Just Like Us is the LGBT+ young people’s charity. We are recruiting for a Media Manager with strong media and copywriting experience. This role will involve engaging press contacts, monitoring media coverage and risks, and garnering positive press coverage.

Your work will persuade teachers, young people and supporters to join Just Like Us’ programmes, make education more LGBT+ inclusive and improve the lives of LGBT+ young people. The role will deputise for the Director of Comms and Media when needed.

As a charity, we work with thousands of schools and young people across the UK through our programmes. In 2021, our Growing Up LGBT+ report hit major national, regional and LGBT+ press, highlighting huge challenges that LGBT+ young people are facing today, and we recruited more schools than ever to join our programmes through press coverage, billboards, social media ad campaigns and email marketing.

We want to grow our Comms team so that we can continue driving our brand awareness, engagement and sign ups to our programmes. Ideally, we are looking for a candidate with a range of press contacts and strong copywriting and sub-editing skills.

You must have at least one year’s experience in media – ideally as a journalist or alternatively in comms. You need to be someone who can build relationships with journalists, manage press coverage and comms risks, and write succinct, sharp press releases that journalists can easily pick up, as well as copy that persuades our audiences to take action.

We are very keen to hear from underrepresented voices, particularly Black and PoC candidates. You would be joining a very friendly, creative and motivated Comms team, working alongside our Social Media Officer Malik Haddington-Ahmed (he/him) and reporting into Director of Comms and Media, Amy Ashenden (she/her).

Key Responsibilities

• Building relationships with relevant journalists in national, regional, LGBT+ and education press
• Respond and deliver to journalists’ deadlines
• Pitching stories to journalists and securing positive coverage
• Sub-editing articles by our young adult volunteers and teachers for use in press and on our website blog – including spotting comms risks, correcting spelling/grammar and improving copy for publishing
• Write strong and capturing copy for press releases, email marketing campaigns, website content and ads that are tailored to specific audiences (such as teachers) and encourage users to take action
• Monitoring and managing press coverage, including mitigating risk, and deputising for the Director of Comms and Media when needed
• Find and record case studies from school teachers and pupils, as well as our LGBT+ young adult volunteers, to grow our press and content opportunities
• Work collaboratively with the Comms team on campaign planning as well as with our Programmes team and Development (fundraising) team to secure case studies
• Identify potential stories for press from our own work across staff teams, case studies and data (surveys), as well as opportunities within the current news cycle
• Build relationships with influencers and talent to support with press coverage
• Experience with any of the following would be desirable but are not essential as training would always be provided: SEO, Campaign Monitor, WordPress and/or Google Analytics

Experience, Skills & Attributes

The applicant must:

• Be passionate about and have a strong understanding of LGBT+ issues, including community intersections
• Have at least one year’s experience in a journalism or communications role
• Have a range of press contacts, and a strong understanding of what will spark journalists’ interest to secure coverage
• Be very comfortable with phoning and emailing journalists, volunteers and schools to meet urgent press deadlines, and building external relationships
• Be able to quickly spot spelling and grammar mistakes and comms risks, plan for mitigation, and work to tight deadlines
• Understand and be able to apply brand identity, including integrating key messaging
• Be able to identify stories within data as well as human interest stories, and suggest suitable press outlets and journalists to pitch to
• Be motivated to measure and evaluate the impact of your work on an on-going basis, and work collaboratively to share this learning with the wider team

About Just Like Us

Just Like Us is the LGBT+ young people’s charity. Founded in 2016, we work with primary and secondary schools as well as young people across the UK to ensure LGBT+ young people can thrive. To do that, we run three programmes:

• Ambassador Programme: we train LGBT+ 18 to 25 year olds to speak in schools about allyship and growing up LGBT+, and support them through mentoring and community support
• School Diversity Week: we run the UK-wide celebration of LGBT+ equality in primary and secondary schools, and provide free educational resources
• Pride Groups: we help secondary schools set up lunchtime or after school clubs for LGBT+ and ally pupils to meet, learn and get support

How To Apply & Details

To apply, please submit your CV, and answers to the following questions (in one Word Doc or PDF), keeping in mind the Job Description:

1. Please tell us about your experience of working in the media and/or communications and how your experience would enable you to do this role? (max 500 words)
2. Outline media risks that Just Like Us may face when it comes to press and how you would seek to mitigate these risks? (max 500 words)
3. Give an example of a story you would pitch to LGBT+ press to secure positive media coverage for Just Like Us. Include a summary of the story, your approach to compiling the story and pitching, and which journalists you would pitch to (max 250 words)

Please email your application to info@justlikeus.org with ‘Media Manager application’ in the subject line. Please mention Journo Resources in your application, it really helps us out!

The deadline to apply is 23:30 on Wednesday 26 October. If shortlisted, there will be an exercise to be completed within two hours at an agreed set time (during a one-week period). We will then anonymise these for internal review and select candidates for interview.

Virtual interviews will be held on Tuesday 15 and Wednesday 16 November. We expect there to be one interview but there may be a second interview if needed.

Pay: £33,600 Permanent, full-time or part-time pro-rata (we are open to candidates interested in a 4-day a week role)

Location: London/Manchester/Leeds/flexible – we are open to candidates based outside of London. If the candidate is based in London, expected office time is at least two days a week in our Brixton office. If the candidate is based outside of London, they will be required to work some days in the London office once a month minimum. The Director of Comms and Media lives close to Manchester and Leeds and so there may be some opportunity for working in-person nearby too.

Holiday: 25 days (excluding statutory public holidays) Reporting to: Director of Comms and Media

What we offer all employees:

• Pension contribution: Just Like Us will match your pension contributions up to 6%
• Flexible working: Just Like Us currently offers a mixed home/office working model, enabling team members to work from home and in the office
• Good work-life balance: the Just Like Us team work core hours and can claim back time off in lieu for working agreed overtime
• Professional development: We are committed to the ongoing professional development of all team members, with an annual training budget per person and a clear pathway to help your career goals
• Extra day of annual leave: For each year in post, team members gain an additional day of annual leave, up to a maximum of five
• Employee Assistance Programme: Wellbeing support helpline available 24/7 for staff