Youth Access is a national membership organisation, championing young people’s right to access local, high quality, evidence-informed advice, counselling and support services. Youth Access work in partnership with a variety of members to promote free young person-centred services, dealing with a broad range of issues, including sexual health, mental health, relationships, homelessness and benefits.
Prospectus were already partnering with Youth Access in regard to the recruitment of their new CEO and Barry Williams (their interim CEO at the time) approached us to assess their options on how best to recruit a new Programme Manager. Youth Access were clear in regard to their limited budget, so the shortlisting product suited their needs well in generating and expanding engagement for them to then appoint from.
Their new Programme Manager would lead on the design, development and delivery of a portfolio of programmes designed around and for young people. They would work closely with delivery partners to ensure that all programmes of work were delivered to the highest quality, ensuring that all programmes delivered on key outcomes. It was a specialist role which required the candidate to possess expertise in monitoring and evaluation for reporting purposes, and strong engagement skills to ensure effective stakeholder management with funders.
Youth Access went on to successfully appointed Jessica Lee (previously Programme Manager at Young Enterprise). Jess was a candidate already known to Prospectus, and it had been clear from previous correspondence that she was a real standout candidate – she was bright, dynamic and engaging, and had significant programmatic and delivery-focussed experience within the youth sector space. In her last role at Young Enterprise, Jess had had overall management of a flagship financial education programme, consisting of a network of over 170 schools/colleges across England, Wales and Scotland.
We advertised across our site, Guardian and Charity Job whilst also sending out mailshots to our networks and leveraging our social media presence to generate a large expression of interest (115 people having applied). We received 19 applications in all, and eventually shortlisted these down to 16 applications.