ABOUT US

Fancy getting stuck in to a comms and engagement role that gives you the warm fuzzies on a regular basis? Want to use your comms skills for the power of good and help people live their best lives?
If you’re a creative comms pro with a big heart, come and join us as our brand new communications and engagement manager for our Shared Lives service.

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

To fly in this role, you’ll need to be a comms all-rounder and have:

• A degree in English, PR, communications, marketing, journalism, something similar, or an equivalent professional qualification
• Mega writing skills with the ability to:
• Write simple, clear and accurate content
• Turn your hand to any subject
• Make complicated language simpler
• Write both long and short copy with style
• Write for a variety of different audiences, able to appeal to each one
• Write for a wide variety of different channels – from press releases and brochures through to social media posts
• Identify and translate jargon
• Use grammar correctly
• Write fluently using the PSS tone of voice
• Media relations skills
• Strategy-writing skills
• Digital communications skills, including managing social media channels
• An eye for stories that move, motivate and inspire people
• Great proofreading skills and an eagle eye for detail
• Basic Canva skills (or be willing to learn)
• Brilliant people skills - listening, empathising, asking the right questions and not being afraid to be assertive
• Creativity
• Kindness
• A big heart
• An open mind
• Determination
• Genuineness
• Professionalism

(Read more about what we’re looking for on the last few pages of the job description).
Sound like your jam? Come and join us!
Candidates who consider themselves to be disabled will also be given the opportunity to attend an interview if they meet the essential criteria for the role.

BEFORE YOU APPLY, WE JUST WANT TO LET YOU KNOW SOME KEY INFORMATION ABOUT OUR SELECTION PROCESS:

We have an equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) policy, which aims to remove any kind of discrimination in employment. Our candidates are selected on merit only, which means they’ll be given equal opportunities no-matter what their age, disability, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, race, religion or beliefs might be.
Once you hit that ‘apply’ button, you’ll be taken across to an online recruitment system called Applied. Applied is the only hiring software with diversity and fairness built into every step of the process and we’re very proud to partner with them to help us give you an unbiased recruitment experience.
Applied wants to make sure its doing its job by finding out more about the socio-economic backgrounds of people applying for roles through their site. Once you register your details on the Applied site, you’ll be asked to give a bit of info about you: things like your age, gender, ethnicity, etc. You’ll also be asked questions around whether your parents went to university and whether you had free meals at school. These questions are set by Applied experts based on extensive research and expertise, and you can find out more about this here.
This information is completely anonymised, and here at PSS, we never see answers linked to a candidate’s name. The answers you give here don’t form any part of our decision-making. We only receive combined data about an applicant pool (and only when there’s enough applicants to ensure that answers can remain anonymous). We report on this data every quarter to help us find out if there’s anything in our process that harms the chances of success for candidates from minority groups and any possible steps to help improve this.
If you still prefer not to answer, that’s no problem at all - there’s also an option to select ‘prefer not to say’. The only EDI-related information that we will learn about you is if you tell us that you have any reasonable adjustments needed at any part of our process.
Your trusty candidate pack will also help you get a feel for what it’s like to work with us, find out what we’re looking for, explain the recruitment process and help you decide whether you can see yourself as a part of our amazing team. Each section is crammed with hints and tips to help you make a great application, so please take the time to give it a good read.
Please feel free to get in touch with us if you have any questions about the above by emailing peopleandcultureteam@pss.org.uk or calling our team on 0151 702 5555.
We also welcome any feedback you might have about our approach so there’ll be plenty of opportunities for you to give this as part of the process.

WHAT WILL YOU NEED TO DO?

As our Shared Lives communications and engagement manager, your main job (in a nutshell) is to help us find and recruit new Shared Lives carers through brilliant communications work, and to help our current carers feel happy, engaged and part of our big national team.
All things Shared Lives comms and engagement will be your baby. As PSS is a charity, we don’t have massive budgets to spend on agencies (although we do work with them sometimes) – this is a role where you’ll do all your own stunts and get the chance to put your creative thinking cap on, roll your sleeves up and get stuck in to some fun comms work.

As a seasoned comms pro, you’ll be able to turn your hand to lots of different comms and engagement tasks, like:

• Planning and evaluating multi-channel communications strategies
• Content creation across our channels
• Working alongside our Shared Lives carer recruiters to scout out the best ways we can get our key messages to potential carers
• Scheduling engaging social media content
• Interviewing people we support and carers
• Evaluating your work
• Finding out how we can help our carers feel happy, informed, motivated and part of our team
• Coming up with ideas for ways we can create a sense of community for our carers
• Writing and being editor-in-chief of our quarterly Shared Lives carer newsletter
• Managing our SharedLivesCarers.com website
• Doing digital advertising campaigns
• Looking after our carer reward and recognition scheme
• Writing press releases, pitching for media coverage and handling media enquiries
• Telling our commissioners about all the ace stuff you’ve been working on

Check out the job description for a bigger list of the types of things you’ll do day-to-day.

To fly in this role, you’ll need to be a comms all-rounder and have:

• A degree in English, PR, communications, marketing, journalism, something similar, or an equivalent professional qualification
• Mega writing skills with the ability to:
• Write simple, clear and accurate content
• Turn your hand to any subject
• Make complicated language simpler
• Write both long and short copy with style
• Write for a variety of different audiences, able to appeal to each one
• Write for a wide variety of different channels – from press releases and brochures through to social media posts
• Identify and translate jargon
• Use grammar correctly
• Write fluently using the PSS tone of voice
• Media relations skills
• Strategy-writing skills
• Digital communications skills, including managing social media channels
• An eye for stories that move, motivate and inspire people
• Great proofreading skills and an eagle eye for detail
• Basic Canva skills (or be willing to learn)
• Brilliant people skills - listening, empathising, asking the right questions and not being afraid to be assertive
• Creativity
• Kindness
• A big heart
• An open mind
• Determination
• Genuineness
• Professionalis