The Social Finance Analyst Programme is open to all applicants who have a university degree or equivalent professional experience, working in research, analysis, field-work, operations or finance, whether in the public, private or charity sector, as an employee or an apprentice.  

Social Finance is an entrepreneurial, forward-thinking company looking for the next generation of social innovators to start their journey on our Analyst Programme in autumn 2020. The Programme is ca. three years in duration and consists of a minimum of 2-3 rotations across business lines. Training, both on the job and in group settings, coaching and mentorship opportunities are used to equip you with the skills and experience required to build your career. 

We are looking for individuals who are:  

• Passionate about making a difference 

• Intellectually curious 

• Innovative thinkers, willing to challenge the status quo 

• Self-motivated, adaptable and confident to work independently 

• Team players who can build good working relationships with a variety of internal and external partners 

We work at the intersection of public services, user data, digital tools, and philanthropic and private investment, and ask questions like:  

• Where should governments, donors and philanthropy focus their efforts to improve society? 

• How do you design public services that can respond to changing user needs and stay focused on meaningful outcomes?  

• How can data and digital tools be used to support better decision-making?  

• How do you align financial success with social impact?  

• And, how do you avoid introducing ethical, social, or cultural bias into solutions and services? 

You will need to show potential and interest in the following areas, which will be developed over the course of the programme. You are not expected to arrive with a full skillset, as you will be supported to learn:  

• Data & analytical skills – you have an aptitude for numerical information and analysis, including the ability to collect, gather and analyse information. You show attention to detail and can quality control your own work to produce accurate and reliable outputs in PowerPoint, Excel and Word. During the programme, you will learn how to create the financial and operational models that support our work, drawing from comparable models in the business, social and development sectors. 

• Problem solving – you are able to look at a problem creatively and suggest alternative, viable solutions. 

• Project management – you can document and organise your work, are able to prioritise and plan your own work streams, communicate project progress effectively, and invest your time appropriately to create high-quality products and meet deadlines reliably. 

• Communication & relationship building – you have excellent writing, listening and inter-personal skills, can summarise and share information effectively, and are able to develop insightful presentations of findings and conclusions. During the programme, you will learn how to establish, support and build strong relationships within and outside Social Finance. 

• Team work – you work well in teams and independently, are receptive to feedback and use it to continually improve. 

• User Research & Design Thinking – you can design, coordinate and implement research plans to understand service users and their needs. You can synthesise research data to build clear pictures of potential service users to feed into project/product design. 

About your work here 

As an Analyst, you will work on various types of projects, supported by a more senior member of staff. Social Finance aims to create social change in partnership with like-minded organisations, and we use various avenues to do this: 

• Systems thinking and design – developing innovative and long-lasting ways of solving social issues, ranging from new funding models, to policy approaches, to service re-design solutions. For example, we have brought together several front-line charities to design a new programme of behaviour change to reduce domestic violence that is being scaled with support from the Home Office. 

• Data analysis and research – from carrying out detailed data analysis to understand complex social issues, to conducting market research to advise investors on how they can generate a social and financial return, to helping government use their data effectively to make better decisions. For example, we draw together multiple data sets to identify which groups of young people are most at risk of poor long-term outcomes, such as unemployment, and use our conclusions to influence policy. 

• Advisory work – assisting social sector and development organisations, and governments worldwide, to create new approaches to services and innovative funding mechanisms to underpin them. For example, we work with Local Authorities to design contracts based on the achievement of social outcomes to prevent young people going into care. 

• Market building – from developing national strategies to create and develop SIB markets, to designing knowledge platforms that support the sharing of learning, to building the capacity of other players in the market to help replicate our work. For example, we work with governments and donors all over the globe to help create outcome-focused funds to improve the quality of primary and secondary education.  

• Operational support - Individual Placement and Support (IPS) supports people with serious health difficulties to find and keep a job in an area that they are passionate about.  We are working with NHS England to expand the number of people who have access to high quality IPS.  We provide hands-on operational support to services, create and deliver free training and develop tools to help providers monitor their own performance.  

• Fund management – from supporting the development of an investment pipeline and carrying out due diligence on potential investments, to monitoring the performance of existing investments and supporting investees achieve their targets. For example, we manage a social investment fund in the health & care space which invests in social enterprises and projects with the aim of improving community health and wellbeing. 

• Partnership building and relationship management- from working with frontline delivery partners, to coordinating with a range of local authority partners, to bringing together diverse sets of funders and investors. For example, through a collective impact model, the Black Thrive initiative is bringing together the council, health commissioners, charities and community groups in Lambeth to tackle high rates of mental illness amongst the local black community. 

To view the full job advert please visit https://www.socialfinance.org.uk/social-finance-analyst-programme