Career Change and Rehoming Specialist (Community)

Travel will be required to support volunteer training, assessment of dogs, carry out in-person visits to volunteers and applicant homes, and build a strong network of volunteers across the area.

The Career Change and Rehoming Specialists (Community)  will be working with dogs who have been withdrawn for health reason and or minor behavioural complexities and will need to utilise their knowledge of health conditions, as well as using their skills in dog behaviour and volunteer and customer experience to identify the right role for each dog. Whether that’s a career change internally supporting our Buddy Dog services or into a different Assistance Dog role, or matching them with a new owner as a much-loved pet. They will also support those ongoing non guiding partnerships and our dogs with more complex health conditions to live healthily, bringing comfort, companionship and loyalty until the end. They work closely in the community, collaborating with volunteers, vets and health teams and other alternative working career providers to ensure our investment within our dogs is maximised to change as many lives as possible.

Key Responsibilities

Caseload Management (Dogs and Customers)

• Manage all aspects of the dog and customer journey for career change and rehoming.
• Monitor and maximize the psychological, physical and emotional wellbeing of dogs within the career change and rehoming caseload.
• Collaborate with internal teams and volunteers to ensure correct career change and rehoming criteria.

• Maintain an up-to-date knowledge of dogs available for rehoming, working across the career change and rehoming team to support dogs and Career Change and Rehoming Specialists from other regions to minimise the time it takes to rehome every dog.

• Communicate with stakeholders about the career change and homing process.
• Identify dogs suitable for alternative careers outside of Guide Dogs.
• Support the development and maintenance of the dog's health and behaviour.

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.