SoW - Hiring of Agency - Project Resources Onboarding and Management Support-Jharkhand

SCOPE OF WORK

Hiring of Agency - Project Resources Onboarding and Management Support-Jharkhand

Organizational Overview

Founded in 2000 on the belief that World Change Starts with Educated Children®, Room to Read develops children’s foundational literacy skills, as well as life skills that promote gender equality. We nurture these essential skills in children by training and coaching educators, creating quality learning materials and spaces, strengthening education systems, and delivering programs directly and with partners – all while honouring the dignity of every child. Committed to accelerating learning outcomes for more children, more quickly, Room to Read has benefited children acros 29 countries, with more than 17 million children actively benefiting from our programming in 2025 alone. Room to Read India’s literacy operations currently span across 12 states, with a focus on improving children’s reading skills, access to quality learning materials, and supportive learning environments. Room to Read envisions a world free from illiteracy and gender inequality, where all children have room to read, learn and grow. Visit us at? https://www.roomtoreadindia.org/

Background

Room to Read is undertaking a significant scale-up of its funded Literacy Program in Jharkhand, with expanding implementation across multiple districts and a substantial field workforce required to support timely and effective program delivery. As Room to Read expands its field implementation in Jharkhand, a substantial number of staff will join different field-facing and supervisory roles.

The scale-up involves a phased mobilisation of personnel across field-facing, supervisory and project-support roles, requiring coordinated oversight of recruitment, selection, offer management, joining and onboarding across multiple locations. Given the scale, pace and operational dependencies involved, a structured approach is essential to ensure workforce readiness, maintain recruitment quality, proactively manage risks and dependencies, and provide leadership with clear visibility of progress, bottlenecks and decisions requiring intervention.

Room to Read therefore seeks senior project-management support to anchor, govern and quality-assure the Phase 1 workforce mobilisation, working in close coordination with Room to Read’s HR, Program and Operations teams. The assignment will strengthen the current internal execution model through integrated planning, progress monitoring, risk management, escalation and implementation oversight, ensuring that recruitment and onboarding remain aligned with project timelines and field-readiness requirements. It is not intended to establish a parallel recruitment function, but to reinforce organisational capacity for a time-bound, complex workforce mobilisation.

Objective of the assignment

The objective is to establish and operate a senior hiring and onboarding control tower that provides end-to-end governance, execution oversight and leadership assurance for the hiring and onboarding program. The assignment will ensure clear accountability across stakeholders, real-time visibility of workforce readiness, proactive management of risks and dependencies, and timely resolution of bottlenecks. It will drive disciplined execution of priority positions from requisition to joining and onboarding, aligned with program milestones and field-deployment requirements, while strengthening coordination and accountability within the existing organizational structure.

This includes driving follow-through on agreed actions, challenging delays and slippages, coordinating corrective measures with responsible stakeholders, and escalating unresolved issues requiring leadership intervention to ensure timely execution and workforce readiness.

Scope of services

Hiring and onboarding project resources management

Periodically review workforce needs and validate against Phase 1 project requirements, field-deployment plans and agreed implementation timelines. Work with project, Operations and HR to confirm the number and type of positions required, their location and deployment timelines, and to prioritise critical vacancies based on project needs and mobilization urgency.

Maintain an integrated, end-to-end view of the approved workforce plan, prioritised roles and locations, recruitment progress, anticipated joining dates, and critical dependencies. Drive a structured program-management cadence across the hiring-to-onboarding lifecycle, ensuring milestone-based tracking, clear stakeholder accountability, timely follow-ups, and proactive identification and resolution of delays to keep workforce mobilisation aligned with program implementation timelines.

Recruitment governance and funnel assurance

Provide oversight and quality assurance across the recruitment lifecycle, covering hiring plans, role scorecards, sourcing strategies, screening criteria, selection processes, recruitment funnel performance, candidate ageing, and offer-to-joining conversion. Identify gaps, inefficiencies and emerging risks across recruitment stages, recommend evidence-based corrective measures, and drive timely follow-through with relevant stakeholders to improve hiring effectiveness, maintain selection quality and achieve workforce mobilization targets within agreed timelines.

Oversight of execution and bottleneck resolution

Provide structured oversight of designated recruitment and HR execution resources, ensuring clear ownership, defined timelines and disciplined follow-through on deliverables. Monitor progress against agreed milestones, proactively identify and challenge delays, resolve operational bottlenecks, and coordinate cross-functional dependencies across HR, Program, Operations and other relevant stakeholders. Facilitate timely decision-making and escalate critical risks, unresolved dependencies and issues requiring leadership intervention to keep workforce mobilization on track.

Assess and monitor internal HR execution dependencies against the requirements of the workforce mobilisation plan. Identify risks arising from competing priorities, workload constraints, resource gaps, process bottlenecks or delays in decision-making, and assess their potential impact on recruitment and joining timelines. Work with HR and relevant leadership to agree corrective measures, which may include reprioritisation, redistribution of work or additional support, and track these actions through to resolution. Escalate capacity constraints and dependencies that cannot be resolved within the existing structure or delegated authority.

Offer-to-join and onboarding assurance

Establish end-to-end oversight of the offer-to-joining and onboarding pipeline, with clear visibility of offer acceptance, anticipated joining dates, candidate drop-offs, background verification, documentation and other critical onboarding dependencies. Strengthen coordination and ensure seamless hand-offs across Recruitment, HR, Program, Operations and field teams to minimize joining delays, proactively address onboarding risks, and ensure timely workforce readiness in line with program deployment requirements.

The agency will maintain visibility of onboarding completion and field-readiness status, track pending requirements and dependencies with the responsible internal teams, and escalate gaps or delays that may affect planned field deployment.

Reporting, risk and escalation

Develop and maintain a live workforce mobilization dashboard and a structured risk, issue and decision log, providing leadership with a consolidated, evidence-based view of staffing requirements versus actual progress, recruitment funnel performance, candidate ageing, offers, confirmed and anticipated joining’s, potential drop-offs, and critical vacancies across priority roles and locations.. Enable timely, data-driven leadership decisions and targeted interventions to address critical gaps, manage delivery risks and maintain workforce readiness against pr