Head of Research 

Term: Permanent  

Salary:  £45k-£55k

Location: Youth Futures office in either Leeds, Birmingham or London, with regular meetings across England. Please specify your preferred office location when applying. 

Reporting to: Director of Impact and Evidence  

Deadline: 22nd May 2020

Transforming youth employment 

The Youth Futures Foundation is a new, independent, not for profit organisation set up to tackle youth unemployment with a £90million endowment from the Reclaim Fund. We are looking for bold and impactful ways to help young people find and keep good jobs. There are over 750,000 young people not in education or employment in the UK. Young people are twice as likely to be unemployed than older adults in the labour market and BAME and disadvantaged young people disproportionately bear the brunt of it. 

We are building an ‘empowerment foundation’ to identify practical solutions that work in a complex world yet are simple and cost effective enough to roll out across multiple locations, to reach as many young people as possible. Youth Futures will apply rigorous evaluation methods to determine what works, then channel resources and funding into sharing learnings and working in partnership to grow good practice.  We recognise that whilst developing and supporting young people will go some way towards tackling youth unemployment and under employment, these are systemic issues. We are seeking a significant change in national behaviour that dramatically improves the number of young people accessing - and progressing in - work.  

The Youth Futures Foundation is committed to: 

• Equipping young people from diverse backgrounds to access and progress in work 

• Removing structural and systemic barriers to employment and progression  

Youth Futures will take an evidence led structural and systems-based approach that recognises the importance of national learnings and local context, as well as promoting strong coordination and partnership working across government, funders, delivery organisations and employers. 

We will work in partnership to close the employment gap by: 

• Building the evidence base 

• Understanding and highlighting structural and systemic barriers 

• Improving the quality of employment programmes for young people 

• Empowering government to carry out evidence-based policy making 

• Equipping employers to improve productivity through hiring the best talent  

Head of Research 

We are looking for a dynamic Head of Research to work closely with the Director of Impact and Evidence to put reliable evidence at the fingertips of those seeking to transform the youth employment ecosystem. You will identify and produce research, create evidence tools, gap maps and frameworks to help policy makers, practitioners and employers make smart decisions about supporting young people towards and into work. 

Key responsibilities 

Manage the Youth Futures approach to research and knowledge sharing, including: 

• Provide strategic direction, set priorities, oversee the management of the Research team and its work, and support continuous improvement  

• Provide up to date information and insights on economic and labour market data linked to youth unemployment issues; collating, reporting, interpreting and tracking data at a headline level and on specific cohorts, regions or demographics 

• Map the evidence base to identify key findings and gaps to determine priority issues for Youth Futures market transformation activities  

• Plan and lead internal and external research programmes contributing to the evidence base on learning, skills and employment, and quality assuring outputs to ensure they generate evidence based policy positions on youth unemployment 

• Develop a suite of evidence tools, gap maps and frameworks to address youth unemployment and under employment  

• Use research evidence across multiple disciplines to inform Youth Futures policy decisions and equip the CEO, Leadership team and Policy team to effectively influence national and regional policy 

• Understand and contribute to Youth futures evaluations of interventions that move young people towards and into work, including comparison studies and randomised control trials 

• Develop strong relationships with experts from the employment, youth and related sectors (e.g. ethnic disparities, disability, social mobility, education and training) to gather useful input to shape our work 

• Work in partnership with research organisations and think tanks across relevant sectors to ensure data and evidence are shared, accessible and useable to the policy makers, practitioners and communities we serve 

• Keep up to date with key developments in policy, research and practice related to young people, skills and employment, and on innovations in research and development approaches; working with colleagues to disseminate this learning  

• Work with relevant government departments, representative bodies and key influencers to unlock big data for analysis and comparison purposes (e.g. LEO, DWP Data Lab, Behavioural Insights Team) and understand what evidence is most useful to policy makers and employers 

• Represent the Youth Futures at events; Chair and participate in advisory groups, grant committees, round tables and meetings to learn from and inform key stakeholder groups 

• Recruit and oversee research staff responsible for collating, sharing and generating evidence of effective interventions in the youth employment field.  

• Provide thought leadership in the field of youth employment, including through regular articles, blogs, peer-reviewed journals, research reports, evidence reviews, podcasts and online video footage.  

Skills and Experience 

Part One - Knowledge and Experience  

• A degree that is relevant to this area and/or training in quantitative research methodologies  

• Experience of developing and implementing a research strategy  

• Experience in undertaking and/or commissioning a wide range of research methods including rigorous quantitative and qualitative techniques such as surveys, mapping exercises (including to identify evidence gaps), interviews and focus groups, ethnographic research.  

• Experience of dissemination activities such as giving presentations, writing reports and blogs, creating online toolkits, animations, films, conferences, meet ups, podcasts or social media.  

• Has experience of collecting and analysing statistics, cutting through complex findings to produce succinct accessible research reports suitable for a lay person  

• Experience in leading major programmes of research and development work, building and leading high-performing teams, achieving impact on public policy and practice, and the policy and delivery context for learning, skills and/or employment 

• Ability to critically appraise a broad range of academic research and standards of evidence, and draw out the key learnings  

• Experience working in partnerships with a range of stakeholders on research or policy projects. 

Part Two - Skills  

• As a leader in a newly forming organisation, fully contribute to: 

• developing the overall strategy of Youth Futures Foundation 

• creating a positive, supportive and effective culture within the organisation 

• organisational development; developing new roles and ways of working; recruiting and developing new team members 

• supporting the team of Directors to become fully established and operational 

• establishing Youth Futures reputation in the Youth Employment ecosystem  

• Engage stakeholders; encourage connectivity and networks within and outside the Youth Futures Foundation 

• Ability to support, coach and develop a team of people who are split across three different locations.  

• Extremely strong analytical skills, including the ability to interpret and make sound judgements about data and research findings 

• Excellent relationship and collaboration skills, to effectively engage stakeholders, encouraging connectivity and networks within and outside the Youth Futures Foundation, and be equally confident working alongside both local and national organisations. 

• Strong communication, written language and presentation skills  

• Proven ability to conduct research across international, national and local initiatives, conducting gap analysis and identifying and evaluating successful projects that could inform the work of the Youth Futures Foundation.  

• High quality project management, prioritisation and resource allocation  

• Firm understanding and ability to track income and expenditure using spreadsheets and data  

• Strong IT skills, including use of MS Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc), shared online folders, calendars and contacts 

Mindset 

• Genuine personal commitment to Youth Futures mission, vision and values 

• This is an exciting opportunity in a newly-forming organisation. As such, many of the systems and processes that are normal in an established organisation either do not exist or are newly forming. To be successful in this role, the candidate will need:  

• to thrive when operating in uncertainty  

• be a highly motivated self starter 

• a proactive and flexible approach, able to identify and take forward opportunities and work effectively in partnership with others.  

• a positive and can-do attitude, willing to roll their sleeves up to get into details where necessary  

• a willingness to collaborate internally and externally to achieve our mission  

• strong leadership communication skills  

Things to know 

• As part of Youth Futures Foundation’s safeguarding policy, all employees are subject to a basic Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check

Timetable

Application deadline: 22nd May 2020

First stage interview: from 3rd June 2020

Panel Interview: 24th or 25th June 2020

Final interview: w/c 29th June 2020