Partnerships Manager

We’ve an immediate opening for a Partnerships Manager, keen to support our growth, and the growth of others, through enriching commercial relationships with existing partners and purposefully establishing new ones.

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YCN (You Can Now) is a next-gen learning partner to creatively-driven, growth oriented organisations of all shapes and sizes — from foodie favourites like Pip & Nut and Dishoom to burgeoning tech companies like Whereby and SuperAwesome; publishers like the Guardian and It's Nice That to amazing charities like Shelter and Action for Children.

We provide continual, personalised learning and development to boost performance throughout our partners' teams, from the leaders at the top to their newest hires — helping people build in-demand skills for the modern world of work. Those could be skills like leading distributed teams, upping personal resilience at times of change or enriching cultures of inclusion by better understanding neurodiversity at work.

And we do this through modern, social and digital first approaches, combining expert-led live experiences with evidence-led and behaviourally driven resources. At at our website you’ll get a feel for our approach, examples of YCN in action and a good sense of the topics we're exploring with our community right now.

As a Partnerships Manager, you’ll be developing business across our open learning programme — bringing more teams onboard to the social, personalised learning platform that sits at the heart of our work, as well as identifying and nurturing opportunities to design and deliver tailored in-house training programmes to teams around the world. Recent bespoke programmes include a company-wide DEI development programme for a national restaurant group, management development programme for a culturally driven retailer and work with a government department to equip civil servants with smart storytelling skills.

Drawing from relevant recent partnership/new business development experience (we’re open minded to what that is); you’ll respond to inbound enquires, spark new conversations with longstanding partners and proactively identify and creatively connect with new ones too — collaborating with colleagues in our close knit team to identify commercial hot-spots and ground your work in sectors identified as ripe for growth.

Reporting directly to a company director, you’ll be comfortable working collaboratively alongside colleagues, as well as working independently and autonomously to positively work towards partner-growth and partner-acquisition targets.

Key aspects of the role will include:

— Researching potential clients and identifying key decision makers within partner sectors we’re keen to grow.

— Crafting engaging communication to establishing contact with such potential partners, and sustaining engagement over time.

— Leveraging existing relationships to begin new ones.

— Supporting in the development and execution of narrative driven campaigns.

— Use our CRM tool, Hubspot, to segment, sustain and move leads through different stages.

— Develop eye-and-mind catching proposals in response to requests.

— Taking part in new business meetings and presentations.

— Contributing creatively to PR activity and content led marketing.

— Immersing yourself in our programme and platform, letting your curiosity get the better of you so that your own continual learning becomes a powerful part of your role and story.

— Inspiring colleagues to share their own future partnership suggestions, to support inclusive growth.

— Bringing ideas, energy and curiosity to our day-to-day doings and continually sharing your learning.

We imagine our ideal candidate will have:

— Proven experience in a partnership/business development role, and are open minded to the extent of this. We hope this role will time well for someone in the earlier stages of their working journey — with some relevant, demonstrable experience. It doesn’t need to be lots; but enough to have developed relevant context to build on, enable you to hit the ground running and have confidence to connect with senior decision makers from the outset.

— Plenty of entrepreneurial spirit, a growth mindset and bags of curiosity.

— Strong written and verbal communication skills. You’ll be able to articulate the unique value we offer to our partners in compelling and memorable ways.

— A passion for people development, and enabling others through continual learning.

— The ability to balance multiple conversations and at different levels of completion.

— Your experience doesn’t need to be in the learning and development / people and culture space; but you’ll need lots of interest in the modern world of work and what makes people tick.

— You’ll have excellent organisational skills, an eye for detail and the ability to balance multiple assignments at different levels of completion.

A flexible approach:

We’re currently working remotely, transitioning back to our workspace at 72 Rivington Street in London — and continuing to embrace a flexible, hybrid approach to working that reflects the way we deliver learning to our partners' teams. As such, we are very open to your location and ideal working week. Equally we’re open to the number of days within the week you’d like to work.

If this sounds like a relevant and interesting opportunity, we'd love to hear from you.

We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team and community; value different thinking styles and strengths, and are open to any adjustments to best support you in your time working with us.

Salary, bonuses and benefits will reflect experience.