Career Development Adviser

Head of Career Development Unit

Purpose of the post

The Career Development Unit is responsible for the design and implementation of global strategies, actions and tools to drive development, engagement and retention of ICRC staff. Working across the areas of Talent Management, the Career Development Unit is an enabler of staff in their growth, development and engagement in their career.

The Career Centre, within this unit, focusses on providing support and establishing tools to enable sound career and people management and development practices across ICRC's workforce (17000 people across the globe), in partnership people management stakeholders.

The Career Centre works to:  

1. Provide career development coaching to individual staff, guiding them towards crafting concrete action plans for individual development and leveraging at best their career relays (line manager, HR manager, staffing manager)
2. Institutionally, through capability building and tools for managers, HR service providers and Talent Managers (staffing managers) to have quality individual development conversations as well as enable staff engagement through sound people management.
3. Design innovative and effective online tools and job aids, potentially mobile apps for individual career planning and customised targeted development planning to enable and empower them to assume responsibility for their own career.
4. Designing tailored solutions and programmes for groups of staff with common career needs such as women, residents, associates etc.

The Career Development Adviser contributes to the establishment and implementation of initiatives within the Career Development Centre, with a particular focus on staff engagement, individual career coaching and counselling, and targeted development.

Main duties and responsibilities

Depending on the profile of the best candidate, the duties and responsibilities could be scaled down or up and the responsibilities split within the Career Centre could evolve.

• Direct coaching and counselling of ICRC staff or managers in seamless collaboration with other sources of career development available to employees:

• Coach ICRC employees to define their professional objectives and action plan to make it happen
• Inform on options for development and sources of support

• Provide continuous support to clients such as managers, HR service providers and Pool Managers as they engage in quality development conversations and development dialogues
• Together with the other career development advisors create effective tools or practice  to build the capability building of people involved in career development, people engagement and sound people management:
  • Line managers
  • HR managers
  • Talent managers

• Propose and develop tools enabling to support more people than people seen in face to face counselling through on line tools, job aid.
• Together with the other career development advisor design and deliver interventions / tools to support people with similar career needs.

Scope & Impact

• Contributes to Staff Engagement (identified as an institutional ´Top Risk´). Contributes to the ICRC´s People Management Strategy.
• Remit: global.

Relationships

• Internally, interacts with Career Development Advisors, managers in the métiers, HR service providers, Pool Managers, HR Partners, Talent Acquisition & Sourcing, and LnD. Also engages with strategically select groups of staff e.g. women, high potentials and associates.
• Externally, interacts with qualified external coaches and career counsellors and external providers of high-impact learning, growth and development programs.

Education and experience required

• University degree in a discipline relevant to the role such as Human Resources, Psychology, Social Sciences, Business, Management, etc.
• Min 6 years of international experience in people management, talent management, coaching, counselling or other related HR roles.
• Formal qualification in coaching (or significant workplace coaching experience) essential 
• Experience of working successfully with people from different cultures, nationalities, religions.
• Fluent in English, with  French,  Spanish,  Arabic or other ICRC key language desirable.
• Computer proficiency.

Desired profile and skills

• Qualification in learning and development highly desirable.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, and confirmed previous success in relationship and stakeholder management.
• Experience in designing and implementing career development tools and processes highly desirable.
• Strong communication and active listening skills as well as insight to also understand non-verbal clues and development needs.
• Experience of connecting/working well with people via remote communication tools is an asset.
• Openness and flexibility to shift easily between multiple functions and projects
• Understanding of ICRC or similar experience in an international organization with a global presence an advantage.
• Accountability and bias for results

Additional information

• Location :                          Geneva
• Type of contract :               Open-ended
• Activity rate :                      50%
• Length of assignment :       4 years, extendable
• Estimated start date :         ASAP
• Application deadline :     Sunday, 19th August 2018

Due to ICRC specific restrictions applicable in Switzerland to international employees, please note that non Swiss nationals will not be allowed to have other lucrative activities in addition to their ICRC contracts