Assistant Talent Acquisition Manager (Retail)

Assistant Manager – Talent Acquisition (Retail)

Location – Lower Parel, Mumbai

About Company

The Souled Store is a homegrown youth casual-wear brand founded in 2013. Today, we are one of India’s largest online merchandising platforms, with licensing partnerships including Disney, Warner Bros., WWE, IPL and Viacom18, among others.

We create products inspired by pop culture- superheroes, movies, TV shows and cartoons while staying deeply rooted in evolving youth fashion and lifestyle trends. Alongside our core men’s and women’s apparel categories, we are actively expanding into new product lines such as activewear, Supima products, personal care, footwear and backpacks.

While we began as a digital-first brand, we have steadily expanded into offline retail and currently operate 90+ stores across India, with further pan-India expansion underway.

The Souled Store was built on a simple belief: people do their best work when they love what they do. We believe work should be driven by ownership, curiosity and leadership at every level not just by titles. Over the years, we’ve built a team of like-minded individuals who work smart, take accountability and grow with the business.

If you resonate with our culture and want to be part of an aggressively scaling, consumer-first brand, we’d love to have you join us!

Role Summary

Owns hiring for Store Managers, Area Managers and all corporate office roles within Retail Ops. Reports to Senior Manager – HR.

Key responsibilities

1.Hiring delivery: Run full-cycle hiring across three mandates

• Store Managers, including leadership for new store launches.
• Area Managers.
• Retail Ops corporate roles, such as retail MIS/analytics, training, audit and compliance, retail excellence, and ops leadership.

2.Sourcing: Map talent at fashion and lifestyle retailers for field roles, source cross-industry for corporate roles (analytics, training, audit), headhunt through LinkedIn and referrals, and manage a small panel of search partners.

3.Internal pipeline: Work with Retail HRBPs to identify promotion-ready ASMs for Store Manager roles and strong Store Managers for Area Manager roles and run internal job postings before going external.

4.Assessment: Build role-specific selection

• For field roles: store walk-throughs and P&L or KPI deep-dives.
• For corporate roles: functional assignments or case discussions.

5.Offer management: Benchmark compensation, negotiate within approved bands and the approval matrix, and manage candidates through to joining.

6.Stakeholder management: Partner with Retail Ops leadership and Area Managers on manpower plans and interview panels and run fortnightly hiring reviews.

7.Reporting: Track TAT, offer-to-join ratio, source mix, cost per hire and 6-month retention by role category.

Requirement

• 5–8 years in talent acquisition, with at least 5+ years in retail or consumer hiring.
• Experience hiring both field leadership and corporate functional roles.
• Strong retail network; skilled in headhunting, assessment and negotiation; comfortable with multi-city travel.