Department: Employability Services

Starting Salary: £33,797
Hours: Full time
Term: Permanent

Since 1850, St Mary’s mission has been to provide a high quality professional environment, inspired by its distinctive ethos and values. The University is an inclusive academic community, where everybody is welcomed.

St Mary’s is on an exciting journey of transformation and growth, to benefit students, staff and the wider St Mary’s community. As the University builds on its proud heritage, it will be looking for exceptional people to help shape its progressive future.

Employability Services in entering an exciting phase in its development. Having brought together the Centre for Workplace Learning (CWL) and the Careers Service, our vision is to embed employability as an integral part of the student experience at St Mary’s, ensuring that all students have the opportunity both within their programme and on an extracurricular basis to develop their knowledge, skills and attributes to gain a good graduate job and manage their careers longer term.

New placement modules are being introduced and we are looking to increase participation in existing CWL modules and we need the Student Placement Lead to support and drive this process. They will ensure that we have a robust team to develop new opportunities for the different types of placement and that we have the processes to support both the academic teams and students to a high standard. This role will have the responsibility of managing the current CWL work placement provision and develop new models e.g. for the one year sandwich placement.

Candidates for the Student Placement Lead role should be able to demonstrate a solid understanding of the value of work placements within the wider academic experience and have the drive and enthusiasm to motivate a small team to take this to the next level within St Mary’s. A passion for providing a high quality student-centric service and a commitment to delivering against quality standards and processes are key requirements. We also are looking for someone who can collaborate with a wide variety of stakeholders including lecturers, careers consultants and employers and develop processes to ensure continuous improvement.  Above all, we are seeking a real team player and motivational manager with experience of supporting students and the ability to adapt quickly and perform well in the role.

Successful applicants will have:

• A good honours degree
• An understanding of the work placement process and the value of placements for students
• An understanding of the relevant quality assurance and enhancement processes relating to work placement and student support and learning
• Good experience in a professional environment and an understanding of employability and workplace expectations
• Proven experience of working successfully in a professional, multi-functioning team
• Experience of developing processes and organising workload across a team
• Experience of analysing and reporting data to enable management decision-making
• Excellent written skills
• Ability to build relationships and collaborate with individuals and groups both within and outside the University
• Excellent IT skills and confidence in working with databases, spreadsheets and Word documents
• Ability to work on own initiative without close supervision
• Creativity to identify new ways of working, process improvements and initiatives
• Willingness to update and acquire new skills and knowledge
• Ability to work flexibly and respond quickly to changing demands and meet deadlines
• Attention to detail and ability to process information and data quickly and accurately
• Understanding of good practice with respect to diversity and inclusion
• A supportive and student-centric approach

For further information about the role, please click here

Closing Date: 13.02.2020 at 23.59

Interviews are likely to be held on 24.02.2020