The Program Manager is responsible for leading and managing a Learning Community comprised 30-40 young adults, with the ultimate mission of providing high-quality service to the students in the community as they prepare for corporate internships and careers in related job fields. Successful outcomes for this role include maintaining 85% retention during the Learning and Development phase and no more than 10% attrition in the Work-Based Learning phase, student satisfaction with the Program, and 75% positive outcomes 4 months after graduation.
The Program Manager will also facilitate day-to-day interactions between our interns and corporate partner staff, ensuring a successful internship experience for all parties. The Manager will support performance for an assigned group of students and serve as the main point of contact for supervisors to help interns convert to employment and yield partner retention and satisfaction.
To be successful in this role, you will bring excellent communication, administrative, and management skills as well as the ability to interface with students, functional departments, and outside stakeholders as we work to achieve our mission. This position will work with our Academic/instructional staff, Student Services, Internship Services, and Corporate Engagement departments, to help provide students with individualized support by addressing challenges and understanding when to leverage other resources.
The Program Manager will also have the opportunity to interact with students on an individual level, as a group facilitator, and advocate, participating in building a positive educational environment.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:
Drive Student Success
- Serve as a role model by reflecting and maintaining our culture and embodying our values and operating principles while preparing students for corporate internships
- Manage, uphold, and track student contracts in a consistent manner to ensure timely and accurate student payment
- Work in collaboration with the Centralized Internship Services team to coordinate intern performance management
- Oversee student performance to ensure seamless transition from learning and development phase to the work-based learning phase
- Balance serving students and ensuring the overall success of the Learning Community by making appropriate decisions that are both student-centered and in line with our mission, vision, and values
- Collaborate with Student Services, Academic staff/instructors, and Corporate Engagement colleagues to identify and respond to student needs; ensure students receive high-quality services and individualized support
- Drive the development and management of individualized student performance/professional development plans in coordination with stakeholders to ensure student success
- Work with the Corporate Engagement and Market-based Employment Placement team to identify and match graduating participants to job opportunities
- Responsible for matching and placing 15% of non-converted graduates to find full-time, training-related jobs
Learning Community Management
- Manage the day-to-day and annual operations of the Learning Community, including the calendar
- Coordinate efforts and schedules while maintaining a positive group dynamic amongst both staff and students
- Work collaboratively with other functions to coordinate support for students and ensure alignment across departments
- Ensure all activities are planned, organized, and executed with high quality
- Plan and run new student orientation; oversee student transition into the program, coordinate orientation activities and ensure that students become acquainted with resources, staff, and program expectations
- Teach Career Development and Interpersonal Relations (CDIR) course
- Develop and maintain healthy and high functioning relationships with other functional areas of the organization that are critical to success in serving students
- Represent the Program Manager perspective when working with various functional areas, including but not limited to Admissions, Corporate Engagement, and other partners
- Identify students and interns for events; track student involvement with onsite guests, help prepare students for donor/outreach meetings, graduation, etc.
- Collaborate with Development team on stewarding mentor relationships
- Understand learning community-related data and synthesize/report out on trends (ex. contract, student performance)
- Coach students on career skills such as interview preparation and applying to open positions
- Help connect participants to open job positions once they graduate from the program; do this by working closely with the Corporate Engagement team and market-based Employment Placement team to identify leads and connect alumni to the open positions
Learning Community Member
- Serve as a 1-1 coach for all participants
- Participate in and sometimes facilitate weekly group sessions with students
- Participate in staff meetings and trainings with Program Managers and staff from Accelerated Core sites in other markets & cities
Placement Success
- Serve as relationship manager with LLA supervisors after internship sales have been confirmed for an assigned group of accounts that range in complexity, size, and maturity stage; partner with account leads in market to retain or expand account.
- Communicate regularly with and coach assigned interns to support performance.
- Provide responsive and high-quality customer service to each group in pursuit of KPIs related to account renewal and expansion in market, satisfaction for all involved customers/clients/intern, additional placements, intern retention, and conversion to hire.
- Manage against engagement scopes of work in account plans, meet standards of service for assigned accounts; flag non-standard activity, intern performance issues, or other risks; triage to solve.
- Oversee matching process for assigned interns. Analyze students’ strengths and decide on appropriate placement based on pattern recognition, partner needs, etc.
- Refer to matching playbooks to drive toward decisions via facilitation of conversations, data collection, timeline alignment, and communications to colleagues.
- Achieve on time onboarding by managing onboarding activities for all students in portfolio
- Follow conversion processes specific to account sourced from Account Directors’ playbooks.
- Drive and track account-specific conversion processes and work with partner HR or staffing agencies to ensure interns complete paperwork
- Enter employment records in Salesforce for intern conversions.
- Engage in knowledge transfer for non-converted interns and collaborate with central career services
QUALIFICATIONS:
- Previous work in student affairs, first-year orientation, college guidance counseling, residence life, multiculturalism/diversity or related higher education roles
- Extensive work with our target population in high stakes environments with clear performance outcome measures
- Demonstrated ability to lead teams and to administrate multiple projects and tasks simultaneously, prioritizing and delegating as needed
- Interest in working a fast-paced, dynamic, complex start-up and/or entrepreneurial environment
- Coaching ability and high comfort level in having one-on-one coaching conversations with staff and students alike
- Demonstrated knowledge managing a CRM; Salesforce experience strongly preferred
- Proven ability to make good, proactive decisions in potentially emotionally charged situations and/or in the absence of complete clarity; comfortable taking risks
- Ability to build strong professional relationships with others across the organization
- Sound judgment, maturity and the ability to handle sensitive and confidential information with discretion
- Excellent oral and written communication skills
- A passion for working with young adults, an unshakable belief in their potential and a strong commitment to our mission
- Pay range is $30-36/hr depending on the amount of relevant experience.
