Senior Recruitment Consultant (Manager fast-track)

Job title: Senior Recruitment Consultant (Manager fast-track)

Location: Preston

Length of contract: Full time and permanent

Hours: 37.5 hours per week, Monday to Friday

To be worked between 8am and 6pm (inc 30-minute unpaid lunchbreak)

Pay Scale: £34,000 per annum plus on target bonus

Holiday entitlement: Paid holiday entitlement of 28 days, plus 8 bank holidays

Plus a day’s leave on your birthday, plus a wellbeing day’s leave

Responsible to: Operations Director

The role: The purpose of the role is to win vacancies and place ex-offender candidates into sustainable paid employment with local employers. Working towards a promotion to Manager within 6 months, you will then also provide leadership to the Preston office team, being responsible for the management and administration of the office, whilst continuing to hold hands-on Recruitment Consultant responsibilities for 70% of your role

Purpose  We place people with convictions into paid work, so they can build purposeful lives and see their families thrive

Mission We do this by providing practical employment support, linking them to companies with good jobs

Vision  A society where people’s past convictions don’t define their employment future

Values                       

Expectant hope         we believe in the change we want to see

Resilience                  we stay the distance

Relationship-led        we focus on people not programmes

Collaboration             we thrive through supporting each other in team and by partnership

Christian values         compassion  in action,  integrity, second chances, faith

Duties and tasks:

There are four main areas of work, all of which are vital to our achieving the key positive outcome for the individuals we support – sustained meaningful employment. These are: 

1 ‘New employers’ engagement: expanding our network of employers to generate a regular flow of job opportunities, to allow us to place our candidates into work.

This will require new business development and excellent ongoing relationship management. You will identify which jobs are most sought after by our ‘typical’ candidates, and which ones are more ‘one off’s; equally you will gravitate towards employers who show themselves to be agile and responsive in their hiring processes - your client contacts are more likely to be business owners, divisional managers, site supervisors etc, rather than social value or EDI teams. You will:

• Proactively approach local employers who are advertising paid jobs that could suit current candidates on our books – eg via online searching using keywords for skills and industry sector - send over your candidate’s details with the goal of obtaining the recruitment instructions for the vacancy and to get them an interview
• Speculatively approach firms who are not visibly hiring right now, but who would be likely to have suitable vacancies in the future that will match the typical skillsets of our candidates
• Maintain a “follow-up” database of active and prospective clients. Take ownership for vertical segments or geographies, in consultation with your team of colleagues to avoid duplication and to maximise our reach
• Seek to visit these employers to explain our services and answer any questions around “protocols” for interviewing or hiring ex-offenders, as well as to gain a good insight into the premises, working environment, travel routes etc
• Select and submit candidates who you consider suitable for the role, advocating for each person based on your knowledge of them, their work/volunteering references, what you have witnessed to be positive in their efforts and life changes. Be prepared to positively “push back” and even contradict an employer, if you consider any reluctance to be unfounded
• Disclose the candidate’s offending history and risk profile, emphasising their personal attributes and work strengths. Guide the employer through the interview and hiring process in close consultation with the candidate (who may be inexperienced in such a situation)

2 Job finder support: interviewing ex-offenders, offering one-to-one job coaching to get them into work, with ongoing mentoring for first 12-months in employment

Ours is a face-to-face, holistic and wraparound service that culminates in our candidates finding good jobs that last, with a wide array of socially inclusive employers. Our job finder support can begin in custody and continue through the gate into community, or start in the community; typically, we will work with a person from anything between 1-3 months to establish ‘work readiness’, and will support them for up to a year once they find work. Many people stay in touch and come back to us for their second or third job, over a period of years, and we consider that our door is always open to them, for as long as is needed. You will:

• Conduct 1:2:1 assessments with job seeking candidates and using your professional judgement, accept them directly into our paid-work search services, or if substance misuse or homelessness are still an issue, refer them onwards for pre-employability support with partner organisations
• Work with candidates over several weeks and months as a job mentor, meeting regularly to assist  in all aspects of their job search
• Help craft a good CV and disclosure letter, ensuring they understand the facts and disclosure obligations around their spent/unspent conviction(s)
• Check they have the correct right-to-work ID, order replacement birth certificates and NI letters where needed
• Book candidates onto any relevant training courses with 3rd party training providers (CSCS card, HGV driver training, renewable energy qualifications etc)
• Encourage your candidates’ own job search activities, including teaching them how to do this via online jobs boards, and complete online application forms alongside them
• Submit your candidates to jobs we have on our books via our bank of inclusive partner employers, and pro-actively seek out other vacancies for them, to send them out ‘on spec’ to prospective employers
• Organise job interviews, making sure the candidate has the financial means to get there by public transport and has appropriate interview wear (provide these where needed)
• Follow-up with the candidate immediately after the interview, managing expectations and reactions if they are unsuccessful, helping to restore confidence for the “next time”
• Where successful, confirm a job start with both parties, ensuring the candidate has any future workwear and travel-to-work costs (provide these where needed)
• Offer any additional ‘helps’ as needed: food parcels, hygiene packs, pre-loaded SIM cards, clothing, utility top ups… 

After the job starts, there can often be unforeseen challenges facing our newly employed candidates - especially the recent prison leavers – be they practical (finance, debt, housing…), emotional (mental health and relationship breakdowns) and/or lifestyle (drugs and alcohol relapses). The best chance of being able to step in and advocate for the candidate and to save the job start, is through having already built relationships of honesty and confidence with them and their employer. Our in-work support lasts for up to a year; in practice our door is always open. You will:

• Advise the employer on how to successfully “on board” the new employee in their first few unfamiliar weeks and months on the job. Make them aware of any extra support needs they should consider (ie the candidate is transitioning from a hostel to private accommodation which might bring hiccups, they have medical/probation appointments that they must keep to, etc)
• Be aware of and navigate ahead of time any negative Google/press reporting about the candidate’s past offending, potentially advising on the use of a pen name at work in tricker situations, to protect their privacy and/or the employer’s reputation
• Remain in regular contact with the candidate in their first 12 months in employment, with check-in phone calls and meetings, to help a smooth and sustained transition into employment
• Record all candidate and employer interactions and reporting outcomes on our “Itris” recruitment CRM database