service roles

-30% Client-side hiring: Brand Managers, GMs, Sales Directors, Key Account Managers, Finance and Data Analysts

• Developed a reputation for consultative search, delivering high-quality placements across diverse geographies and disciplines.

Reason for Leaving: Head-hunted by an agency in Dubai, UAE.

Position Held: Corporate Sales Executive

Job Overview: Responsible for selling corporate VIP hospitality packers to executives from various

companies

• THG Sports falls under the Hospitality Division of Marcus Evans. As the world’s leading sports hospitality providers, covering over 350 different events globally each year, I was tasked with speaking to decision makers of companies (MD, CEO, CFO) and selling them VIP packages to the different events available throughout South Africa which includes Nedbank Golf Open, Tri Nations, ODI’s and more.