Community Action Bradford & District

Can you start by introducing yourself and explaining your current role?  

My name is Kirsty Gregory, I am the Information and Marketing Development Officer at Community Action Bradford & District. It is my role to design and deliver training, posters, infographics and social media images, as well as text to go with them. It is also part of my role to write newsletters, train new members of the team and ensure we are always being inclusive in our materials. 

Why do you choose to work with the University of Bradford and how have you found working with us?  

We work with the University of Bradford to help people gain experience; not only where they may not have gotten a role before but also to introduce students to different ways of working, management styles and to give them a foot up on the career ladder with as much experience as we can. 

What benefit/value do our graduates bring to the workplace/ to your organisation?  

The graduates bring invaluable value and benefits to us with fresh eyes on campaigns, new ideas and alternative thinking. They are also extremely keen to learn and work which means they have excellent work ethic and a drive to learn new skills. 

What do you want to see on a job application?  

I would like to see the willingness to learn but also proof that they have a great work ethic. We can teach the skills of the role, we want someone with great people skills and we can help with the rest.

Tell us how our graduates can progress in your organisation? What type of job opportunities do you have?

Due to us being an infrastructure organization, the roles we have vary in a massive scale. We may have roles for cleaners, designers, researchers, safeguarding, administration or training. We like to ‘skill match’ people where possible, or give them opportunities to find what they like to do in our sector.

Why should a young individual/graduate come and work for you?  

We like to ensure we get to know a person before they come work for us, this is to ensure we are giving them the best that we possibly can. If we know someone’s values, attributes and interests we can try our best to get that in a role for them. We have a great organisation where we all pitch in (where necessary) to let people try out our roles; we give them 1:1 mentoring but don’t micromanage – full training will be given. training.

What advice would you give to our/ current students/graduates looking for jobs?  

Look for something that actually interests you (or may lead to that role) and don’t look in the most obvious places. Show that you are eager to work (e.g. by offering a work trial), do your research and show your personality.