University of Manchester Students’ Union
Associate Director of Student Engagement (Maternity Cover)
Salary: £40,950 - £47,250 (plus a cost of living award will be added from August)
Location: University of Manchester Students' Union, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PR
Contract: Fixed-Term, ending on 31st July 2025
Hours: Full-Time, 35 hours per week (open to part time working requests of 0.6 FTE)
Do you love developing managers and leaders? Do you ask great questions and create space and safety for people to figure things out? Are you comfortable managing people who are more expert in things than you? Do you enjoy solving organisational/people puzzles and helping to guide and navigate teams to do the same? Do you value and seek co-leadership with beneficiaries (in our case, students)? If yes, this is the role for you!
About the Students’ Union
The Students’ Union is a registered charity and is independent from the University (although we work closely together). We are a student-led organisation and exist to help students make the most of their time at Manchester and get the best for their future. We’re the home of societies, volunteering, student media, advice, campaigns, student democracy and events.
We’re looking for an Associate Director to provide senior leadership to student facing teams in the students’ union. This is a fantastic opportunity to work with a competent team and provide cross-organisational stewardship with a team of senior leaders. You’ll be getting up to speed with our culture, organisational approaches in your first month or so alongside the person going on maternity leave. You’ll have a clear roadmap of what’s coming up and be given the freedom to make good decisions to respond to the context as it changes. There is good support around our senior leaders from the director team, external coaching is available to anyone who requests it, and there are well developed people, finance and compliance functions. We have requisite knowledge around the role to make this suitable for someone with transferrable skills from outside Students’ Unions and if you’re from Students’ Unions, you’ll be working alongside great people to bounce ideas and thoughts off.
As an organisation, we’ve got a clear strategic framework, insight, people and values frameworks so your contribution will be to role model great behaviours and maintain excellent cross-directorate working. You’ll need to be able to pull different threads together and ensure our work is aligned to our strategy and values. You’ll be providing political advice to the elected student officers so being able to navigate complex stakeholder relationships and navigate others through it is important.
You do not have to have worked in education, Students’ Unions or the third sector before. The person specification is clear we’re looking for leadership development skills and a navigating complex environments orientation. This is because there is a lot of interest and scrutiny on what our organisation does, our influencing environment, relationships with the university and programmes develop and evolve quickly.
We recognise that we are looking for an experienced person (albeit without a sector knowledge requirement). If you have additional skills to bring to the role, we’d love to hear them. We’re open to discussing whether you want to work part time (minimum 0.6 FTE) alongside other freelancing work, so long as the outcomes and expectations are delivered to the required standard. We have a brilliant range of benefits which makes University of Manchester Students’ Union a very attractive place to work.
Closing Date: 3pm on Monday 27th May 2024
Interviews: Tuesday 11th June 2024
Please click the 'Apply for this job now’ button to be redirected to our website, where you can download the Job Description and Person Specification and find details of how to apply.
For an informal conversation about the role and application process, please contact our recruitment partners, Atkinson HR Consulting
Please mention ACEVO Jobs when applying for the role.