Senior Consultant and Business Development Lead

Do you have a clear, realistic view of how the Internet is challenging public and private sector organisations? Do you have a desire to help the people who lead those organisations to understand the steps they must take to adapt? And are you a natural deal-maker, who finds business opportunities around every corner? If so, mySociety has a job that may interest you.

What you would be doing in this job

This job has two distinct parts, each of which will take about half of your time:

Role 1 - You would be responsible for delivering digital consultancy to public, voluntary and private sector clients. This requires a broad, mature and non-dogmatic knowledge of digital technologies and the way in which those interact with the operations of large organisations, and the lives of everyday people.

Role 2 - You would be jointly responsible for developing new business, along with our Director. This includes not only consultancy, but also bespoke web and mobile development and product sales (which form the bulk of our commercial revenues).

The consultancy would often involve helping organisations to understand what technical and managerial changes are required before they can deliver the excellent digital services they dream of operating. You would also frequently be asked to look at current digital services and processes and analyse them for improvements or reforms.

The business development role would most often involve identifying people who seem like they could benefit from mySociety’s technology or advice, and building relationships with them. To do this you will need to develop and execute a business development plan, and review it regularly for success.

Both jobs would be highly varied, and rarely the same from week to week.

Why you should work with us

mySociety is a social enterprise - a charity that wholly owns a commercial subsidiary (the profits of which are donated back the charity). It is the subsidiary that you will be working for, and whose success you will be driving. Both parent and child organisations are keenly focussed on the importance of high quality user experiences in the public parts of our lives, whether that is tracking politicians or making the experience of buying a train ticket less painful.

All the services we offer commercially ultimately relate to the common goal of filling the world with quality user experiences, whether for the public or employees. At one end of this scale, we offer products like FixMyStreet for Councils, that directly enable a local government to provide citizens with a better way of reporting problems. We also offer bespoke development which is always user-centered - helping people provide access to services or data that will be effective, attractive and well used. And at a strategic level, we offer a consulting service for leaders, focussed on helping chief executives and others in similar positions to understand what has to change about their organisations in order that their digital services become user-centered, attractive and popular.

Here are the minimum skills we need you to have:

• Knowledge of how digital services are built today, common problems encountered, and a historical perspective on how this has changed over the last decade.
• Working knowledge of usability principles and good practices.
• Solid stakeholder and relationship management skills.
• Business research and analysis skills.
• Graduate level written and verbal communication skills.

Minimum experience. Prior to this job you will have:

• Developed and won business from clients, for the supply of digital products, services or consulting.
• Written reports containing clearly laid out digital plans or options.
• Acquired knowledge of the internal workings of large, bureaucratic organisations.
• Worked directly on the development of at least two digital projects (not just the sales).
• Explained the implications of digital issues to senior decision makers.
• Experience of working alongside a user centred design function, ensuring that user needs are fully identified and incorporated into the overall lifecycle.

As a person, we hope you will be:

• Empathetic to people in constrained corporate environments.
• Good at prioritising.
• Friendly and motivated.
• Creative and lateral-thinking.
• Good at managing your own time and avoiding distractions.
• Aware and realistic about your own strengths and weakness.

What mySociety is for

mySociety’s mission - particularly that of the parent charity - is to help people become more powerful in the civic and democratic parts of their lives, through digital means.

We do this in three ways:

1. We build websites that make it easy for people to write to their politicians, get potholes fixed, get public transport irritations resolved and extract information from governments.
2. We provide consultancy, bespoke software development and software products to organisations keen to meet the expectations of digital natives.
3. We develop free and open source software for individuals and organisations around the world who want to build copies of the sites we build.

What working for mySociety is like

Working for mySociety is not an everyday job. You’ll be part of an unusually skilled, motivated team, arranged in a very flat hierarchy, working to build tools that help people and communities. We’re widely geographically dispersed, and a lot of people work from home (although we have a central London office too, with an Oxford office coming soon). There is a high expectation of self-direction and self-discipline, you’ll normally be left alone to solve problems, unless you choose to consult colleagues. You’ll also be collaborating with some amazing volunteers who are incredibly skilled and dedicated in their own right.  Being part of mySociety means being in the kind of organisation that is so motivated that the management’s job is often to tell people to take it easy. We welcome people who, deep down, burn to make a difference.

Location

You can work from home, or in an office based in either London or Oxford.  Home workers will need to be based within about two hours’ travel time from central London, as plenty of business meetings will take place there.

Salary & Benefits

Up to £60k plus pension (3% employer contribution, 5% employee). You will be a full PAYE employee.

Deadlines and Dates

The application deadline is 10am on Monday 28th January 2013, and interviews will be on Monday 4th and Tuesday 5th February 2013, in Oxford, or via Skype if travel is problematic.  We will aim to notify applicants of whether or not they will be invited to interview on Wednesday 30th January 2013.

How to apply

Please apply via http://mysocietyltd.theresumator.com/.

No recruiters or agencies, please.