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[personal profile] fearmeforiampink
Unlock Democracy, the organisation at which I work, is hiring.

For those who haven't already had this spiel from me: Unlock Democracy is a not-for-profit campaigning organisation trying to improve the UKs democracy. We push for things like reform of the electoral system, of party funding, more transparency around lobbying, right of recall, elected Lords and lots of other similar things.

It's a really nice place to work; because everyone who works there really believes in what we're working towards, it's a laid back and friendly place to work; core hours are 10-4, and generally it's assumed you're doing a 7 hour day, but you can do it 9-5 or 10-6 assuming a lunch hour, or indeed 10-5 without such (I tend to do something between 10-5 and 10-6 depending on whether I have a proper lunch or just some soup whilst working.

Also? The office is full of geeks; there's a regular board games night, discussion of geeky subjects is common in the office, and my line manager is in the process of running a RPG for me and several other members of staff, where we're making the setting as a collaberative endeavour.

The office is in central London, just north of Chancery Lane.




Whilst the link up at the top has the full details, the positions can be summarised thusly:


Local Works Outreach Specialist:


Three days a week (or some other arrangement for 21 hours work), two year contract. £17,502 a year (pro-rata'd down from a fulltime rate of £29,170). 15 days a year holiday, plus two weeks off when the office closes for Christmas.
Basically, Local Works is a project of Unlock Democracy that successfully campaigned to bring in the Sustainable Communities Act, a piece of legislation where local councils can go to the government and ask for help in promoting the sustainability of local communities, local shops, etc, and where local people can be involved in that process. Part of that legislation is now much more heavily in effect than it was before, and we've received funding to get local groups that would otherwise likely miss out on the powers available within the act to get involves (so it doesn't become 'the middle classes/other well informed types get all the use out of it').

This is definitely the highest bar to entry of the three jobs; on the job specification it lists 'a proven track record of outreach work (1 year minimum)', and has a higher general assumption of knowledge of politics and campaigning.

Closing date: Friday 17 August
Interview date: Monday 27 August

Communications assistant


Four days a week (or some other arrangement for 28 hours work), four month contract (with the possibility of an extension if our funding is extended), London Living Wage of £8.30 an hour, 7 days of holiday across the four months.

Someone who likes writing, this job will be about writing blogposts, tweets, facebook page content, press releases, and other stuff that we put out to the world. The big thing needed here is the writing skill and ability to point at stuff that shows that, interest and involvement in politics and campaigning are definitely pluses, but the ability to write is the key.

Closing date: Wednesday 7 August
Interview date: Thursday 16 August

Research assistant


Four days a week (or some other arrangement for 28 hours work), four month contract (with the possibility of an extension if our funding is extended), London Living Wage of £8.30 an hour, 7 days of holiday across the four months.

This is a research position, therefore experience with researching into stuff, with datawrangling, and with producing summaries of reports are the sort of skills wanted here. This job has a certain amount of 'take 20 page report, produce 2 page summary for the rest of the staff and other people to look at', a certain amount of keeping an eye on legislation in parliament, but also some quite interesting data analysis elements

As an example about a month ago, we released some data analysis we'd be working on (initially going out via this story in the Telegraph) on comparing the voting and speaking records of all those in the Lords to what they'd claimed in attendance allowances.

This was a huge amount of data - a years worth of sittings in the Lords, alongside the expenses for all those Lords, whilst also wanting to keep an eye out for other things like whether they were sitting on any committees, whether they'd recently died, or anything like that. And whilst it was a lot of work, it's really worth it, both for using the stats in our own press releases and protests, but also in news stories about those lords; the former president of Plaid Cymru and the peer who got drunk and set alight a party both getting mentioned for it.

Obviously, that one is now done, but it's an example of the sort of stuff that role covers, and how the research can have a real effect on things.

Closing date: Wednesday 7 August
Interview date: Thursday 16 August





The main piece of advice I'd give to anyone who applies to this relates to the personal statement part of the form. Obviously you want to get the rest of the stuff in the form filled out and appropriately talking about your skills and strengths. But assuming you make it through any longlisting we do (essentially, if we get a large number of applicants, take out the ones that really don't meet the requirements), the shortlisting consists of us picking some but not all of the 'Essential Skills' and 'Desirable Skills' from the job specification, then marking each candidate on each of those areas, those people who score the highest, go through to the interview. Whilst we'll look somewhat at the rest of the form, the main place where we look for how you match those is the Personal Statement part.

Thus, the best sort of statements are those that that very clearly state how you match the essential/desired skills, and which make it easy and quick to pick out any given one of them, as we have to get through shortlisting a lot of candidates in a short time. A bullet point for each listed criteria, preferably actually with that criteria as a boldened part of it, or "I am skilled at [blah blah blah] through my experience in…". Whilst it's still your skills that you're primarily marked on, making things easier for the people doing the shortlisting probably means they'll give you the benefit of the doubt between a higher or lower mark in a given area, and/or have a happy memory of your form when you come to interview.


N.B. I am listed as the person to email applications to for one of the positions. My role in that is to anonymise the application forms, so that other staff can do the short listing without being influenced stuff other than the application itself (as much as possible).

Date: 2012-07-28 11:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] theviciouspixie.livejournal.com
Cheers for this. You'll be hearing from me very soon. :)

Date: 2012-07-30 04:51 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] theviciouspixie.livejournal.com
The Comms assistant is basically my dream non-music job.

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