ThoughtWorks is not your average global IT consulting company; so don’t expect to find average people working here. As a People Development Lead [PDL], you are going to help us stay this way. People really are our business and your job will be to act as their success partners.

The People Development Lead [PDL] is responsible for aligning business objectives with ThoughtWorkers [TWers] from assigned accounts, offices, and roles. The position serves as a partner to leadership on TWer development, engagement opportunities, and challenges.

A successful PDL acts as a coach, manager, connector, and change agent. The role assesses and anticipates people-related needs. You must be able to synthesize and communicate with key leadership stakeholders to develop support structures and action plans related to TWer development. The PDL maintains an effective level of business literacy about strategy, midrange plans, culture, and competition. The PDL role is based in Chicago and requires 40% travel.

We believe to excel in this role, you will be good at:

• Building relationships. You will work with a diverse group of ThoughtWorkers and act as a career development partner for 100-125 consultants in North America. You will also collaborate with project team leaders to ensure consultants are receiving the right support to grow their skills.
• Supporting diversity and inclusion. Be mindful about diversity on teams and in leadership, help identify ways to continuously improve TW’s ability to support a diverse workforce.
• Providing both constructive and effective feedback. Support a feedback culture through training, coaching, and accountability partnership.
• Communicating. Strong verbal and written communication to discuss new programs and initiatives from the People Development team. You will also be comfortable with providing feedback or making suggestions to current processes.
• Recruiting. Be an active participant in recruiting future TWers.
• Ensuring the right opportunities for TWers. Support the process of staffing TWers on engagements that overall balance the needs of clients, TW, and the TWer development.
• Facilitating. Work with projects to conduct virtual and onsite engagement health checks for assigned teams. Drive talent review sessions with assigned teams and office leadership in order to amplify TWer growth and development. Contribute to national level talent review sessions.
• Synthesizing. You will work on gathering a variety of data points for consultants to ensure their success. Rely on data whenever possible to make the best decisions.
• Bringing talent management best practices. From determining salary recommendations to recommending potential performance improvement strategies.

You will bring these skills and experiences:

• Extremely comfortable working in ambiguous environments that are culturally diverse, fast-paced, always changing, and light on structure/process.
• Incredibly strong organization, follow-through, time, and management skills.
• Experience working with and supporting distributed teams/individuals.
• A knack for talent management and loads of experience resolving difficult and unique employee relation matters. Deep knowledge in employment laws is a plus.
• Ability to make tough and sometimes unpopular decisions.
• Stakeholder management experience and confidence to challenge, influence, and persuade after gathering an appropriate level of context and data to support.
• Resilience. Can accept feedback and admit when you’ve made a mistake.
• Bachelor’s degree in a people or organization design related field; or three to five years of talent management experience, preferably in a people-centric, professional services environment.

It is the policy of ThoughtWorks, Inc. to provide a work environment free of discrimination. The Company will take affirmative action to ensure applicants and ThoughtWorks employees are treated without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, ethnic origin, veteran status, family status, disability, sexual orientation, gender expression or gender identity. This also includes individuals who are perceived to have any of the aforementioned attributes. ThoughtWorks will adhere to all federal, state, and municipal laws and regulations governing employment.

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