Social Entrepreneur / Event Manager

Social Entrepreneur / Event Manager

Location: London , South East Salary: Salary information is in the job description Date posted: 02/04/2012 12:00 Job type:Permanent Company: SchoolsPlus Contact: Mike Deakin Ref: Totaljobs/nccarkApr12 Job ID: 53260177

Our idea

Imagine a typical secondary school, perhaps like the one you went to. By 6pm all the kids have gone home, and the school is sitting empty. Isn't that a waste?

So we at Schools Plus sign a contract with the school, and then market those facilities to the local community. Want to play football? Hire our pitch. Having a wedding celebration? Hire our hall. Need a place for a meeting? We have dozens of offices, meeting rooms and classrooms. We make sure the facilities are ready for our customers, look after them while they are in school, check everything is hunky-dory after they've gone, se t the alarms, lock the doors, and go home.

The benefits? Well, we make money for the school. And, more importantly, we transform them into thriving community hubs open 365 days a year. Community groups get a proper professional service. And someone (it could be you!) gets to run the whole thing like their own business.

The Role

The key to making this whole thing work is the Manager. Marketing the premises. Showing customers round. Deciding the prices. Recruiting people to help. Doing the cleaning, the caretaking, the customer service, and the security when you don't have enough staff. Spending a LOT of time during the school day building up fantastic working relationships with the school staff. Looking after your team. It's like having your own business. Youre in charge.

It might sound a bit like a marketing job - that's what we thought when we started the business... But in fact, the marketing is pretty straightfor ward. The key to the job is getting to know EVERYONE at the school really well (leaders, teachers, caretakers, cleaners, cooks, support staff, guard dog...) so that you can work closely with them through the many complexities which arise.

And then, obviously, you need to manage your operation and your staff. We give you a lot of help with this in the first year, you get an existing Manager as a Mentor. And nearly all the procedures for running community use of schools have been written up for you to read, so youre not making it up as you go along (although you might have to make some of it up every school is different... but, being an entrepreneur, youll enjoy that).

By the way, we really don't like the word "Manager", which is why we advertise for "Social Entrepreneurs". If you can come up with a better job title feel free to let us know...

(Oh, and it really is all about the relationships, just in case that wasnt clear before... . )

The Hours

It's your business - you decide! The last thing you need is one of us telling you to be at school by 0854 every morning. You know what needs to be done, and you put in the hours that you need to achieve this. Realistically, the first 6 months you work all the time, quite often seven days a week, and it's a huge effort. But the reward comes once you have built the relationships and trained your staff and got a set of good customers, because then you can take a breather.

Typically, after this start up period, managing one school is equivalent to one part time job, and two schools is one full time job. You come to work when you want. You stay in bed when you want. You work in bed whenever you can! Take holidays as and when you wish.

Sound good to you?

The Money

Basically, you pay yourself what you like.

Sorry, did you read that right? Yes, this is a very entrep reneurial role, and you set your own salary, based on the performance of your site. In general this means that in the first year you earn not very much - typically about 8,000 - 15,000, depending upon the school. From the second year onwards, as the operation grows and thrives, you can really start to improve your income. For a full time manager with two big schools and several years experience under your belt, you can earn a good living - our most successful managers earned over 60,000 last year.

After three years you have the opportunity to become a shareholder, with voting rights and the chance to be one of the decision makers for the whole company. Currently there are seven shareholders, comprising James Woods (the founder) and six other managers.

The Staff

Your staff are like your family, only more important. If they come to work and do a good job, you relax. Without them, you just have to work harder! And if they get it wron g, you get the blame...This is the joy of management. They're your team, so you recruit them, and you decide how much to pay them, you worry about their health and happiness. Have a good friend from college who you'd like to work with? Then employ them! Your husband lazing around at home? Put him to work as security, and pay him as little as possible.

The only significant control - and it's really important - is that we are VERY hot on child protection. So anyone employed by Schools Plus, including you, is subject to extremely thorough vetting and background checks, and ongoing monitoring throughout their employment to make sure that they are safe to work around children.

The Recruitment Process

There are two stages to our recruitment: first, you may be invited to have a 30 minute chat at the school this is a chance for you to ask questions about the business and get a feel for how the whole thing works; then, if we both think its a good idea, youll be invited back for a proper interview (with a test and everything).

Finally, all of our employees are subject to the approval of the school in question.