Program Manager, Talent Attraction & Candidate Experience

GEICO•Bethesda, MD

About The Position

The Program Manager, Talent Attraction & Candidate Experience shapes how prospective and current talent experience GEICO, from first impression through offer acceptance and onboarding handoff. The role translates the employer value proposition and Talent priorities into connected attraction strategies, candidate experiences, scalable programs, and measurable outcomes. By bringing together brand, content, channels, technology, data, vendors, recruiters, and business partners, the Program Manager helps attract priority talent, reduce friction, strengthen trust, and deliver a consistent, human-centered candidate journey.

Requirements

5–7+ years of experience in talent attraction, employer brand, recruitment marketing, candidate experience, talent acquisition, program or product management, marketing, communications, People Operations, or related cross-functional work.
Demonstrated experience leading complex programs, products, campaigns, or portfolios of related work, including roadmap development, dependency management, governance, risk and issue management, benefits tracking, and leadership reporting.
Experience designing or improving candidate, customer, employee, or user journeys using research, feedback, data, and human-centered design principles.
Ability to translate workforce priorities and broad business objectives into attraction strategies, audience plans, channel approaches, operating rhythms, measurable outcomes, and practical execution steps.
Experience developing integrated content, campaign, channel, or communications strategies for distinct audiences or talent segments.
Strong data literacy, including experience interpreting funnel, engagement, conversion, sentiment, channel, market, or campaign data and using insights to support decisions.
Experience developing business requirements, journey maps, future-state workflows, briefs, process documentation, validation scenarios, or operating procedures for complex programs or technology-enabled experiences.
Experience preparing management-level presentations, stakeholder updates, recommendations, or decision-ready materials for leaders.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to create clear, credible, audience-centered messaging and synthesize complex information concisely.
Strong problem-solving, critical thinking, organization, attention to detail, and follow-through, with the ability to manage ambiguity and balance multiple priorities.
Ability to work independently and collaboratively across teams, influencing outcomes without direct authority.
Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.

Nice To Haves

Experience with employer brand platforms, career sites, candidate relationship management tools, recruitment marketing technology, social media, job media, talent communities, events, or candidate survey platforms.
Experience applying brand, content, media, digital marketing, user experience, service design, accessibility, or personalization practices in a talent or people context.
Experience supporting high-volume hiring, specialized or scarce-skill hiring, internal mobility, early career, frontline, professional, or executive talent segments.
Experience managing agencies, media partners, technology vendors, budgets, statements of work, performance scorecards, or vendor governance.
Experience designing or supporting change management, learning, enablement, or adoption strategies for new processes, tools, standards, or experiences.
Experience working with senior leaders, cross-functional partners, vendors, recruiters, hiring leaders, and subject matter experts to align priorities, resolve trade-offs, and drive outcomes.
Program management, product management, marketing, change management, Human Resources, user experience, or related certification.

Responsibilities

Lead the strategy, ongoing health, and evolution of Talent Attraction and Candidate Experience programs, aligning work to workforce priorities, business outcomes, candidate needs, brand standards, and operational expectations.
Develop and maintain an integrated roadmap across employer brand, recruitment marketing, career sites, talent communities, candidate communications, events, social channels, referral activation, and candidate experience improvements.
Translate hiring priorities and talent market insights into differentiated attraction strategies for priority skills, roles, locations, and talent segments.
Map and improve the end-to-end candidate journey from awareness through onboarding handoff, identifying important moments, friction points, experience gaps, and opportunities to improve clarity, personalization, accessibility, and trust.
Partner with recruiters, hiring teams, employer brand, Communications, Marketing, People Technology, Legal, business leaders, and other stakeholders to deliver consistent and compliant candidate messaging across channels and touchpoints.
Lead complex scoping, analysis, and design for attraction and candidate experience programs, processes, content, and technology enhancements, including requirements, future-state journeys, operating impacts, and validation measures.
Establish measurable outcomes and reporting for attraction and candidate experience, including channel effectiveness, engagement, conversion, source quality, candidate sentiment, experience consistency, adoption, and return on investment.
Use candidate feedback, funnel data, labor market insights, channel performance, and stakeholder input to identify trends, challenge assumptions, develop insights, and recommend improvements.
Manage program governance routines, including prioritization, campaign and content calendars, decision forums, risk tracking, action follow-up, escalation paths, and stakeholder communication cadences.
Coordinate cross-functional execution across Talent teams, People Group partners, business stakeholders, agencies, technology vendors, and project teams so work is integrated, sequenced, and not duplicative.
Partner with project managers and product or technology teams to transition new capabilities into steady-state ownership, ensuring adoption, controls, documentation, training, reporting, and continuous improvement plans are in place.
Manage agency and vendor relationships as applicable, including briefs, deliverables, budgets, scorecards, service levels, performance reviews, enhancement roadmaps, and governance escalations.
Create candidate-facing content and internal enablement to help recruiters, hiring leaders, and ambassadors communicate a clear, credible, and consistent story about GEICO and the opportunity.
Prepare concise leadership updates, management-level presentations, and decision-ready materials that synthesize progress, risks, insights, trade-offs, and recommendations.
Drive adoption of attraction and candidate experience standards across teams that may not directly report to the role, influencing through clarity, credibility, data, and partnership.