Job Details:
Employment Specialist

Job Description

The Growth Company (GC) have an exciting opportunity to join our Pioneer program as an Employment Specialist. This is a fantastic role to work within the Greater Manchester area to build relationships with both participants and local businesses.

We help to make a lasting difference to the lives of people throughout the North of England and beyond, by supporting individuals to gain meaningful employment.

Our highly skilled advisers and keyworkers work with a range of individuals; from people who have found themselves recently out of work, to those with complex barriers such as physical disabilities, mental ill-health and debt.

Key Responsibilities:

• Be able to build and maintain strong and positive relationships with Participants in the Greater Manchester area, which will enable you to use vocational profiling to help build a support and development plan.
• Proactively and effectively work with the participants to prepare/progress them into employment- supporting them through their individual barriers to secure sustainable employment.
• Confidently form connections with local businesses/services such as Local Authorities, Jobcentre Plus, National Probation service/CRC and a wide range of voluntary/community groups.
• Utilising multiple systems and services such as IngeusHub to accurately input all participants data, Personal Support Team (PSTs) and Social Prescription Network.
• Working from local hubs and “pop-up offices” within the community ( e.g housing, health and primary care centres) to increase participant activity and services accessibility.
• Advocate with employers on the participants brokering job opportunities that meet the participants needs and continuing support for up to 6 months after an successful job offer.
• Help with administrative work, including report writing, conducting audits, collecting information and paperwork.

 Experience:

• Experience working in a fast paced and target driving environment is essential.
• Previous work with guidance, advice, and counselling environments.
• Experience in recruitment is advantageous.
• High level guidance skills, with the ability to deliver one-to-one and group sessions to a Grade 2 standard.
• Have worked with people who have multiple and complex needs (health conditions and disabilities) and have knowledge of support agencies that can benefit/assist individual needs, such as Debt, substance misuse, housing etc.

About you:

• Must be confident and approachable.
• Great communication skills, both written and verbal.
• Be extremely organised and thrive under pressure.
• Comfortable in working with IT and Microsoft suites (Excel & Word)

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of everyone including vulnerable adults and young people, we expect all staff to share this commitment. All appointments will be subject to Safer Recruitment Procedures which include a DBS check. This will be conducted by Due Diligence Limited (DDC Ltd) on behalf of GC. Please note that the successful candidate will not be required to pay for this.

If you are on the Barred List, it is against the law to apply and to be hired for a role that includes regulated activity with the concerned group.

We are committed to increasing the diversity of our workforce, we provide a guaranteed interview to applicants who meet the essential requirements for a role. This commitment applies to candidates who have a disability or are from a diverse ethnic community.

As part of our application process, you can ask to be considered under this scheme if you are from an ethnic community or have a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial and long-term negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Providing that you meet the essential criteria for the role, you will then be invited for an interview. Your guaranteed interview application will only be shared with the Hiring Manager and our Internal Recruitment Team.

We are a member of the national campaign Ban the Box; this campaign aims to open opportunities for people with convictions to compete for jobs. We’re supporting the campaign by removing conviction questions at the applications stage.

GC aims to promote a culture of flexibility and agile working. Going forward we will be transitioning to a culture where full agile working will be a feature of many of our roles. We also recognise that there may be a need for more permanent flexibility in your working arrangements and in such cases, we encourage you to have these discussions at the interview stage, to enable your flexible working request to be considered as early as possible.

If you require support with the recruitment process, please contact or Internal Recruitment Team at [email protected] or call us on 0161 237 4447.

All GC colleagues will work inline with the Health & Safety at work act and the GC Health & Safety Policy.

• Our annual leave entitlement starts at 25 days, plus bank holidays which increases with length of service with the opportunity to purchase up to 10 additional days leave each year.
• Access to counselling via our Employee Assistance Programme.
• We have 8 EDI steering group to make sure we value our differences and enable an environment of fairness, dignity and respect.
• We offer up to two days’ paid leave to volunteer at a charity of choice through our Volunteer2Day scheme. 
• We offer travel loans, discounted seasonal travel tickets for public transport and a great cycle to work scheme promoting opportunities to reduce environmental pollution and a healthier lifestyle. 
• We have an enhanced learning and development offer for all staff and managers with opportunities for mentoring, undertaking apprenticeships and continuous professional development. 
• Paid for eye test and contributions towards glasses for VDU users, helping improve overall health and wellbeing in the workplace.