View Vacancy - HK - Consular Assistant

The British Government is an inclusive and diversity-friendly employer.  We value difference, promote equality and challenge discrimination, enhancing our organisational capability. We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds. We do not discriminate on the basis of disability, race, colour, ethnicity, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, age, veteran status or other category protected by law. We promote family-friendly flexible working opportunities, where operational and security needs allow.
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Consular Roles)
Consular

Main purpose of job:

Frontline assistance to British nationals in Hong Kong and Macao. Assistance cases can include providing advice on a variety of issues, hospitalisations, detention (including prison visits) or the death of British nationals, issues surrounding mental health problems or victims of crime/sexual assault and issuing Emergency Travel Documents (ETD) and notarial work. The job involves managing sensitive and sometimes distressing cases, including working with bereaved families and dealing with sick and injured customers. This will often involve managing our customers’ expectations about the service that we can provide and engaging with UK and Hong Kong/Macao government departments, in particular local police, Immigration and Correctional Services Department. The role holder will also be expected to support our consular outreach strategy by building strong ties with local partners, UK community groups and the authorities. The jobholder is also expected to travel within consular region for cases, sometimes at short notice. Regional travel - especially for training and an annual visit to offer additional supportto British Nationals (Overseas) detained elsewhere in Asia - is also required. On rare occasions, there is a requirement to work late and at the weekends.

The majority of our customers are British nationals, but many of these will be native Cantonese speakers (as we provide ETDs and notarial services for British Nationals (Overseas)). A high-degree of fluency in both English and Cantonese (written and spoken) are essential. There is also a requirement to attend and pass Consular training for one week in London after three months in the job. The successful candidate will also prepare the paperwork for the Notarial services that we currently provide. This includes affirmations, declarations, and oaths.

The jobholder is also expected to use a variety of IT systems in their daily work and should be competent with Microsoft applications.

Roles and responsibilities / what will the jobholder be expected to achieve?:

Provide consular assistance to British nationals in Hong Kong consular district. This will include: answering customer queries via the Hong Kong consular mail inbox, phone, mail and at the counter. Cases will include:

  • Deaths, detentions and arrests, rape and sexual assault,mental health problems and hospitalisations. This work will include some liaison with Hong Kong and Macao authorities.
  • Issuing Emergency Travel Documents (we are one of the highest volume ETD issuing posts worldwide)
  • Support the delivery of the team’s goals in the Country Business Plan to support the most vulnerable British Nationals through outreach work
  • Consular office admin tasks – administering fees, responsibility for the ETD working stock, MI returns
  • Deliver notarial services
  • Customer service
  • Telephone and written skills
  • I.T skills
  • English speaking environment 
  • Excellent English (spoken and written)
  • Good Cantonese (spoken and written)
  • spoken Mandarin
3 December 2017
Administrative Officer (AO)
Full-time, Permanent
41
Asia Pacific
Hong Kong SAR
Hong Kong SAR
British Consulate General
1
HKD
17,264
15 January 2018

There will be a compulsory consular training course in London which will need to be completed. During this time there will be numerous e-learning course which will also need to be completed and passed. Going forward, there will be e-learning which will need to be completed again as policies change or new ones arise periodically.     

Flexible working possible subject to business needs

 All applications must be received before 23:55 on 03 December 2017.

Incomplete application forms will not be taken into consideration, so please ensure you provide the information requested. We regret to advise that we will only be contacting short-listed candidates. Applicants called for an interview will be assessed on the core competencies listed above.

The successful candidate should be able to start as soon as possible.

Please be aware that you will only be able to apply to vacancies for Country Based Staff roles with the British Government through this official tal.net site (operated by Oleeo). Jobs may be advertised on third party websites, however our adverts will always link back to the official tal.net site. If you complete and send an application through any other site, we will not receive it.

This opportunity is closed to applications.