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! 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), the salary can be negotiated between £40,950 – £47,250 (we’re also expecting a cost of living increase once agreed to be added from August). 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.

Staff Benefits

• 30 days of annual leave + bank holidays
• Enhanced parental leave policy
  
• Employer pension contribution of up to 8%
  
• Flexible working and hybrid working opportunities
• Free/subsidised Manchester Academy gig tickets
• Contribution to eyecare such as eye tests, glasses and contact lenses
• Employee Assistance Programme (including 6 free counselling sessions per year)
• Discount at our onsite bar and cafe - 532 Bar and Kitchen and Corridor Coffee
• Free breakfast and lunch from our cosy Community Space when you are in the office

Salary: £40,950 - £47,250 (plus a cost of living award will be added from August). Negotiation is possible and expected, but will result in enhanced expectations.

Contract: Fixed-Term, ending on 31st July 2025

Hours: Full-Time - 35 hours per week (we are open to part time working requests of 0.6 FTE)

Please read the full job description and person specification before applying, as well as our guide to recruitment.

Recruitment Guide

We have a guide that explains our full recruitment process. We recommend reading through this before beginning an application.

View/Download Recruitment Guidelines 2024

Please avoid using AI to write your answers unless you need to do so for accessibility reasons. Your answers should be personal to you and provide detailed examples that are related to your own skills, experience and knowledge.

If you are invited to an interview with you, you will receive a copy of the interview questions in advice to help you prepare. We're more interested in hearing about your experiences and ideas than testing your memory so we want to help you feel as prepared as possible. You are welcome to bring brief notes into the interview as well if you want to.

Inclusivity and Accessibility

We are committed to equality of opportunity and we work hard to ensure that we appoint candidates based on merit. We particularly encourage applications from Disabled and Black, Black British, Black Welsh, Caribbean or African candidates as we recognise that these groups are underrepresented in our current staff team.

Recruitment Timeline

Applications opened: 22nd April 2024

Applications close: 27th May 2024 3pm

Interviews: 11th June 2024

Role Commencing: ASAP

We may close applications early if we receive a high volume of applications. We recommend that you apply as soon as possible to avoid disappointment. In this case, all applicants who have started an application will be contacted 2 hours before we close the role.

Contact

You can contact the hiring manager, Anneessa Mahmood (Director of Student Engagement) if you have any role-specific questions via email at anneessa.mahmood@manchester.ac.uk

If you have any other questions, please contact the People Team by email at jobs.su@manchester.ac.uk or give us a call on 0161 306 3279