Start date: ASAP
Type: Permanent (4 or 5 days a week – your choice)
Salary: £36,000 – £38,000 FTE
Benefits: https://castfromclay.co.uk/careers/
Application deadline: we are interviewing on a rolling basis
About Us
We are a communications consultancy that helps public policy experts shape conversations that strengthen democracy.
We want to see robust democracies, with people better engaged with the decisions and policies that affect them. Which is why we use data, strategy and design to build powerful campaigns that give big ideas the impact they deserve.
We work with NGOs, think tanks, and university research centres to better connect policy expertise to the audiences that matter – to craft policy ideas into human-shaped stories, and breathe life into them.
Some of the campaigns we’ve recently worked on:
- Blue Food Assessment, Stanford. Blue foods and the waters from which they derive will have an essential role to play in the shift towards a sustainable, healthy food system.
We built a new website for BFA, set up social media channels, and developed a suite of social media-focused content, to drive their communications forward.
- International Livestock Research Institute. ILRI’s research is directed to improving food and nutrition security through, among other things, increased production and access to animal-source foods in the developing world.
We developed an approach to help them tell human stories, alongside their more technical policy messaging. We tested the approach at two UN conferences (UNFSS and COP26).
- Improving school food in the United Kingdom. School Food Matters, the grassroots movement to improve the quality of food in British schools, has engaged us on a three year multifaceted campaign.
We will be engaging everyone from policymakers to headteachers to school cooks, encouraging each of them to see the value in better quality school food for pupils.
The Job
We’re looking for someone to head up a new project team. You’ll be the first member of the team, and within a few months you’ll be supported by a junior consultant.
You (and your team) will be focused on campaigns and communications strategy projects.
We’re on the hunt for a generalist rather than a specialist. You’ll be someone who can quickly build relationships (clients and colleagues), has a keen eye for detail, and is able to anticipate issues before they become problems. You’ll have a sense of urgency about you, and not be afraid to muck in to the most mundane of jobs (you can expect us to be right there with you).
One day you’ll be running a workshop (online or in-person) to help a client rethink their strategic positioning. The next you’ll be managing the design of a suite of social media content. The day after you will be guiding a prospect to reconsider how they have been thinking about running their campaign, and explaining why.
Working at Cast From Clay is about more than just client work. You’ll be someone with ideas. Someone who thinks outside the box.
At a philosophical level, you’ll be hungry to change the way policy experts perceive their role in society. We couldn’t care less what your political views are, as long as you have some.
You won’t be someone that is content with the status quo. Indeed, you may have debated whether policy organisations themselves are part of the problem.
We have been described as the “think tank for think tanks” by the communications lead of a top US think tank. Spending time thinking will be something you enjoy doing, but knowing how to turn that thinking into communications that will have an impact is crucial.
We’ll look to you to complement and enhance our existing thought leadership through your own analysis of the policy influencing sector, and your prescriptions of how to improve it.
You will be encouraged to use the company’s resources and connections to invest in your own brand. We consider writing and thinking about the sector as a core part of your role – that means regularly taking time out of your day to think and write, and not be wholly absorbed in client work.
Things to Note
We work from our offices in Kennington on Tuesdays and Thursdays (government restrictions permitting). You’re welcome to use the office more frequently than that should you wish.
If you do not live in London and you’re interested in this role, as long as you are able to make the office for those two days a week, it’s no problem for us. We have no plans to be in the office more than two days a week (even before Coronavirus we only did three days), so you won’t have to increase this number at a later date.
Our Core Philosophy
- Tom Hashemi, The Business of Ideas is in Trouble: re-injecting facts into a post-truth world, War on the Rocks
- Aidan Muller, A new model for think-tank communications (Part 1 and Part 2), Cast From Clay
- Aidan Muller & Tom Hashemi, Why the public should matter to think tankers, Cast From Clay
Box Ticking
We are looking for someone that can tick the following boxes.
- A belief that the status quo isn’t good enough
- At least four years’ communications experience
- Experience managing a communications campaign
- Experience conducting audience research to deliver a communications strategy
- Client management skills
- Diligent, proactive, excellent attention to detail, a strong work ethic
- Ability to meet deadlines whilst not letting the ball drop on other projects
Interested?
If this sounds like you, please send an email to [email protected] with the subject line “Application: Senior Consultant”. Please send us:
- A short covering letter in the body of your email that includes the below (we don’t need any more than this):
- 100 words on an idea you’ve heard recently that has stayed with you (it doesn’t have to be anything to do with politics or policy), and;
- 100 words about a piece of communications you love and why.
- Your CV (no more than 2 pages)
We aim to be an equal opportunities employer and we are determined to ensure that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment on the grounds of gender, age, disability, religion, belief, sexual orientation, marital status, or race, or is disadvantaged by conditions or requirements which cannot be shown to be justifiable.
You need to have permission to work in the U.K. for this role.