Communications Officer

The deadline for this vacancy has passed.

About Unlocked

Unlocked Graduates exists to break cycles of reoffending. Currently prison isn’t a place which successfully does this: the average prisoner has 16 previous convictions and 48% reoffend within a year of release. Not only does this recidivism make our communities less safe, it also represents a huge waste of human potential. And it is expensive, costing the taxpayer over £18 billion every year.

We believe the most effective way to ​change this is by recruiting, training and challenging the best graduates in the country to become frontline prison officers. These future leaders bring innovation and a different kind of problem-solving expertise to a hidden and underfunded public service. In the same way an outstanding teacher can transform outcomes for a child, an exceptional prison officer has the power to alter the course of a prisoner’s life. Our award-winning two-year graduate development programme equips these individuals to lead rehabilitative change from the inside out. In return, they get a fully funded master’s degree, a highly competitive starting salary, and career development they won’t find anywhere else.

About the role

We’re looking for a driven communications officer with strong media connections to help us find new and better ways to communicate the impact our participants are having on the landings.

Prisons are often considered the forgotten public sector, and prison officers the forgotten frontline staff. Guided by the External Relations Director, we want you to help build and execute a communications strategy to change that. You’ll be responsible for the day-to-day delivery of all aspects of our media operation, becoming somebody who journalists and the wider sector seek out for insight. You’ll also be heavily involved in supporting our engagement with Government, parliamentarians and other criminal justice stakeholders.

You’ll get to learn from a small but mighty team of recognisable experts in their respective fields; people who have advised governments, led legislative change, and run ministerial offices. The skills you’ll learn and decision-makers you’ll be exposed to will help you build your own network and personal brand in a way few other roles can offer.

Key accountabilities

You will:

• Alongside the External Relations Director, design and lead a new multi-year media strategy for the organisation, focused on securing regular coverage targeted at the audiences we care most about
• Become our internal press office, building your expertise and credibility such that you own relationships with journalists and government comms colleagues, act as the first point of contact for day-to-day enquires and proactively pitch ideas
• Collaborate with Marketing colleagues to create engaging copy and digital content for a variety of platforms, including as part of our recruitment campaign
• Help shape public policy debates by supporting the External Relations Director to engage with government, parliamentarians, civil servants, corporate partners, the criminal justice sector, unions and policy-makers
• Create opportunities to tell our story through events, awards and partnerships
• Help prepare Unlocked spokespeople, ensuring they are prepared to represent the organisation as part of media engagement, public events and internal presentations

Person specification

You are:

• Passionate, or willing to become so, about what Unlocked is trying to achieve
• Somebody who lives and breathes all things comms and already have the beginnings of a strong contact book
• Politically savvy
• A fluent storyteller with a sixth sense for communication ideas in a digital world, particularly across social media platforms
• Able to grasp complexity quickly and communicate it simply
• Intellectually curious beyond your field of expertise and are constantly applying things you’ve learnt from other disciplines to your work
• Technically proficient, or willing to learn to be, across production and web design tools (e.g. Canva, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Mailchimp, WordPress)
• A self-starter and not somebody who needs a big team to get things done
• Qualified to degree level (or equivalent)
• Somebody who has the right to work in the UK