Talent Acquisition Research Analyst

COFCO International is a global agri-business with a clear vision, strong values and a positive culture, focused on being a leader in the global grains, oilseeds and sugar supply chains. We provide the food the world needs in a responsible way. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, we are ambitious, with the right structures and culture to meet the world's increasing and changing needs. With 12,000+ people in 35 countries, our global portfolio includes assets across the Americas, Europe, Africa, Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. We trade with over 50 nations, while providing farmers unique direct access to the growing Chinese market.

About the Role

We’re looking for a Talent Acquisition Research Analyst to join our recruiting team, someone whose curiosity runs deeper than the job title suggests. This person will support our global Talent Acquisition function by mapping talent markets, building candidate and company intelligence, and surfacing the people, organizations, and trends that aren’t obvious from a first search.

This is not a data-entry role. It’s for someone who treats research like a puzzle: who reads between the lines of an org chart, notices when a company’s LinkedIn headcount doesn’t match its press releases, and can’t stop pulling a thread once they’ve spotted it.

What You’ll Do

• Partner closely with the Talent Acquisition team to translate search briefs into effective research strategies, continuously refining the approach as new information and market insights emerge.
• Conduct deep market mapping across key functions, industries, companies, and geographies, identifying target organizations, adjacent sectors, and talent pools beyond the obvious first choices.
• Develop intelligence on target companies, including their business models, areas of expertise, global footprint, organizational structures, leadership teams, M&A activity, expansions, restructurings, workforce shifts, and other relevant developments.
• Create and maintain organizational maps, reporting structures, talent ecosystems, and competitor landscapes to provide a deeper understanding of where talent sits and how organizations and teams are structured.
• Identify passive candidates who would not surface through a standard keyword search by connecting signals across sources such as news, company publications, filings, conference speaker lists, and other relevant channels.
• Build detailed intelligence profiles on potential candidates, including career trajectories, team structures, reporting lines, and relevant career context, rather than simply summarizing a résumé.
• Synthesize findings into clear, concise, and actionable briefs, with a focus on insights rather than raw data.
• Build and maintain structured repositories of candidate, company, competitor, and market intelligence that can be leveraged across future searches.
• Manage multiple research projects simultaneously, ensuring findings, sources, methodologies, and outputs are accurate, well documented, organized, and delivered within agreed timelines.

What We’re Looking For

• Genuine curiosity and learning agility. You read widely, follow tangents, and are the person who says, “Wait, that’s interesting,” and actually looks into it. You’re motivated to continuously develop your understanding of companies, industries, organizational structures, talent markets, and new research techniques.
• A researcher’s instinct and comfort with ambiguity. You enjoy finding information that isn’t sitting on page one of a search result. You’re comfortable working with incomplete information and refining your approach as research briefs evolve and new insights emerge.
• Persistence and resourcefulness. You’re willing to explore different routes, test alternative research approaches, and keep investigating when the answer is not immediately available.
• Pattern recognition and analytical thinking. You can connect a funding round, a LinkedIn job change, a conference talk, an acquisition, and a leadership move into a coherent story about a person, company, or market.
• Precision and rigor. Curiosity without rigor just produces noise. You know how to verify information, cross-check sources, question assumptions, document findings, and present research accurately.
• Strong organizational skills and a structured way of working. You can manage multiple research streams, organize complex information logically, maintain clear and high-quality documentation, and ensure research findings remain structured, accurate, and easily accessible.
• Strong written communication and synthesis skills. You can organize large volumes of information and turn a sprawling research thread into a concise, relevant, and actionable summary for someone who doesn’t have time to review the raw material.
• Fluency in English, with strong written and verbal communication skills.

Nice to Have

• Prior experience in research, talent intelligence, competitive intelligence, market research, business research, executive search, or another analytical field.
• Familiarity with tools such as LinkedIn Recruiter, Boolean search, organizational mapping tools, data aggregation platforms, or similar research solutions.
• Experience working alongside recruiters, sourcers, headhunters, executive search professionals, or Talent Acquisition teams.
• Interest in business strategy, organizational design, corporate structures, global businesses, talent markets, and workforce trends.
• Strong Excel and presentation skills, with the ability to structure, analyze, and communicate information clearly.
• A track record of “finding the unfindable,” whether through professional experience, academic research, a thesis, investigation, personal project, or hobby that demonstrates curiosity, persistence, and analytical thinking.
• Understanding of the legal and data privacy framework applicable to the processing of candidate and market intelligence, including GDPR requirements.

Why This Role

You’ll work at the center of high-stakes searches, where the quality of your research directly shapes who gets hired into critical roles. You’ll have the freedom to dig, question, and go down rabbit holes, because that’s exactly where the best insights tend to live.

Beyond supporting individual searches, your work will help build a long-term Talent Intelligence capability by increasing our understanding of talent markets, target companies, organizational structures, competitor landscapes, and the movement of critical talent across industries and geographies.

COFCO International is an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.

Please refer to our Candidate Privacy Notice to know how COFCO collects and processes your personal data during your job application.