#hiring a Junior Talent Manager
🚨 Application deadline: April 30th, 2023!
Introduction
Rootical start-up studio enables purpose-driven entrepreneurs in Uganda to build and own their regenerative agri-food companies. Bringing together talent, capital and ideas, a start-up studio is a structured process to build businesses. Rootical will select 40 Ugandan talents and guide them through an intensive 10-days food system leadership course and a 3-months systemic venture building programme. After this entrepreneur-in-residence programme, we will go on to co-found and further support a handful of businesses to become commercially viable and purpose-driven enterprises, designed to accelerate the transition to a fair and regenerative food system. More info on rootical.org
Who are we? Rootical is a collaboration between Shona and Fresh Ventures Studios. Since 2013, Shona has been providing business advisory and business training to help SMEs grow revenues and become profitable businesses. We teamed up with Shona because of our shared urgency to build businesses that matter. They are the expert partner for developing good businesses in Uganda. Fresh Ventures Studio builds new companies that accelerate a circular and regenerative food system in Europe. Fresh launched in 2021 to work alongside founders to address the world’s most pressing problems through scalable agri-food ventures. While they are running their second cohort, we joined forces with Fresh to build on their experience to implement Rootical as a context-specific startup studio in Uganda.
We are frontrunners. We aim to regenerate and reinvent how food is produced and consumed in Uganda, with highly innovative thinking and breakthrough business building methods. With our participatory studio approach to business development, we are unique in East Africa.
Are you ready to join our mission to equip talented entrepreneurs with the tools, skills, networks and capital to build food system shaking businesses?
Job description
As a junior talent expert, you are a prodigy in human resources and talent management regardless of your years on the job – preferably in talent acquisition. The Rootical talent expert has one mission: to support the best people with the best people. Your job is to make Rootical co-founders bigger than they are by swarming them with the best people (mentors, technical experts, professional service providers, etc.).
Key Responsibilities
Manage the entire talent recruitment and selection process to identify potential founders for each cohort.
Growing and managing the Rootical community of advisors, experts and mentors. Developing our network of venture building support partners and attracting more extraordinary talent from Uganda and the region.
You will play an integral role in establishing fruitful mentor/expert – entrepreneur relationships during the different studio stages. Support in vetting and training experts and mentors; support in tracking, monitoring and facilitating mentor engagement.
Leading in connecting the potential co-founders to the right members of the network. You will support in assessing entrepreneur needs and lead in finding and matching them to the right people to provide value to the Rootical co-founders.
You will also be responsible for the management and coordination of Rootical’s alumni network to keep our alumni engaged as food system changemakers and potential employees, partners, or service providers of the businesses we build.
Assist in guiding the co-founder matching and team definition throughout the entrepreneur-in-residence programme, and for our portfolio companies.
Assist in human resources and talent management for the Rootical Studio team (talent acquisition, recruitment, retention, etc.)
Contribute to project M&E, reporting and accountability.
Assist in all things necessary to make the Rootical venture building programme a success and an awesome experience for potential founders. We are a small entrepreneurial team that steps up when there is work to be done. At times, you'll be expected to work outside of just your role to contribute to our team's overall efforts.
Education & Work Experience
Essential: Educated to at least undergraduate degree level
Essential: At least 3 years relevant work experience
Essential: You are born and raised in East Africa or have had at least 5 years of experience working in East Africa.
Desirable: educational background in Human Resources and Talent Management
Skills, Behaviour, Passion
These are your Superpowers and what we are looking for:
Building relationships
Ability to quickly build rapport and engagement with people.
Comfortable and confident to engage with people of all calibre, from CEO’s to young professionals.
You are a people person and love engaging with and getting to know people.
You are outstanding at the following traits:
Empathetic, active listener, curious and inquisitive
Problem solver, go-getter mentality
Good oral and written communication
You have experience managing and engaging a community or network of individuals and partners.
You have experience of developing relationships with a broad variety of stakeholders.
Project management
Ability to plan, execute and coordinate projects achieving specific goals within deadlines
(Essential) You have experience developing and managing your own workflow and task management working in a team.
(Desirable) You have developed and managed a project from scratch.
Effective communication
Ability to effectively engage a community and transmit a specific message in various ways
(Essential) You have experience developing communication material in various forms and mediums to successfully engage a broad variety of stakeholders.
(Desirable) You have developed and managed a network and ways for people to connect to build relationships and trust, collaborate, have fruitful conversations and support each other.
Business Acumen
Ability to understand how a business operates and becomes profitable.
Ability to proactively anticipate, navigate and leverage trends impacting a business.
(Essential) You have a passion to understand more about how to set up and develop a business.
(Essential) You are a fast learner and can demonstrate a time where you have grown into a new role and quickly learnt about the content of work.
(Desirable) You are interested in meeting entrepreneurs and would quickly diagnose and understand the key drivers in their business and the key challenges they are facing
(Desirable) You have experience of supporting entrepreneurs, or you have direct experience of setting up a company.
Additional Specifications
In every new team member, we look for a strong alignment on values and shared vision.
You are able to demonstrate how you embody Rootical’s values and share the vision of how our future food systems should look like.
You are always thinking of creative solutions to challenges.
You are able to tackle projects without much guidance.
You don’t fear trying something new and experimenting.
You are not easily overwhelmed.
You believe in the power of entrepreneurship to solve some of the greatest challenges that we face and will jump for an opportunity to play a small part in a grand journey as we seek to make our food systems fairer and more regenerative.
Questions & Answers
→ How to Apply?
Thank you for your interest in becoming part of the Rootical team!
We look forward to reading your application. 🚨 Application deadline: April 30th, 2023.
Step 1: Send an email to info@rootical.org with the subject line “Rootical Position: [Position title]”. Please attach the following 3 documents to the email:
Your CV or LinkedIn profile
A document listing two references that know you well and can give insight into your ability to do this job. Please include their name, phone number, email, and your relation to them.
A document with answers to these questions.
Why are you interested in this specific position? What makes you a great fit for this role? (max. 300 words)
Why Rootical? Why do you want to dedicate a period of your life to working for a regenerative agri-food start-up studio? (max. 300 words)
How would you describe the ideal food system for Uganda in a nutshell? From where we are now, what challenges and opportunities do you see to get there? (max. 300 words)
What are your salary expectations? Please indicate a gross yearly salary range. Applications without this information might not be considered.
If you are selected for the following round(s), you might expect:
Step 2: To have a phone interview with our team
Step 3: Complete a job-specific challenge (which we will explain at that time)
Step 4: Have a final in-person interview with the Rootical Team
We want to encourage women to apply. If you need more context or have any questions before applying, please contact us at info@rootical.org to schedule a call.
Date of publication: March 30th, 2023. We accept applications on a rolling basis. Our goal is to have you start as soon as possible.
→ Who will I be working with?
At Rootical we are a small team. So, you will be working closely with the Rootical director and 2 other colleagues. Moreover, Rootical is hosted at the office of our leading implementation partner, SHONA. You might regularly be in contact with some of the SHONA management and colleagues too.
→ Is your team currently remote?
We currently have a flexible policy, combining both remote and office-based work. The main condition is that you are able to show up for required physical interactions, on a daily basis in/or around Kampala during our training stage and 3-months entrepreneur-in-residence programme. Otherwise, you are welcome to partially work remotely.
→ What does the compensation look like for this role?
Compensation is always commensurate with experience. Despite being a small team and Rootical still in the early-stage phase, a start-up ourselves at this point, we strive to provide fair and competitive compensation. We are planning to consider profit sharing and ownership options in the Rootical studio and/or portfolio companies.
In addition, we will provide health insurance. This is a 12-months contract, with possible extension based on programme funding and performance.
