The posting
First Circle is one of the fastest-growing FinTech companies in the country, providing financial services to under-served SMEs. We've already transformed access to credit for thousands of businesses, and now we're building a full-stack neobank offering multi-currency bank accounts, payments, FX, corporate credit cards, and payroll. As we enter this next phase of growth, we're hiring exceptional talent with a track record of excellence to join us in shaping the next chapter.
We're looking for a People Business Partner who is a practical problem-solver. You will be the People team's link into the business: close enough to our team leaders to understand what drives performance in their teams, and rigorous enough to turn that understanding into people programs that work at scale.
This is not a traditional HR generalist role. We are growing fast (our sales team has more than doubled in under a year), and the questions we need answered look like this:
- Why do some new hires ramp up faster than others, and why do some leave early?
- Which signals in our hiring process actually predict performance on the job?
- What does a good people manager look like at First Circle, and how do we get every manager there, not one at a time?
The right person answers questions like these with data first. You frame the hypotheses, test them against the data we have (or go and collect it), find the real cause, then build the process, tool or standard that fixes it, and measure whether it worked.
You'll join a lean People team that has automated much of its admin with AI and in-house tools, so your time goes into judgement and impact, not paperwork. The role comes with high exposure to our leadership team.
First Circle is changing small business banking in the Philippines. The sky is the limit for someone who wants to get stuck in and make a difference.
What you'll do
- Partner with business leaders: Serve as the main People partner for team leaders and department heads, starting with our largest and fastest-growing team, Acquisition (Sales). Get grounded in their goals, talent gaps, and overall team health, bringing a clear, data-informed perspective to the table.
- Diagnose before you prescribe: When a team hits a bump—like early attrition, slow ramp-ups, or low engagement—dig into the data across HR systems, ATS, performance tools, and survey metrics. Compare cohorts to uncover the root cause before recommending a solution.
- Co-lead performance management: Help design and roll out an assessment framework and clear career maps, ensuring decisions around development, promotions, and compensation stay fair and consistent across departments.
- Raise the hiring bar: Partner with hiring managers to set objective, values-aligned criteria for evaluating candidates, and establish feedback loops to track whether new hires thrive over time.
- Build cultural onboarding: Create an onboarding experience that turns company values into clear, day-to-day expectations for individual contributors and managers—going far beyond a simple admin checklist.
- Set the standard for people managers: Define what great management looks like at First Circle (from regular 1:1s to constructive feedback) and give managers the tools and support to meet that standard.
- Handle employee relations with sound judgment: Guide managers through performance and conduct issues, running fair and well-documented processes aligned with Philippine labor law and internal policies, while identifying broader patterns that need systemic fixes.
- Build for scale: Lean into templates, dashboards, automations, and clear standards instead of quick band-aids. If a process happens more than twice, systemize it—leveraging AI tools wherever they add value.
- Measure your impact: Define clear success metrics up front for every initiative (such as retention, ramp time, or engagement) and track and share progress transparently.
Example projects in your first six months
- Working out what separates new sales hires who ramp up and stay from those who don't, and fixing the root cause with team leaders.
- Building the assessment framework and first career maps with department heads.
- Turning our employee pulse survey results into targeted interventions for each team's lowest-scoring areas, and tracking whether they move.
- Launching the new cultural onboarding program and measuring its effect on early attrition.
Requirements
- Relevant Experience: 5–8 years in HR, including time as an HR Business Partner or People Partner working directly with business leaders. (That said, we value your trajectory and potential far more than a strict year count.)
- [Non-negotiable] Analytical problem-solving: You reach for data first. You know how to break down complex, messy questions into clear hypotheses, comparing cohorts, spotting trends, and separating correlation from causation. You run analyses yourself rather than just outsourcing them to a vendor. Strong proficiency in Excel and Google Sheets is required (pivot tables, lookups, and basic statistics).
- Systems thinking: You build processes, templates, and tools that keep working long after you set them up, and you can point to systems you’ve created that other teams actively adopted. You have a natural bias for automation and feel completely comfortable integrating AI tools into your daily workflow.
- Practical execution: You can outline exactly what you’d do on Monday morning, not just present a high-level framework. You take ideas across the finish line and stay around to measure the results.
- HR foundations: Solid grounding in employee relations, performance management, and core talent processes, along with a practical working knowledge of Philippine labor law (due process, regularization, and separation). Exposure to compensation and benchmarking is a strong plus.
- Stakeholder partnership: A clear, structured communicator who can challenge senior leaders with evidence, hold your ground under pushback, and earn the trust of frontline managers.
- Ownership: Highly responsive, proactive, and accountable. You thrive in ambiguity and love building things from scratch in a fast-moving environment.
- Nice to have: Experience in fintech, tech, a startup, or a high-volume sales organization; or a background in consulting, data analytics, or people analytics.
Benefits
- Salary package: dependent on experience, plus 13th month pay and an annual company performance bonus.
- Work set-up: At least 4 days per week in our BGC office, subject to change based on business needs.
- Benefits: HMO coverage from week one, 20 days of vacation leave, life and accidental insurance, and monthly fitness, transportation and accommodation allowances.
