Money & Housing Advice Service Senior Officer

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About Us

The King's community is dedicated to the service of society. King's Strategic Vision 2029 sets out our vision for the future, shaped around five priority areas: educate to inspire and improve; research to inform and innovate; serve to shape and transform; a civic university at the heart of London; and an international community that services the world. Our ambitious Education Strategy sets out the actions that we must take to transform how we teach, how and where our students learn and how we support them during their time with us.

Specialist Advisors and Officers in Advice, Wellbeing & Welfare provide expert advice and support to our diverse community. At any stage in their university careers, students may experience a variety of complex problems relating to money, housing, and welfare issues for which they need practical support and legal advice. Our work is to ensure that these do not become a barrier to their success at King's and that through our well-being initiatives, our students thrive during their studies and make the most of their opportunities after graduation.

We are part of the Students & Education Directorate, a collection of wide-ranging professional services in place to support King's students and their education. As a directorate we manage the student lifecycle from application to graduation and beyond, to ensure a coherent and seamless student experience and effective administrative processes, working closely with King's faculties to do so.

About the role

The Money & Housing Advice Senior Officer supports the advisors to provide detailed advice, support, and information to current or prospective students at King's College London. Efficient administration is essential to the successful running of the service. This includes ensuring that enquiries are triaged and processed promptly and sensitively, whilst also prioritising bookings from vulnerable students and students whom other parts of the university have referred.

As part of a network of Senior Officers in Student Support & Wellbeing Services you will provide administrative support to the Management Team, including (but not limited to) arranging and servicing meetings, diary management, ordering and maintaining equipment, resources, and subscriptions, and following up with finance and colleagues to ensure prompt payment.

The Senior Officer will support the advisors in promoting the service, liaising with and updating communication teams, maintaining social media accounts, and completing key processes on behalf of the university. The Senior Officer will also support management in evaluating, promoting and continuously improving the processes relating to service delivery.

Previous experience working in a higher education setting would be advantageous but not essential. Relevant experience working in a busy advice centre or supporting staff in a client-focused service would be equally applicable to this role. This is an ideal opportunity for an organised and dynamic administrator, officer, or project manager from the charity sector, to gain experience in a HE advice and advocacy service at one of the UK's leading universities.

We encourage applications from candidates who have experience from both within and outside of the Higher Education sector where they can demonstrate the skills needed to succeed in this role.

This is a full-time post (35 Hours per week), and you will be offered an indefinite contract.

About You

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1. We think a wide range of different work and educational experiences could support you to be successful in this role. Relevant work experience might include work in legal and community advice services or student services. Relevant educational experiences might include higher education in a related discipline, professional qualifications or other training.
2. Friendly, approachable and kind; can demonstrate excellent customer service skills with a high level of tact and discretion, as well as a sound knowledge of the sensitive nature of personal data and the importance of compliance with Data Protection Legislation (by both yourself and your team). You need to demonstrate a deep understanding of the need for confidentiality and when and how to escalate / signpost sensitive cases.
3. Good written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to draft and edit correspondence and documents, with a high level of accuracy for a diverse range of audiences and mediums (e.g. initial response to enquiries, staff guidance, social media posts, web pages).
4. Good numeracy skills, attention to detail and experience in ordering on behalf of a service, updating finance systems and running reports.
5. Excellent IT and data entry skills including experience in Microsoft Office, Microsoft Teams and Excel.
6. Ability to establish and proactively build professional working relationships with external and internal stakeholders.
7. Self-motivated and committed to the successful delivery of projects; working using initiative without close supervision as well as co-operatively as a part of a team.
8. A clear commitment to customer service and a willingness to be flexible and take on wide variety of tasks.

Desirable criteria

1. Experience in using a case management system such as AdvicePro or similar.
2. Experience of using student record databases (we use SITS).
3. Knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite, Canva or other publishing software used to create and edit graphical documents.
4. Experience in using enhanced Microsoft Office Tools (e.g. PowerBI, Power Automate, Sway, SharePoint and Forms).

Full details of the role and the skills and experience required can be found in the attached job description which is provided on the next page.

Further information

We pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming. We embrace diversity and want everyone to feel that they belong and are connected to others in our community.

We are committed to working with our staff and unions on these and other issues, to continue to support our people and to develop a diverse and inclusive culture at King's. We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the advert. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

To find out how our managers review your application, please take a look at our ' How we Recruit ' pages.

Interviews are due to be held on 25th July