Advisory Manager at Mercy Corps

The Position

This newly created position will establish and maintain a scalable management system capable of ensuring the smooth running of these advisory services.  It entails collaborating closely with the Director of Advisory, TSU Director for Energy Access, and other senior management staff to ensure that the efficient deployment of specialist across programs.  The manager will establish systems to ensure each request for technical services is assigned in a timely manner to an available specialist with the corresponding skills. This requires a nuanced understanding of the Scope of Work of the assignment and its audience, the skills required, the availability of technical resources and a good grasp of the level of effort required.  The systems established will monitor the timely delivery of each assignment as well as maintain a database of each assignment. 

Essential Responsibilities

INFORMATION SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT

• Create and update a comprehensive database, inclusive of CVs, daily rate, geographical coverage, languages spoken, specific skills and sectorial knowledge
• Establish and implement a system to maintain the roster updated, inclusive of periodical calls to consultants to assess their availability
• Establish and maintain a scalable digital workflow assignment system
• Create and maintain comprehensive project documentation.
• Track task delivery, specifically to analyze the successful completion of short and long-term goals.
• Develop spreadsheets, diagrams, and process maps to document needs.
• Catalogue and store assignments by thematic specialization allowing for efficient retrieval

 ADVISORY MANAGEMENT

• Assist in the definition of project scope and objectives, involving all relevant internal stakeholders and ensuring technical feasibility.
• Collaborate to develop task delivery plans to be shared with clients as well as other staff members.
• Coordinate between internal resources and clients for the timely execution of multiple assignments.

INTERNAL

• Identify internal resources to assign to a particular task with appropriate skill and timely availability.
• Ensure resource availability and allocation.
• Manage changes to the project scope, assignment schedule using appropriate verification systems.
• Meet time management budgets and adjust delivery constraints.  
• Work closely with Senior Management, including the Business Development team, to plan staff and consultant availability.
• In collaboration with Director of Advisory and/or TSU Director Energy Access, identify staff and consultant capacity building and skills improvement requirements to ensure ability to deliver advisory tasks to a high and uniform standard (e.g. delivery of presentations and meeting / workshop facilitation).
• Report and escalate to management as needed.
• Perform other related duties as assigned.

Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders

Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standards guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.

Minimum Qualification & Transferable Skills

Required:

• 4 years professional experience
• Excellent data management and database skills. Proven experience in setting up, managing and integrating project management software  into collaborative workflows required (e.g Asana or Jira software or any other system enabling Gantt chart-type functions as well as effective team communication, workflow and shared document storage and retrieval). 
• Excellent organizational skills including attention to detail and multitasking skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Project Management, process improvement and quantitative / analytical skills
• Fluent in English, French fluency is an asset

Desired:

• Experience of working in a commercial consulting setting is highly desirable