Marketing Communications Officer Location: Home based with travel to sites as required Salary: Up to £35,000 per year dependant on qualifications and experience Hours: 40 hours per week Contract: Permanent The Aurora Group We’re one of the largest providers of SEND educational and care services in the country, supporting over 1,200 children, young people and adults, and employing over 1,500 staff spread across 27 services around England. Due to the continued growth of our company we’re looking for a Marketing Communications Officer to join our marketing and communications team to continue raising our profile to external stakeholders such as prospective staff, parents and local authorities. The main purpose of the role: You’ll work with our services across England to help us deliver exciting and engaging communications and raise Aurora’s external profile. As part of this role, you’ll produce targeted communications and ensure consistent messaging across multiple platforms, promote our brand and strengthen relationships with external stakeholders, including parents and carers, local councils and politicians, and other educational organisations across the sector. You’ll create press releases, website articles, and other content for various comms channels, while effectively supporting the Group Communications Manager to deliver engaging comms across all channels. This is an exciting time to join an ambitious and rapidly growing organisation. Your work will have a tangible impact on the lives of children, young people and adults with special educational needs and disabilities. Key duties: Building external relationships with local, regional and national media Raising profile of Aurora’s services through local, regional and national media Drafting press releases and proactive and reactive quotes Drafting website articles for our schools, colleges and care homes which will also be used for internal news Nurturing relationships with our schools, colleges and care homes and ensuring their comms needs are supported effectively Supporting external events Monitoring the news media for reactive and proactive opportunities
Successful candidate qualities: Essential: Experienced in external communications with Press and/or PR. A familiarity with the news media, and demonstrable experience of developing relationships with journalists. Proven experience of writing for different audiences for a variety of different media including print and digital. Can evidence an understanding of and confidence in using a wide range of social media. A track record of writing concise and engaging content that resonates with the target audience and presents complex subjects in a clear and compelling way. Excellent communication skills and attention to detail. Ability to juggle a variety of complex tasks and prioritise them appropriately. Working to tight deadlines and remaining calm under pressure. Collaborative and able to build great working relationships internally and externally but must be able to work independently and show initiative. Microsoft Office proficient. Desirable: Experience of the special educational needs and disabilities sector. Experience of using SharePoint, Viva Engage, Poppulo (internal comms platform), Vuelio (press release platform) or similar. Experience of crisis communications.
What’s on offer? Training and Development Within Aurora, we strongly believe that learning and development should not be limited to just the children and young people we support. We offer wide range of programmes and opportunities to all our employees to improve your skills and further your career. Save money on your bills!! With the cost of living rising we have a fantastic benefit through Perkbox to help with cutting costs and help make your money go further. Perkbox is a free app for you to use on the go wherever you are. You can get deals and discounts to save money on things like your weekly food bill, phone plans, internet, eating out, gym memberships, insurance and more. You can also use Perkbox for our cycle to work scheme and car scheme. Competitive Pay and Reward Every year we compare the market rates of pay and rewards to insure they are comparable or better to other similar organisations. We also offer Enhanced Annual Leave, Company Sick Pay, Enhanced Pension Scheme and Life Assurance. UK Health Cash Plan This plan can help cover your day-to-day healthcare expenditure such as optician and dental bills. You and your children are covered on this plan, and you can also choose to upgrade and add a partner to enjoy the benefits with you. Employee Assistance Programme Your health and wellbeing is very important to us and we have support available on a wide variety of issues, helping you with online tools, information and via a freephone counselling service available 24/7. Refer a friend for £1,000 We’ll reward you for recommending friends and family to come and join the company (*terms apply) Apply/Enquiries: If you are interested in this role then please apply on-line. Successful applicants will be subject to pre-employment safeguarding checks including an enhanced disclosure and barring service (DBS) check. The post is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and the Aurora Group is therefore permitted to ask job applicants to declare all convictions and cautions (including those which are "spent" unless they are "protected" under the DBS filtering rules) in order to assess their suitability to work with children. The Aurora Group is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of the children and young adults in our care and is a disability confident and equal opportunities employer. Closing Date: 5th February 2025 Please apply as soon as possible as we may close the role when we have a suitable level of interest. Please note that candidates that are shortlisted might be subject to an online search.