About Us
The Library Service promotes the benefits of reading for pleasure, learning, health, and wellbeing, through events and activities. We provide a welcoming environment for all, encouraging families to join in our regular activities, supporting people accessing digital services, offering regular activities for adults to help combat loneliness and isolation and helping people in need find their way to other local services that can help them.
We offer a smart training package so you can be part of our work from the very first day. And we’re invested in our staff, with opportunities for the right people to progress to supervisory and management roles, or to join one of our specialist librarian teams, organising events and outreach work.
For more information about working in one of our West Sussex Libraries, watch this short video: library recruitment animation video and why not explore our West Sussex Libraries website?
About The Job
Are you looking for a role where you are not always sat behind a desk?
Do you love new books?
Do you have great organisational skills?
If so, working in our Library Support Team could be just the role for you!
Salary: £20,812 - £21,189 per annum (pro rata for part time) £10.79 to £10.98 per hour
Working Pattern: Part Time (15 to 30 hours per week)
Location: Library Headquarters, Power Place, 23 Terminus Road, Chichester, PO19 8UJ
Interview date: 20 April 2023
We’re looking for a well-motivated person, with a keen attention to detail, and good digital and administrative skills, to join a small but active team, based at our library headquarters, that supports the work of all our branches.
And you won’t just be sitting behind a desk, you’ll be supporting our vital van delivery system, sorting, and packing stock and other items for onward delivery to libraries. It’s an active role; carrying books, pushing trolleys, lifting boxes, and loading and unloading library vehicles.
The team is vital in ensuring the effective delivery of library services to communities across West Sussex. The job involves ordering and processing new stock for both public and school library services, so every day you’ll be handling new books and getting them ready for our library customers to borrow.
We’re looking for a friendly and enthusiastic person, who enjoys talking to customers, as you’ll be dealing with requests from individual customers and Reading Groups, as well as providing support for libraries, by telephone and email, and visiting branches to offer front-line support. And you will be a keen team player, able to work alongside partners and other services providing excellent customer service.
Working Pattern:
We are looking for candidates who can work between 2 and 4 days per week, ideally including a Monday or a Tuesday. 8:30am-4:30pm (7.5 hours per day), Monday-Friday
No candidate will meet every single desired qualification. If your experience looks a little different from what we've identified and you think you can bring value to the role, we'd love to learn more about you!
Experience and Skills
Key Skills:
- Good communication and customer service skills to interact effectively with the general public and experience of providing a service giving basic advice and guidance.
- Experience of team working and the ability to work as part of a team completing shared tasks, including working alongside volunteers, and demonstrating an appreciation of their role.
- Good interpersonal skills with the ability to confidently work with children, families, and customers of all ages e.g. leading Baby Rhyme Time and reading to groups of young children during story time sessions
- Ability to quickly respond to changes in ways of working and to promote new library initiatives, e.g. helping customers access digital services.
- Ability to demonstrate initiative and judgement whilst working within library practices and procedures e.g. resolve basic customer problems when possible and identifying when to refer to a senior colleague.
Qualifications and/or experience:
- 4 GCSEs with A-C passes including Maths and English or equivalent qualification/experience.
- Digital expertise and experience, particularly with basic Office applications.
Rewards and Benefits
Why choose us as your next employer? We care about wellbeing, allowing time for celebrating our teams efforts, and developing our team to be the best they can be. Alongside this, we also offer the below benefits.
- An excellent local government pension scheme
- Generous holiday entitlement of 24 days (plus opportunity to buy additional leave)
- A range of flexible working options, depending on your job role
- Maternity, paternity, dependency and adoption leave
- Volunteering opportunities
- Training and development opportunities, including coaching, mentoring and apprenticeships
- A range of discounts giving our staff access to hundreds of offers; groceries, travel, cinema tickets, days out, leisure activities, high street retailers and the opportunity to save over £1,000 a year through our West Sussex Choices benefits platform (see our Staff discounts pageif you are a business looking to offer a discount)
- Health and wellbeing benefits including access to our Employee Assistance Programme, Mental Health First Aiders, Wellbeing Hub and Voluntary Health Cash Plans
For a full list this can be found at our Rewards and Benefits page.
Further Information
The reference number for this role isCPP00718.
For an informal conversation or for further information regarding the role, please contact Roger Fredricks atroger.fredricks@westsussex.gov.uk
For an informal conversation regarding the application process, please contact Rosa Siracusa (Resourcing Advisor) at Rosa.Siracusa@westsussex.gov.uk
For issues or queries regarding your application please contact hrrecruitment@westsussex.gov.uk.
To apply, upload your CV and complete the application explaining the skills and experience you can bring to the role ensuring that any gaps in employment are covered in your CV. Please ensure you have saved the job description attached to the main advert on our website as, once the job has closed, you may not have the opportunity to download again.
We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people, and vulnerable adults. This post is subject to satisfactory references and health check.
West Sussex County Council is an equal opportunities employer committed to promoting an environment that is inclusive and free from all forms of unlawful or unfair discrimination and values the diversity of its people. We actively welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and take every possible step to ensure that no individual will be disadvantaged.
For information regarding your eligibility to apply for this role under our Disability or Veteran’s Guaranteed Interview Scheme, this can be found on our application helppage.
Note for Recruitment Agencies: We prefer to hire people directly, but we do have a supplier list for when we need a helping hand. We'll be in touch directly if we need you!
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Job Reference: CPP00718