Assistant Director, Talent Management Experience Design at Northwestern Mutual

About the Job:

The Assistant Director, Talent Management Experience Design for Career & Talent Planning owns the end-to-end design, execution, and continuous improvement of enterprise processes and experiences that empower employees to invest in their growth and strengthen the talent pipeline required to sustain and accelerate business performance.

This role is committed to the employee-facing experience, designing and curating an ecosystem that empowers individuals to explore career possibilities, set meaningful development goals, and track progress against a personalized growth plan that is integrated into the flow of work. The role also ensures these processes and experiences are effective, scalable, and aligned with business priorities, talent strategy, skills development, and the organization's culture and behaviors.

By leveraging talent data, skills insights, fit-for-purpose technology, and AI-enabled tools, this role ensures career and development experiences do not live in isolation by connecting them to talent review and calibration processes and agile succession approaches. In doing so, it makes individual growth aspirations visible to the organization, continuously informs leadership pipelines with real-time development data, and enables talent readiness to be assessed and acted upon with consistency and rigor.

Partnering closely with HR Business Partners and key stakeholders, the Assistant Director brings fresh perspectives to complex talent challenges, influences across functions and leadership levels, and translates people data and business insights into experience designs that reduce critical talent risk, strengthen organizational resilience, and create the conditions for both individual fulfillment and enterprise growth.

What You'll Do:

Enterprise Talent Process Ownership

• Own the end-to-end design of the enterprise career, talent review & succession philosophy and processes, including: career planning, development planning, continuous career & development conversations, talent review & calibration, succession planning, and skill development.
  • Own the enabling technology experience and requirements for these processes (e.g., Development Plans, Talent Card, Talent Marketplace, Gigs, Career Hub, career navigation tools, etc.).
• Ensure talent processes are practical, leader and employee-friendly, and aligned with enterprise talent philosophy, business needs, and culture.
• Accountable for supporting delivery of these talent processes through developing clear guidance, materials, draft communications, and readiness support for HR Business Partners, leaders, and employees.
• Providing day-to-day support and management of processes, including escalated technical inquiries, issue coordination, and follow-through with HR stakeholders.
• Utilize talent analytics and relevant success metrics to assess the effectiveness of cycles, monitor adoption, gather insights for continuous improvement, and track progress and outcomes.

Continuous Improvement

• Lead retrospectives and synthesize quantitative and qualitative feedback to identify opportunities to simplify and strengthen these talent processes.
• Translate insights into clear recommendations and design enhancements that improve clarity, consistency, impact, and the employee, leader, and HR experience.

Stakeholder Partnership & Enablement

• Serve as a primary point of contact for HR on enterprise talent management processes. Strengthens knowledge management for HR Services and HR business partners.
• Provide consultation, guidance, and problem-solving support related to process execution, interpretation, and application.
• Develop and deliver enablement materials (e.g., toolkits, job aids, FAQs, talk tracks, training, etc.) to support consistent enterprise adoption.
• Creates automated and scalable self-service support through AI tools to quickly surface accurate guidance for employees, leaders and HR, reducing the day-to-day support requests.
• Partners with the HR Advisory team to brainstorm and enable Career Center consultations related to career development and talent review & succession, including career planning and development action guidance.
• Partners with HR Technology and Talent analytics to modernize and scale our talent management practices through fit-for-purpose tools, digital workflows, enhancements, and data-informed capabilities.

What Experience You'll Bring:

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Organizational Development, or a related field required
• Graduate degree strongly preferred

Experience

• 6-8 years of experience in talent management, organizational effectiveness, or related HR disciplines with a focus on high-impact, enterprise talent processes
• Demonstrated experience leading enterprise-wide talent management processes (e.g., career development, talent reviews, succession planning, and skills)
• Experience partnering with HR Business Partners
• Experience leveraging Workday as a process owner to drive mature, scalable talent management processes and insights.

Skills & Capabilities

• User-Centered Design Process: Designs products, services, and experiences that are tailored to the needs, preferences, and behaviors of the end-user.
  
  User-Centered Design Process: Designs products, services, and experiences that are tailored to the needs, preferences, and behaviors of the end-user.
• Customer Centricity: Applies a customer first mindset to design and continuously improve solutions, systems, processes, and services that support enterprise strategy, impact critical business outcomes, and drive organizational success.
  
  Customer Centricity: Applies a customer first mindset to design and continuously improve solutions, systems, processes, and services that support enterprise strategy, impact critical business outcomes, and drive organizational success.
• Stakeholder Relationship: Organizes, influences, monitors, and improves relationships with key stakeholders; systematically identifies stakeholders and analyzes their needs and expectations to support in planning and decision making while implementing various tasks to engage with them.
  
  Stakeholder Relationship: Organizes, influences, monitors, and improves relationships with key stakeholders; systematically identifies stakeholders and analyzes their needs and expectations to support in planning and decision making while implementing various tasks to engage with them.
• Cross Functional Partnering & Planning: Facilitates collaboration, communication, coordination, and planning with individuals and teams from different functions within the organization, and who have different areas of expertise, to achieve common goals.
  
  Cross Functional Partnering & Planning: Facilitates collaboration, communication, coordination, and planning with individuals and teams from different functions within the organization, and who have different areas of expertise, to achieve common goals.
• Consulting: Connects with stakeholders to understand and gain specific information to help resolve customer problems in a given domain. Communicates effectively intent to customers, solicits customer requirements, utilizes domain knowledge and collaborates with the right stakeholders.
  
  Consulting: Connects with stakeholders to understand and gain specific information to help resolve customer problems in a given domain. Communicates effectively intent to customers, solicits customer requirements, utilizes domain knowledge and collaborates with the right stakeholders.
• Executive Presence: Builds and maintains an authentic personal brand, inspiring and motivating people to pursue a desired outcome by sharing a clear vision and demonstrating confidence, professionalism, self-awareness and trust with business stakeholders.
  
  Executive Presence: Builds and maintains an authentic personal brand, inspiring and motivating people to pursue a desired outcome by sharing a clear vision and demonstrating confidence, professionalism, self-awareness and trust with business stakeholders.
• Business Influence: Collaborates, communicates and influences direct reports, stakeholders, and other business functions based on understanding of the marketplace, organizational needs, and the client as a people manager.
  
  Business Influence: Collaborates, communicates and influences direct reports, stakeholders, and other business functions based on understanding of the marketplace, organizational needs, and the client as a people manager.
• Change Management: Acts as an advocate for change as well as identifying gaps/issues that should be addressed to deliver optimal client/field experiences. Leads change management, when driving technology or process improvements, applying relevant change acceleration, risk mitigation, and stakeholder management methodologies and best practices. Analyzes business trends and current state to develop a case for change that aligns with business strategy. Implements plans and strategies to manage organizational and behavioral changes by aligning leaders and engaging impacted stakeholders.
  
  Change Management: Acts as an advocate for change as well as identifying gaps/issues that should be addressed to deliver optimal client/field experiences. Leads change management, when driving technology or process improvements, applying relevant change acceleration, risk mitigation . click apply for full job details