Career Change and Rehoming Specialist (On-site)

The Career Change and Rehoming Specialist (On Site) helps people with sight loss live the life they choose by managing the career change of dogs identified for alternative working careers outside of Guide Dogs or needing to be placed into new homes following withdrawal from Guide dog service or training and breeding.

This role is responsible for the direct, day-to-day care and behavioural assessment of dogs based at Guide Dogs facilities or with allocated volunteers who are preparing for rehoming or alternative careers. This site-based role focuses on understanding each dog’s individual needs, delivering tailored behavioural support, and collaborating with on-site teams and volunteers to ensure the psychological and physical wellbeing of dogs as they transition out of Guide Dog work, training, puppy raising or breeding programmes.

Career Change services encompass two functions; a Career Change and Rehoming Specialists On Site team, and Career Change and Rehoming Specialists Community based teams. These two teams work collaboratively with the rest of operations to support retired guide dogs, retired breeding stock and dogs that are not best suited to the Guide Dog training, Guide Dog services or breeding programme.  

Benefits:

We wouldn’t be able to change the lives of people with sight loss without our people. That’s why it’s important for us to provide a variety of benefits that reward our colleagues in a way that suits them and recognises the hard work and contribution that they make.

· 26 days annual leave. After three years of continuous employment, this increases to 28 days plus bank holidays.

· Real Living Wage Employer

· Flex pot - equal to a proportion of your annual salary to use on our wide variety of flexible benefits

· The option to buy and sell annual leave

· Discounts and cash-back scheme

· Excellent pension scheme (We will match your pension contributions plus 2% up to a maximum of 9% employer contribution)

· And lots more!

For high volumes of applications, we reserve the right to close adverts earlier than advertised.

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

Behind Every Guide Dog Is Someone Like You - We’re passionate about creating an inclusive workplace that celebrates and values diversity. Bring your whole self to work regardless of age, disability, gender identity or reassignment, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity, race, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation. We don’t want you to ‘fit’ our culture, we want you to enrich it.

How to apply

Further details on the full role are attached below. When you are ready to apply, submit an online application form via this page. Please note - If you are successful you will need to provide evidence of your right to work in the UK via our digital ID checking supplier. We cannot offer visa sponsorship at this time.

As part of your application ensure you provide evidence and examples of how your skills & experience meet the criteria as set out in the attached job description. You will also be asked to complete a few job-specific questions, so please be prepared to write your answers to these questions.

If you choose to use AI tools to assist in completing your application, please use them appropriately. We value authenticity. If you want to stand out, using a generic AI-generated response isn’t going to separate you from the crowd. This is your time to shine and showcase your unique skills, personality, and thought processes! You can find our full statement on the use of AI to complete applications on our careers website.

If you would like to have an informal conversation about the role before applying, or require any accessibility support to apply, our friendly recruitment team is ready and waiting to help. Call them on 0118 3540345 or drop an email to [email protected].

Safer recruitment:

Guide Dogs follow Safer Recruitment practices to ensure we are safeguarding the vulnerable people we work with. As part of this, we require a full work history with any gaps accounted for & a minimum of 2 professional referee details fully covering the past 5 years. If you are applying for a disclosure role, please note that you will be required to undergo an enhanced DBS check and sign up to the DBS update service.

At Guide Dogs, we believe in fair and equitable hiring practices. A criminal record will not automatically disqualify an applicant from consideration for a position. Each case will be evaluated individually. We encourage all candidates to disclose relevant information, and we assure you that it will be handled confidentially and fairly.