Associate - Talent Management & Acquisition

About Zydus Wellness:

Zydus Wellness Limited is a leading consumer wellness company and the FMCG arm of the Zydus Lifesciences Group. It is a separately listed entity on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and National Stock Exchange (NSE), and is headquartered in Ahmedabad, India.

Zydus Wellness operates across three high-growth industry sectors - Personal Care, Foods & Nutrition, and Vitamins, Minerals & Supplements (VMS) - with a portfolio of iconic, market-leading brands that are trusted by millions of consumers:

- Personal Care: Everyuth, Nycil, Cuticolor

- Foods & Nutrition: Complan, Glucon-D, Sugar Free, I'mLite, Nutralite, Max Protein

- VMS (Global Portfolio): Weight World, Maxmedix, Animigo

Founded in 1988 with the launch of Sugar Free, India's first zero-calorie sugar substitute, Zydus Wellness has evolved into a scaled, innovation-driven organization focused on building science-backed, consumer-centric wellness solutions.

The company operates owned manufacturing facilities in Sikkim, Ahmedabad, and Aligarh, supported by a strong supply chain and partner ecosystem, ensuring high standards of quality, reliability, and speed to market.

Zydus Wellness has been accelerating growth through strategic acquisitions, including:

- Naturell India (NIPL) - strengthening presence in nutrition and better-for-you foods.

- Comfort Click (UK) - marking the company's first overseas acquisition and significantly expanding its footprint in the global VMS and digital wellness space.

Zydus Wellness continues to pursue a robust growth ambition, driven by brand expansion, premiumization, portfolio diversification, and international scale-up. The company remains committed to improving everyday health and wellbeing by building trusted brands, strong capabilities, and future-ready talent.

About the Role:

Position Title: Associate - Talent Management

Reporting To: Head - Talent & HR - Comfort Click

Location: Ahmedabad

Role Purpose:

Drive the design, development and execution of enterprise-wide Talent Management frameworks and initiatives covering talent identification, assessment, succession planning, career architecture, role evaluation, leadership development and internal talent mobility.

The role requires a strong combination of conceptual thinking, analytical capability, framework design, stakeholder influence and execution excellence.

The incumbent will also contribute to strategic Talent Acquisition initiatives, including leadership and lateral hiring, campus talent programs, and implementation of Talent Acquisition and Talent Management modules within Darwinbox or equivalent HR technology platforms.

The position offers the opportunity to conceptualise and institutionalise scalable talent practices across Core Zydus Wellness, Neo Foods and Comfort Click.

Key Accountabilities/ Responsibilities:

Customer:

- Partner with Business Leaders, Functional Heads and HRBPs to understand organisational capability requirements, critical talent priorities and future leadership needs.

- Independently facilitate talent discussions, challenge assumptions and translate business requirements into actionable Talent Management interventions.

- Influence senior stakeholders to drive alignment, ownership and timely implementation of talent and succession initiatives.

- Collaborate with assessment partners, consultants and technology providers to design and execute enterprise-wide talent programs.

Process:

1. Talent Reviews, Assessment & Identification of Key Talent:

- Design and execute end-to-end Talent Review cycles, including eligibility frameworks, performance-potential assessment, 9-box calibration and leadership discussions.

- Develop objective frameworks for identifying high-potential employees, top talent, critical talent and employees with accelerated growth potential.

- Design and implement assessment methodologies using behavioural competencies, assessment centres, psychometrics and other evaluation tools.

- Translate Talent Review outcomes into differentiated development, career progression, mobility and retention actions.

2. Role Architecture, Job Evaluation & Career Frameworks:

- Support the design of enterprise-wide role architecture, job families, career levels, role comparability and grading frameworks.

- Evaluate role scope, complexity, accountability and organisational impact to support job evaluation and grading decisions.

- Identify unique, specialist and business-critical roles requiring differentiated career or talent interventions.

- Develop vertical, lateral, cross-functional, cross-business and specialist career pathways, defining the capabilities and experience required for career progression.

3. Critical Roles & Succession Planning:

- Design frameworks for identifying critical roles based on business impact, replacement difficulty, capability scarcity and continuity risk.

- Develop and institutionalise succession planning frameworks covering successor identification, readiness assessment, bench strength and development priorities.

- Create actionable succession and talent development plans, including targeted assessments, developmental assignments, mentoring and internal movements.

- Establish mechanisms to monitor critical-role occupancy, succession coverage, successor readiness and key-talent retention.

4. Leadership Development & Mentoring:

- Conceptualise and execute structured mentoring programs, including mentor-mentee matching, developmental objectives, progress reviews and impact measurement.

- Translate identified capability gaps into targeted leadership development interventions in partnership with the L&D CoE.

- Design frameworks for Individual Development Plans (IDPs), including developmental experiences, capability milestones and progress measurement.

- Evaluate the effectiveness of talent development interventions and recommend improvements.

5. Cadre Building & Campus Talent Programs:

- Design and execute early-career talent pipelines covering Management Trainees, Graduate Engineer Trainees and Summer Internship programs.

- Strengthen cadre selection, assessment, onboarding, developmental journeys, performance reviews and conversion processes.

- Conceptualise and execute campus branding and business case-study competitions, including flagship initiatives such as WellNXT.

- Develop frameworks to evaluate cadre program effectiveness through quality of intake, conversion, retention, performance and career progression.

6. Strategic Talent Acquisition:

- Support leadership and critical lateral hiring mandates, including talent mapping, market intelligence, sourcing strategy, candidate evaluation and stakeholder engagement.

- Strengthen assessment and selection frameworks for leadership, specialist and lateral hiring.

- Analyse recruitment effectiveness through sourcing mix, quality of hire, time-to-fill, hiring costs and recruitment funnel metrics.

- Partner with the TA team on process improvement, hiring governance and implementation of recruitment technology.

7. HR Technology, Analytics & Insights:

- Contribute to the design, configuration, testing, implementation and adoption of Talent Acquisition and Talent Management modules in Darwinbox or equivalent HRMS platforms.

- Translate business and process requirements into HR technology workflows, dashboards, reporting structures and user requirements.

- Develop talent analytics and leadership dashboards covering succession, critical roles, talent reviews, attrition, internal mobility, hiring effectiveness and development outcomes.

- Generate actionable insights, identify emerging talent risks and prepare executive-level presentations and recommendations for leadership decision-making.

People:

- Strengthen organisational capability through structured talent identification, development and deployment interventions.

- Build effective partnerships with HRBPs and functional leaders to institutionalise Talent Management practices.

- Drive adoption of talent frameworks through stakeholder communication, training and change management.

- Contribute to a culture of continuous development, internal mobility and leadership readiness.

Financial:

- Drive cost-effective execution of Talent Management, assessment and development initiatives.

- Optimise assessment partner, consultant and HR technology utilisation.

- Support hiring cost optimisation through internal talent development, direct sourcing and effective talent pipeline management.

Key Interactions:

Internal: Business Heads, Functional Heads, HRBPs, Talent Acquisition, L&D, HR Technology, Finance and employees across Zydus Wellness businesses.

External: Assessment and psychometric partners, job evaluation consultants, HR technology vendors, campus placement teams and talent advisory partners.

Role Requirements:

Education:

MBA/PGDM in Human Resources from a recognised management institute.

Experience:

Post-MBA professional with 4-6 years' experience in Talent Management, covering talent reviews, succession planning, HiPo identification, performance assessments, role architecture, grading frameworks, talent development, leadership hiring, campus programs, assessments, and Darwinbox/HRMS Talent Management implementation or configuration experience.

Functional Competencies:

- Talent Management expertise: Talent Reviews, 9-box, succession, talent assessment and development.

- Organisation architecture: Job evaluation, grading principles, role architecture, career pathways and critical-role frameworks.

- Conceptual and strategic thinking: Ability to structure ambiguous problems, develop frameworks and propose practical solutions.

- Talent analytics: Advanced Excel, PowerPoint, dashboards, data interpretation and executive storytelling.

- HR technology: Understanding of TA/TM workflows, HRMS implementation, process configuration and digital adoption.

- Program management: Ability to manage multiple enterprise initiatives from concept through implementation and measurement.

- Stakeholder management: Ability to engage, influence and challenge senior business stakeholders constructively.

Behavioural Competencies:

- Enterprising and intellectually curious: Proactively identifies opportunities, questions existing practices and brings fresh ideas.

- Conceptual thinker: Connects business problems with structured frameworks and practical solutions.

- High ownership: Takes accountability from conceptualisation through implementation and outcome measurement.

- Analytical and insight-oriented: Goes beyond reporting data to interpreting trends and recommending action.

- Strong communicator: Presents complex ideas clearly and confidently to senior stakeholders.

- Collaborative and influential: Builds credibility and drives outcomes without direct authority.

- Execution-focused: Balances strategic thinking with detail orientation, speed and delivery discipline.

- Demonstrates integrity, confidentiality, adaptability and alignment with the Zydus Wellness NEEV Behavioural Competency Framework.