View Vacancy - Vice Consul B3 ES, Barcelona (ESP306)

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

The British Consulate in Barcelona is looking for a Vice-Consul to join their dynamic, and experienced consular team and ensure a high quality, professional and efficient consular service to visiting and resident British nationals in Barcelona.

With a customer base of over 300,000 British residents and over 15 million British tourists each year, Spain is the FCO’s busiest and highest profile consular operations.

As Vice Consul you will provide support to vulnerable British nationals by leading a motivated team of Consular Officers who deliver high quality modern services to the British public. You’ll be expected to lead on high profile and complex cases, which will may mean dealing with grieving families, the death British nationals in difficult circumstances or those who have been detained for a range of offences. You may be called upon to provide support to victims of crime and their families, or respond as part of a team to a crisis or natural disaster, which could be outside of normal working hours. You’ll receive training and support to do this as you follow written guidance and examples of best practice. You’ll need good written and verbal communication skills in order to brief and advise the Consul-General and other senior colleagues as cases progress. You’ll also be expected to be one of our external faces, leading on local influencing in Catalonia, Andorra and Aragon. You’ll do this by building and maintaining great relationships with external stakeholders such as local authorities, the travel and tourism industry, local media, and the British community. You’ll need the language skills to handle delicate issues diplomatically in English, Spanish and desirably, Catalan.

 

Main Duties / Responsibilities

Assistance and day to day management

  • To ensure consular officers handle assistance cases in accordance with guidance, maintaining an overview of live cases, and providing support and advice, where necessary. To lead on high profile and complex cases, briefing and advising the Consular Regional Operations Manager (CROM) and other senior colleagues as appropriate.

Policy

  • To keep abreast of evolving consular policy, promoting its implementation and ensuring consular team is aware of key changes and how they relate to Spain /Europe South Network (ESN). To contribute as a team to delivering on ESN work streams and the Country Business Plan (CBP). To ensure best practice is applied at post through membership of ESN Vice Consul Working Group. To keep in view changes to local law, considering how these might affect resident and visiting British nationals.
  • To lead on the implementation of change management projects aimed at providing more efficient, effective and better quality services to customers in particular in the BalearicsExternal Stakeholder Management
  • To develop and nurture a strong network of mutually beneficial relationships with local authorities, travel and tourist industry, local media, and British community groups, particularly the NGO sector, as relevant.

Influencing

  • To support the implementation of the influencing plan in the region and to lead on projects as and when necessary.

Line Management

  • Performance management of the Barcelona consular team, ensuring Consular officers have challenging objectives and an individual development plan.

Crisis

  • To maintain and test local crisis plans as part of a mission-wide effort, working with emergency service agencies in the North East Spain Consular District. To support CROM/Consular Regional Director (CRD) in responding to a crisis in the district or in wider Spain/ESN. To put in place contingencies for large-scale events likely to attract significant numbers of British visitors.

Corporate management

  • Overall responsibility for the management of the office: implementation of Health & Safety regulations, Budget profiling and monitoring, Estates issues, Security issues, Fire Safety Plan, Accounts, ETD bulk custodian, back office and weeding programme.
  • Customer service experience, preferably gained in Consular (or similar social/welfare) background.
  • Experience of working in an international or governmental organisation.
  • Leadership, staff and officer management experience.
  • Excellent knowledge of Spain and the issues affecting British nationals resident or visiting the country.
  • Experience in working with and lobbying Spanish organizations and official bodies at a central, regional and local level.
  • Performance management, inter-personal, communication and team working skills.
  • Excellent organizational skills and a proactive approach.
  • Resilience, with ability to work unsupervised and innovate – someone who is results driven.
  • Self starter with strong time management skills - able to work to deadlines and targets and manage a sometimes heavy workload.
  • Ability to analyse trends and productivity from statistical/management information.
  • Excellent written and oral communication skills – Fluency in both English and Spanish (C2 level).
  • IT skills (Outlook, PowerPoint, Word and Excel.
  • Driving license.

  • Experience of working in an international or governmental organisation.
  • Public sector experience considered useful.
31 July 2017
Executive Officer (EO)
Full-time, Permanent
37.5
Europe, Eastern Europe & Central Asia
Spain
Barcelona
British Consulate
1
EUR
40,713.00
1 September 2017

This is a permanent full-time contract of 37.5 working hours per week.

Due to the nature of the work, flexibility on start and finish times as well as to work at weekends will sometimes be required together with availability to travel.

The annual salary is €40,713.00, at a locally engaged B3 level.

The successful candidate will be subject to a confirmation of a background check and security clearance.

The successful candidate will be enrolled in the Spanish Social Security Scheme and will therefore not be entitled to any gratuity from the Embassy/Consulate based on gross annual salary.

Regarding taxation, the Consulate in Barcelona is part of the British Mission in Spain, and as such supervised by the British Embassy. The Embassy is a Diplomatic Mission with tax exempt status and does not collect taxes for other States.

Employees are fully responsible for payment of Spanish income tax at the legally required rate. Staff recruited locally by the British Embassy in Spain are subject to terms and conditions of service according to local Spanish employment law.

Please be advised that Consular positions at the FCO entail dealing with casework in situations that may involve death, detention, rape, assault, post-mortems, prison visits and highly distressed customers.

Candidates should therefore have a high level of resilience to trauma.

All applicants should have the right to live and work in Spain. The British Embassy does not sponsor work permits.

Staff recruited locally by the British Embassy in Spain are subject to terms and conditions of service according to local Spanish employment law.

Please note that the deadline for applications is 23:55 of the day mentioned in the above field “Application deadline”.

We kindly advise you to allow enough time to complete and submit your full application.

Only applications completed and submitted before the closing of the deadline will be considered.

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.