Come and join LOTI, London local government’s collaborative innovation team, to help borough councils improve the way they recruit, train and develop the digital, tech, data and innovation talent they need.

About the role

This is a rare and exciting opportunity to design, deliver and influence skills projects that can have an impact at a truly London-wide scale. You’ll be responsible for shaping a wide range of initiatives, from apprenticeships to recruitment support, and from training programmes to expert communities of practice. While LOTI has a number of skills and talent initiatives underway, you’ll be able to bring your full creativity and initiative to design and test new ways of meeting boroughs’ needs.

You’ll benefit from a starting salary of £50,721, a training budget of £1,500/year to support your professional development, and enrolment in the Local Government Pension Scheme. The role is being offered on a two-year Fixed Term Contract, with potential to extend.

How to apply

• Read the full job description and apply online here.
• In the online application, you’ll be asked some details about your career history, then a few questions about how you’d be a great fit for the role.
• Applications close just before midnight on Monday 21 April.
• There will be face-to-face interviews at London City Hall on Tuesday 29 April.
• The top two candidates will be invited to an online interview on Friday 2 May.

A week in the life of the Skills and Talent Manager

Wondering what it would be like to have this role? Below we sketch out what could be a typical week…

Monday

Today’s an office day. You head to London Councils’ HQ at Arthur Street to spend it with the LOTI team. Three boroughs have sent requests for recruitment help and so you join calls with them to discuss which of our freelance recruiters might best support their needs. You also share with them some job descriptions (JDs) and salary information we’ve crowdsourced to save them time. Following the calls, you start the ball rolling, putting them in touch with the relevant recruiters. You notice we don’t yet have a good JD for one particular role and make a note to find or create a good one to add to our list of exemplars.

You enjoy some lunch with colleagues from the LOTI team, comparing notes on the best local food outlets near Monument.

The afternoon starts with LOTI’s fortnightly team meeting where we’re planning our next All-Member workshop. (All-Member workshops take place every month and are for the main representatives of each borough – typically their Chief Digital Officer.) You update the team on the new online library of borough team structures you’ve been working on and get their feedback so you can continue developing it in advance of that workshop.

After the meeting, you work on your presentation to share the online library with LOTI members. You finish the day by having a call with a borough who’s recently been asking for advice on how to support their apprentices. You talk them through some guidance developed with two other boroughs.

Tuesday

You start the day with a LOTI team stand-up. It’s a short meeting just to check in with the rest of the team, hear any important updates and ask for any help you need. 

After that you check the jobs boards of each LOTI borough to add any roles relevant to digital, technology, data and innovation to the LOTI jobs board and database of salary information. It usually only takes an hour and it’s a great way to stay on top of what  positions boroughs are currently recruiting for. You notice an interesting new role – a Data Journalist – being offered by one borough and email them to ask about it. 

Five boroughs have said they’re struggling to recruit an Enterprise Architect. You join a video call with them where you share information on the latest salaries that other boroughs have offered for that role, and explore ideas for how boroughs might work together to access those skills. One idea is to hold an event that specifically aims to attract architects working in other sectors. You offer to work up plans for what that could look like.

In the afternoon, you spend time thinking about how LOTI might set up a cross-borough mentoring scheme to help nurture the next generation of digital leaders in London local government.

Wednesday

After the morning team stand-up meeting, you join LOTI’s Data Leaders Community of Practice online meeting. You listen in to pick up any challenges faced by multiple boroughs. Several report that they want to find a way to upskill non-data professionals in their councils to understand the role of data. You make a note to speak with other data colleagues in the LOTI team to explore how we might help and to see how other sectors address this challenge. Perhaps we could create a training video for boroughs to use as part of their staff onboarding process?

On Wednesday afternoon you have three interviews with London boroughs to discuss how they have been getting on with their apprenticeship schemes. Several are interested to know which training providers offer the best apprenticeships in Artificial Intelligence. You offer to do the research for them and report back with a list.

You finish the day with a call with LOTI’s Communications and Engagement Manager to plan for an event you’d like to hold in a few months for new graduates to tell them about opportunities in local government. You agree to write a blog for the next LOTI newsletter to promote it.

Thursday

No team stand-up today. You spend the morning writing up some case studies on best practice in staff retention based on some interviews you conducted last week with five councils from around the country. You’ve arranged for these to be added to a new case study library on the LOTI website.

Just before lunch, you have your weekly 1-2-1 with your line manager to check in and share how things are going. Your line manager mentions that several boroughs are interested in learning more about service design skills. You agree to do some research to see what resources and training opportunities are out there.

In the afternoon you’re in the office to support LOTI’s Pan-London Information Governance Lead to run a workshop on data protection for London boroughs. You helped with the design of the workshop to ensure it included best-practice from a training perspective, and you’re interested to get feedback from participants on how we can make it even better in future.

Friday

You’ve almost reached the end of the week! 

In the morning, you join a webinar with HR directors from across London local government to share details of LOTI’s latest initiative to partner with local universities to access specialist skills we struggle to recruit for in our sector. The HR directors are interested to learn from LOTI’s experience, and you promise to return in six months to report back on progress.

Talking of which, immediately after the session, you jump on a call with a London university to discuss the secondment of four of their PhD students to work in London boroughs on service design projects. 

Just after lunch, you join the full LOTI team online for the weekly retro and planning meeting. In the meeting, each team member shares highlights from their week and details of their most important activities next week. It helps ensure we’re coordinated and that each team member can ask for any help they need. One team member asks if anyone can assist them in facilitating a smart city workshop next Wednesday. You volunteer. While every member of the team has a specific role and remit, you enjoy being able to get involved in support of others’ work and events.

After the team meeting, you have one further call with a London borough who wanted some advice on a hackathon they’re putting together next month.

You end the week tidying up your notes, following up on a few emails and checking you’re all set for another week.

About the LOTI Model

This video provides more information about LOTI, how we work and what projects we’ve delivered.