Job Description
The Careers Group is now recruiting for a Careers Consultant to join their renowned service, on a fixed term basis until mid-November 2022. The role will be based at St Mary’s University, Twickenham.
- Do you want a role where you can help other people to fulfil their potential and where you are provided with constant opportunities to develop yourself professionally?
- Do you want to work in a forward-focused organisation surrounded by enthusiastic, innovative, diverse and supportive colleagues?
As a Careers Consultant, you will help students and graduates to acquire the skills necessary to choose their future path, find employment and to manage their career successfully. You will achieve this through a combination of in- and extra-curricular teaching and one-to-one guidance, both delivered remotely and in-person. You will also support a range of exciting employability initiatives and be required to develop online resources and learning materials. A key part of this role will be for you to build strategic relationships with academic staff, alumni and other professionals inside and outside of the university careers team in order to design and deliver the best possible employability support.
St Mary’s has a strong reputation for teaching excellence and a student-centred approach. As a public University with a faith identity, St Mary’s welcomes students and staff of all faiths and none, comprising a diverse population of almost 6,000 students. The powerful sense of community that characterises St Mary's is a product of our ethos and the core values that underpin it: inclusiveness, generosity of spirit, respect and excellence.
The St Mary’s Careers Services is part of Employability Services, alongside the Centre for Workplace Learning and the Placements Teams. Together we work with colleagues across the university to deliver the institutional Employability Strategy, which includes embedding employability within all our degree programmes and extra-curricular activities.
St Mary’s is currently operating a hybrid working model, whereby staff are expected to be on campus for three days per week pro rata. This is subject to regular review so may change in the longer term.
An overview of The Careers Group
The Careers Group, University of London was established over 100 years ago and is the largest network of higher education careers services in Europe. Its mission is as follows:
Our Group exists to make each of our member services the best that it can be strategically and operationally in the context of its institution and to ensure that each service is demonstrably better as a member of the group than it would be if it were not.
As a collective, our Group will be highly visible as thought and practice leaders in higher education careers and employability nationally and globally. In turn, the leading edge thinking and practice will enhance delivery in member services and bring reputational benefits to the University of London centrally and to member institutions.
The Careers Group, University of London is an expertise-led, collaborative membership organisation, set up to serve predominantly, but not exclusively, the member institutions of the University of London. The Group comprises the careers services of City University London, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Goldsmiths University of London, King’s College London, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Queen Mary University of London, the Royal Veterinary College, SOAS, St George’s Medical School, St Mary’s University, University of London and UCL. There is additional provision for the School of Advanced Study, the Institute of Cancer Research, technē, the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and London Arts & Humanities Partnership. All the institutional services are closely aligned to the learning and teaching, student experience, employability and enterprise strategies of the institutions that they serve. The group has over 250 staff and serves a population well in excess of 150,000 students, researchers and graduates.
The Group HQ is at Senate House and contains the Director's office and a small central team which supports the institutional services by coordinating recruitment and resourcing, providing training and professional development, supporting research and evidence-based practice, overseeing the creation and curation of shared resources, and undertaking special projects on behalf of member services and the Group as a whole. Senate House is also the base for the Head of College Careers Services for the smaller specialist institutes of the university.
In October 2020, The Careers Group began implementation of a new action plan for Equality and Diversity, shaped by external expertise in social justice and anti-racism, and led by the new Director of The Careers Group, Dr Kate Daubney. This plan takes both a collective and individual approach to reviewing learning and practice in equality and diversity, striving to improve our understanding of the differences in and the impacts of lived experience, both across our staff community and among our students and other partners. We are seeking to address structural inequality and obstacles to progression in our organisation through a range of actions including: establishing an internal Advisory Panel of staff to inform the Group’s strategic priorities; reviewing our manager progression processes, experiences and data; and embedding approaches to building and maintaining safe spaces for all.
The University of London created a new academic strategy during 2020, which includes the establishment of a new Centre of Excellence for Careers and Employability, which will be one of five new Centres of Excellence in the University. The establishment of the new Centre of Excellence for Careers and Employability will initiate a period of review and reflection for The Careers Group, both senior leadership and colleagues in all member services, to determine how best to use the concept of the Centre and the community of staff to enable services to meet and respond to the swiftly changing landscapes of higher education and work. Part of this review includes developing new approaches to enable The Careers Group, through the senior leadership and staff, to demonstrate our commitment to creating a safe space for all staff and to celebrating and promoting equality and diversity, through our culture, processes and community across all member services.
Further information
For more information on the Careers Consultant role see the attached Job Pack and Job Description. For an informal conversation about the role please contact Obi Oputa, Team Leader at St Mary’s Careers Service: obi.oputa@stmarys.ac.uk
To be considered for this opportunity, please submit your application by clicking ‘Apply for job’ at the bottom of this page before the closing date at midnight on Sunday 6th March 2022.
Interviews will take place on 22nd March or 23rd March 2022. The interviews will take place online via Zoom.
We look forward to receiving your application.
The University of London is committed to promoting a diverse and inclusive working environment where we can all be ourselves and succeed. We particularly encourage applications from members of Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic communities as this group is currently under-represented in senior levels within the University. All appointments will be made on merit, based on the criteria identified in the job description.
Pursuing excellence in education and equal opportunities.