Career Center Consultant

Consultant Title: Career Center Consultant

Period of Performance: August 26, 2024 – April 25, 2025, with possible extension

Level of Effort: 100 days

Reports to: Chief of Party

Location: Manila, Philippines

Applicant Type: Philippine nationals

About the Organization

RTI International / Research Triangle Institute (RTI) is both a global research institute and a leading international development organization. We combine these powerful capabilities with those of our partners to co-create smart, shared solutions for a more prosperous, equitable, and resilient world. Based in North Carolina, USA, RTI is one of USAID’s top implementing partners. A commitment to making meaningful change energizes our 6,000 staff who deliver results across eight international development sectors and in more than 80 countries. RTI’s Sustainable Growth & Resilience (SG&R) technical unit within the International Development Group brings together RTI experts and capabilities across food security, agriculture, energy, environment, water, governance, and economic opportunity. SG&R will leverage RTI’s experience designing and delivering multisectoral programming and technical solutions to respond to climate change, build resilience, and promote economic growth around the world.

The RTI Center for Governance promotes strong, stable societies by empowering people and strengthening institutions. Building on RTI’s decades-long legacy of leading governance projects around the world, the Center works to increase transparency and accountability, mitigate corruption, and help government actors to better deliver on the needs of citizens. Boasting a global reach, the RTI Center for Governance includes partners, expertise, and learning from major initiatives spanning sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. The Center leverages RTI’s longstanding local partnerships to bring together governments, civil society, the private sector, and communities to define problems and jointly create sustainable solutions in countries around the world.

Project Description

USAID’s U.S.-Philippines Partnership for Skills, Innovation, and Lifelong Learning (UPSKILL) Program aims to strengthen the Philippine higher education system to support broad-based and inclusive growth. UPSKILL does this by strengthening the innovation capacities and workforce development functions of Philippine higher education institutions (HEIs) through faculty development, curriculum improvements, and engagement with industry and international partners, as well as overall improvements in HEI management and administration. UPSKILL also supports an enabling regulatory and policy environment to improve governance in the sector and provide convergence platforms for stakeholders to work together in achieving shared development goals.

Assignment Description

RTI International (RTI) is hiring a short-term Career Center Consultant for USAID’s UPSKILL Program. The Consultant shall support in the development of Career Centers (CC) in multiple Philippine HEIs by providing capacity-building services such as direct training and mentoring activities. The Consultant will likewise lead desk research concurrent to the CC initiatives that include but are not limited to survey design and implementation, university-industry mapping analysis, and short-term research to guide training activities and policy recommendations.

Responsibilities

The Consultant is expected to perform the following tasks:

• Craft a training program design that will capacitate CC personnel in higher education institutions and provide other competency-building opportunities towards improved student career services.
• Deliver training and development programs for HEI staff, faculty, and officials that enhance student career services and graduate tracing.
• Provide inputs and mentorship to HEIs on the organizational structures needed for a sustainable and institutionalized office or center for student career services.
• Manage consultation meetings with higher education institutions, industries, and key stakeholders that support existing collaborative mechanisms for student career development.
• Conduct desk research studies such as surveys and mapping analyses that will serve as basis for program design, grants plans, and policy recommendation.
• Ensure best practices and lessons learned are captured and disseminated through written reports and presentations as required.

Expected Deliverables:

• Inception report and training design
• Consultation meeting reports
• Delivery of an agreed-upon CC development program, including the conduct of workshops, lectures, and other activities of the program.
• Output reports from training sessions conducted
• Terminal report on overall capacity building activities conducted along with recommendations
• Presentation of research study results to UPSKILL

Qualifications

• Minimum educational and professional achievement is a bachelor’s degree holder with at least 7 years of relevant experience, or a master’s degree holder with 5 years of relevant experience.
• Demonstrated experience in the management of a student career center or related office in a higher education institution.
• Expertise in the planning, designing, and implementation of capacity-building activities for career center development in higher education institutions is a preference.
• Demonstrated ability to work with industries, government agencies, multi-agency councils, and academic associations.
• Demonstrated ability to build and sustain professional working relationships with higher education officials and high-level counterparts within the complex operating environments of higher education policy and institutional change management.
• Experience working with USAID-funded projects is preferred.
• Excellent analytical, interpersonal, and facilitation skills.
• High proficiency in English is required.
• Ability to conduct trainings throughout the Philippines during most days of the week.
• This position is exclusively for Philippine applicants.

Application Instructions

If interested, please follow the link to the RTI portal. Applicants are encouraged to apply as soon as possible as interviews will be conducted on a rolling basis. Due to the volume of applications that we receive and the urgency to fill positions, only shortlisted applicants will receive notifications on next steps. The application deadline is on August 16, 2024.

EEO & Pay Equity Statements

As a global employer of choice, RTI is committed to equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging in the workplace and the communities and markets where we serve our mission. We value diversity of thought, culture, background and perspective and welcome applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, creed, citizenship status, disability, protected veteran status, or any other classification protected by applicable discrimination laws or RTI policy.

We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Further information is available here.