Employment Advisor

**Who we are**:
Better Pathways is a values’ led charity with over 60 years’ experience, supporting communities to overcome barriers to employment, skills, and social inclusion. We exist to empower citizens within Birmingham, by building self-belief and resilience to maintain wellbeing and create pathways to secure opportunities for volunteering, training and education and employment.

**Job Opportunity**:
We are seeking dedicated Employment Advisors to join our team in providing support and guidance to individuals seeking employment opportunities. As an Employment Advisor, you will play a crucial role in assisting job seekers in their career development journey.

**The role will include**:
Supporting participants to overcome barriers to employment by engaging with them, setting up and reviewing SMART, person centred action plans and finding them sustainable employment.

The Employment Advisor role will be pivotal to the success of the project and will work closely with the wider teams to deliver service quality whilst direct case holding. The successful post holder will have significant expertise delivering employment advice and support, preferably within a similar support service, a relevant IAG qualification and experience with caseload management. The post holder will support service users to gain, return to or retain employment. The role will involve working directly with Jobcentre Plus, employers, trade unions and employment agencies to keep people in employment and secure employment opportunities. The post holder is expected to work with between 100-120 people each year. The role will involve working in the community and various locations across the city.

The service will assist targeted participants to progress their journey towards gaining, returning to, or retaining employment. The service will consist of a variety of skills-mix to ensure that individuals are offered support and advice that meets their needs.

The service will provide advice and training to potential employers on reasonable adjustments and retention of employees where necessary. This service will reduce health inequalities as employment is evidenced as a way of maintaining good health and well-being.

We are seeking highly motivated individuals who will be expected to demonstrate competence and have experience working in similar services. You will be able to demonstrate a strong commitment to high quality service, good organisational skills, an ability to prioritise your workload and have good written and verbal communication skills.
- Conduct one-to-one interviews with job seekers to assess their skills, experience, and career aspirations
- Identifying transferable skills and capabilities in participants to find suitable education, training, and employment.
- Signposting to local stakeholders to provide support where required such as debt concerns, health related services or career coaching.
- Support individuals with job interviews and assessments.
- Supporting the participant with job search using the appropriate job boards and ensure profiles are kept up to date.
- Support individuals with job interviews and assessments.
- Identifying skills gaps and signposting to courses which will help the individual.
- Find relevant jobs for participants in addition to working with the employer engagement team to identify suitable job opportunities.
- Deliver group workshops on employability skills and job readiness
- Maintain accurate records of client interactions and progress
- Collaborate with employers to understand their recruitment needs and facilitate successful placements
- Offer ongoing mentoring and support to individuals throughout their employment journey

**Key Skills and Mindset**
- A passion to exceed all monthly performance targets and KPIs.
- Motivation to deliver strong outcomes for individuals and transform lives.
- Experience of working in a fast-paced environment and manage multiple priorities.
- Experience of working in target driven environments
- Excellent communication skills to build rapport with individuals quickly and with the ability to listen, understand and coach.
- Ability to motivate individuals and challenge when needed to promote self-belief with the aim of helping to achieve their full potential.
- Strong minded with the ability to working with challenging people.
- Great knowledge of the labour market
- Effective at problem solving.
- Excellent organisational skills
- A strong commitment to personal and professional development
- Be able to comply with data protection, IT security and other policies.
- Be a team player and supportive of colleagues.
- Have values of trust, honesty, integrity, and inclusivity which match the company’s values.

In return for your enthusiasm, hard work, and commitment you will benefit from being part of a unified team all working towards the same aims. You will also benefit from 30 days’ annual leave in addition to 8 bank holidays and flexible working arrangements