Senior Specialist, Talent Acquisition

Job Description

Senior Specialist Talent Acquisition

• Scale shared service hiring. Drive regional talent impact across APAC

• Shape regional hiring impact from Malaysia — partnering across APAC to deliver critical talent for business growth.

• Drive niche hiring, talent strategy, and future-ready recruitment initiatives in a high-impact regional TA role.

The Opportunity

In this role you will be the regional Talent Acquisition Advisor based in Malaysia, supporting hiring priorities across selected markets in Asia Pacific. You will partner closely with the Regional Talent Acquisition team, senior business stakeholders, HR partners, and RPO partners to deliver business-critical hiring, volume recruitment support, and talent acquisition initiatives that enable the business to be talent-ready for the future.

We are not specific to a particular sector or industry; however, prior experience in an MNC environment and experience in building or supporting a shared service/support centre recruitment model will be a strong advantage.

What You Will Do

• Partner with senior business leaders, HR partners, and the regional Talent Acquisition team to understand current and future hiring needs across assigned APAC markets.

• Bring prior experience or strong capability in supporting the recruitment setup for a support center/shared services hub, including hiring ramp-up, stakeholder education, process creation, and recruiting governance.

• Lead and manage business-critical niche hiring across selected Asia Pacific markets, ensuring strong market mapping, candidate engagement, stakeholder alignment, and timely delivery.

• Support day-to-day recruitment delivery in partnership with RPO partners, especially for volume hiring, ensuring strong execution, quality of candidate slate, process discipline, and timely follow-through.

• Support the continuous improvement of recruitment processes, tools, systems, and ways of working, aligned with regional and global Talent Acquisition guidelines.

• Use recruitment data, market insights, and key hiring metrics to support decision-making, track progress, and improve hiring outcomes.

• Partner on employer branding and talent attraction activities to position the organization as an employer of choice in the region.

What You Must Have:

• Bachelor’s degree required; Around 8-10 years of experience in Talent Acquisition / Recruitment / HR.

• Strong experience managing end-to-end recruitment, including stakeholder management, sourcing strategy, candidate engagement, interview process management, and offer support.

• Experience in business-critical, niche, or specialist hiring across one or more markets. Prior experience in an MNC environment will be a strong advantage.

• Experience supporting the recruitment build-out of a shared service center, support center, regional hub, or large hiring ramp-up will be highly preferred.

• Strong understanding of recruitment processes, TA tools, market mapping, sourcing channels, and hiring metrics. Comfortable working in a matrixed, regional environment with multiple stakeholders and competing priorities.

• Fluent in English; good communication and influencing skills are a must to be successful in this role.

Who we are: We are known as Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, New Jersey, USA in the United States and Canada and MSD everywhere else. For more than a century, we have been bringing forward medicines and vaccines for many of the world's most challenging diseases. Today, our company continues to be at the forefront of research to deliver innovative health solutions and advance the prevention and treatment of diseases that threaten people and animals around the world.

What we look for: Imagine getting up in the morning for a job as important as helping to save and improve lives around the world. Here, you have that opportunity. You can put your empathy, creativity, digital mastery, or scientific genius to work in collaboration with a diverse group of colleagues who pursue and bring hope to countless people who are battling some of the most challenging diseases of our time. Our team is constantly evolving, so if you are among the intellectually curious, join us—and start making your impact today.

Required Skills:

Behavioral Interviews, Data Analysis, Direct Sourcing, Diversity Recruitment, Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS), Job Advertising, Market Analytics, Personnel Recruitment, Pharmaceutical Industry, Project Management, Recordkeeping, Recruiting Processes, Recruitment Strategy, Strategic Planning, Strategic Sourcing, Talent Acquisition, Talent Development, Talent Intelligence, Talent Management, Talent Recruitment, Talent Strategy, Vendor Management

Preferred Skills:

Current Employees apply HERE

Current Contingent Workers apply HERE

Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company. No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails.

Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

VISA Sponsorship:

Travel Requirements:

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

Valid Driving License:

Hazardous Material(s):

Job Posting End Date:

08/27/2026

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