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Chas Brickland

39years • Southampton

Summary

Alumni Relations Officer: Student and Volunteer Engagement, University of Southampton where part of my role is supporting student enterprise and employability activity through alumni volunteering. Other hats include UoS LGBT staff network Chair. Big into Science, Media and Comms & all round geek...

Skills

management

time management

teamwork

communication

relationship building

leadership

media relations

marketing

volunteer management

community fundraising

alumni relations

recruitment

sales

higher education

enterprise

employability

entrepreneurship

Experiences

Alumni Relations Officer: Student and Volunteer Engagement

11-2014 - Now

Journalism / PR

The Office of Development and Alumni Relations exists to create lasting and mutually beneficial relationships between its community of 210,000+ alumni and the University, it's staff and students. My role is to develop excellent working relationships with university colleagues, the student union and individual students to identify engagement opportunities for alumni volunteers. I am responsible for volunteer management from recruitment and retention, management of the activity through to stewardship of volunteers.

Recruitment Consultant - IT

05-2013 - 09-2013

HR / Training

First point of contact for all incoming calls from both business clients and contractors. Organisation of own and office diary to book client visits, candidate registrations and meetings. Administration of emails, paper and telephone correspondence, including recording, actioning and following through to resolution any enquiries and issues, Organisation and management of own workload to ensure all tangible targets are met and all work delegated to me is completed in a timely, efficient and satisfactory manner. Direct marketing to business clients to build relationships and secure future opportunities. Advertisement, negotiation and administration of all successful contracts within my remit. Ensuring all contact with either clients or candidates results in excellent customer satisfaction, repeat business and exceeds expectations.

Senior Administrative Officer, R&A, PG Health Sciences

03-2013 - 10-2014

Administration

The primary skill I have developed in this role is line management. Responsible for the day-to-day management of three team members including sickness and absence monitoring, performance management and reviews and appraisals. I quickly built a rapport with my team and gained the knowledge to be able to competently advise and guide them through daily tasks where necessary. During reviews and one-to-ones, we have identified training needs and I have encouraged the team to widen and improve their skills sets. Working together, we have identified new working practices and current ones that can be improved and were not being used that have had a positive effect after implementation. This role has required me to acquire a detailed understanding of recruitment and admissions policies, processes and systems and have reviewed many of these, suggesting and implementing improvements as well as taking the tema from a mixed online and paper based system to a completely online one. Working with colleagues from across the University including academics, the International Office, Fees, Student Offices and CQA teams on a range of work from advertising and marketing PhD vacancies to contracts, induction arrangements and compliance. Responsible for resolving complicated issues which are escalated to me, ensuring that all legal obligations are fulfilled, that we are abiding by the regulations the University of Southampton and that all applicants are treated fairly and equally.

Student Administration and Assessment Officer, UG Management

10-2012 - 03-2013

Administration

Administration of all undergraduate programmes within the School of Management including assessment, curriculum, attendance and day-to-day queries by telephone, email or in person. Organisation and minute taking in Staff Student Liaison Groups and School Programme Boards. Management of generic inbox and own. Taking direction from the Senior Administrative Officer and Team Leader on tasks and using initiative and judgement to delegate to Administrative Assistants and ensure completion in a timely and accurate manner. Administration of Erasmus and Visiting students. Liaising with academic colleagues and students. This role has vastly broadened my knowledge of University processes and allowed me to gain experience of new parts of the student lifecycle. I developed my supervisory skills and management skills, having been responsible for the workload of an Administrative Assistant as well as delegating tasks to reception staff and have refined my skills at coaching and explaining complex ideas in a patient and clear manner. I was afforded a great deal of autonomy with my work and I believe that I used this autonomy productively to develop new processes, evaluate existing ones and improve my own performance and competencies as well as those of my colleagues.

Curriculum and QA Officer

02-2012 - 10-2012

Administration

Coordination of programme boards, staff student liaison committees and external visits for accreditations. This included: - scheduling, booking facilities, inviting attendees, managing responses - drafting agendas, collecting supporting documents, circulating agendas - taking minutes and carrying out any action points relevant to the CQA team Coordination of the evidence bases for use in periodic programme reviews and institutional audits; assessing what documentation is required, who the member of academic or administrative staff is that would have access to that documentation and ensuring that all elements are delivered in the correct format, fully and are stored in the appropriate places ready for future use. Maintenance of handbooks including online wikis and blackboard. Creation of spread sheets and databases for the use of the Curriculum and Quality Assurance team, including documentation of processes and procedures. Administration, collection and collation of module evaluations for Psychology, Education and Geography. This role allowed me to greatly develop my time management, organisational and self-management skills. It also gave me the opportunity to further develop my communication skills in my day-to-day encounters with members of my team, my managers, external stakeholders, members of the academic staff and other University services.

Education & training

Cardiff University

2010 - 2011

Cardiff, United Kingdom

Information pack for HPV vaccine. Dissertation topic: Sources of information parents use when choosing whether or not give their children the MMR.

Aston University

2006 - 2010

Birmingham, City and Borough of Birmingham

I used my time at Aston to gain valuable experience working with people and learning to understand the larger context of society within which they exist. I was particularly interested in the study of knowledge, risk society and the media's effect on social attitudes. Dissertation topic: Portrayal of violent women in British news papers.

My soft skills

Creative

Communicating

Persuasive

Curious

Extra-professional Experiences

Chair

University Of Southampton Staff Lgbt Network

12-2013 - Now

RAG Officer

Aston University Rag

09-2008 - 09-2009

Leading a team of 13, I worked with over 200 volunteers to organise charity events and street collections to raise funds on behalf of the Student's Guild. During my year in the position, Aston RAG raised over £60,000 for various charities.

My dreams

One day

To go back to uni and get my PhD