The Institute of Student Employers (ISE) is recruiting an Insights Manager: someone who is fascinated by the processes that employers use to attract, select and manage early career talent; someone who has a thorough understanding of the early careers landscape including apprenticeships and related policy issues, someone who can engage with ISE members to create valuable content.
Background to the role
Developing and delivering market intelligence and thought leadership to our members and stakeholders is at the core of what we do. We help members create and develop their early talent strategies, provide insights that underpin the benchmarking of their operations, and we deliver key research and analysis to a wide range of stakeholders.
The knowledge we create, coordinate and share on the student labour market and industry practices is a key reason members join and remain a member of ISE. Our knowledge also informs areas of policy related to education and skills and is used by stakeholders across government and the education sector. The work we do and the insights we deliver stimulate change and demonstrate the positive impact investment in emerging talent can deliver to employer organisations.
The role
Reporting to the Joint CEO for Knowledge and Insights and working with the Head of Insights, this role will work across the ISE membership to help shape and deliver ISE’s core insights content and ISE’s policy positions. You will help build the ISE-generated content that drives ISE’s reputation as the experts in the emerging talent market, ensuring we are listened to and respected by members, policymakers and other external stakeholders.
Across a range of events and platforms, ISE engages with members who discuss a wide variety of issues relevant to student recruitment and development at a strategic, operational, and policy level. This role will listen to and engage with those conversations, alongside other sources of market analysis, and work with the team to create the content that helps members deliver to their organisations’ objectives. This content could include articles, presentations and social media content.
Managing ISE’s policy positions is also a key part of the role. Government policy on education and employment shape how students transition through education and into work. The Insights Manager will seek to understand how policy changes will impact members, increase members’ awareness of the relevant policy landscape, explore where ISE should advocate for policy change, and coordinate ISE responses to policy proposals.
This role will work alongside and coordinate activities with the Head of Insights, membership, events, communications and PR team members, and engage with the full range of ISE members: employers, careers professionals in universities/schools/colleges, and solutions providers.
This is a great opportunity for someone with a background in early careers who understands the challenges organisations face when recruiting and developing students, and wants to engage with and influence the broader strategic and policy-related issues that impact ISE’s members.
We have an open mind about how this role might work as it is a new position within the ISE team, so this is a great opportunity for someone to shape how it is delivered.
The role is part-time and will require a commitment of at least two days per week. The role can be home or office based and is offered on an initial two-year contract.
The post-holder will be expected to attend ISE’s conferences, key member meetings and external events, both in-person and online. The total remuneration package will be in the region of £45,000, depending on the experience of the candidate.
Main responsibilities
- In conjunction with the Joint-CEO, Head of Insights and the broader ISE team, develop the ISE’s labour market intelligence and thought leadership provision within the emerging talent market
- Coordinate insights gleaned from ISE forums and conferences to support content creation and delivery across ISE’s events programme and online channels
- Work with ISE members and stakeholders, including sector champions and relevant working groups, to identify their knowledge needs
- Ensure ISE’s recently developed apprentice-related content is both kept up-to-date and increased where necessary
- Work with ISE members and stakeholders to identify policy support needs and lead on the development of policy positions
- Help members and the ISE team with ad hoc requests for data and insights on subjects where they need support to answer
- Support ISE forums and conferences by delivering sessions and as part of the ISE team behind the scenes
- Represent ISE at events and in meetings with internal and external stakeholders
Success measures
- Clear and measurable increase in the quality of ISE-generated insights content delivered to members
- Clear and measurable increase in members’ engagement with ISE-delivered content
- Clear and measurable increase in ISE engagement with relevant policy debates
- Clear and measurable increase in members’ engagement with ISE-developed content on the apprentice market
Person specification – skills, knowledge and expertise
- Knowledge and understanding of the school/college leaver, apprentice and graduate market, including knowledge of the apprentice levy
- Practitioner knowledge of how employers attract, recruit and develop students at a strategic and operational level and the challenges they face
- A confident communicator and relationship-builder, able to engage across the ISE membership base from those at entry level to more senior-level stakeholders and partners
- Well-networked with existing relationships in the early talent industry amongst a variety of stakeholders including employers, educators, suppliers, industry influencers and policy makers
- Comfortable working with and analysing a range of data and analysis sources and able to draw meaningful conclusions, sometimes from multiple strands, that get to the core of members’ concerns
- Self-starting, organised and able to work at pace in a small team
- Strong communication skills including:
- Strong listening skills in order to unpick member’s needs and concerns in the early career market
- Writing and proofing skills for the production a broad range of written content
- Writing skills for blogs, newspaper articles and other summaries of research for a general audience.
- Presentation skills for online and in-person audiences.
Application details
Please send your CV and a covering letter to uzma@ise.org.uk. The closing date is 27th June 2025. There will be a two-stage interview process, the second of which will include a structured discussion on a piece of your pre-prepared content.