Job: Operations and/or Community Manager

Full-time; Blackpool, UK. To start mid-late September.

We are looking for dynamic, adaptable, highly organised and conscientious people with high agency, to immediately take on the challenge of maintaining our operations and nurturing the community at CEEALAR (affectionately called the EA Hotel). We are hiring for both operations and community management roles, but are happy to adapt specific responsibilities based on personal fit.

We are a charity focused on providing a physical location to support people developing high impact careers through self-directed education and research. We provide individuals with accommodation and food, along with a community of their peers, while they upskill towards professional roles or further study programmes. Examples of roles our beneficiaries aim for include existential risk research, EA community building, charity entrepreneurship, and many more. We have a constantly growing community of alumni and look to add more diversity to the projects we host.

What you’ll do

This is a very self-directed role. The Trustees and Executive Director will be at your disposal for advice and any support we can provide, but they all live elsewhere – so you’ll need a high level of autonomous dedication to the continuing success and development of the project.

You will ideally thrive in situations where you have many competing priorities on your time – ‘herd of cats’ doesn’t begin to describe a hotel full of effective altruists!

Hours fluctuate – and part of your responsibility will be making sure you don’t overwork! – but this is a full-time role with tasks that need doing daily. 

Operations manager:

In this role, you will be focusing on building maintenance management and back end digital systems, with the following responsibilities:

• Ensuring the hotel is a welcoming, safe and comfortable environment; 
• Monitoring and recording building maintenance;
• Calling and overseeing contractors and inspecting completed jobs for repairs and improvements (or doing them yourself when possible);
• Overseeing safety systems (fire safety, first aid procedures, etc.) and ensuring adherence to all regulations;
• Team building and presenting the place to new guests;
• Updating and managing the CEEALAR website and back end digital systems;
• Ordering and Bookkeeping.

Community Manager:

In this role, you will be focusing on developing, nurturing, and feeding our community, with the following responsibilities.

• Vegan cooking (and its outsourcing to volunteers or other paid staff);
• Answering email enquiries;
• Coordinating with Trustees and Advisors to vet applicants;
• Interviewing applicants via video call;
• Grantee onboarding;
• Maintain community morale at a high level, and resolve conflict if it arises;
• Organise and host regular group meetings (e.g. a weekly Friday night meeting
  to discuss logistics, talks, events and any other business), in coordination with
  the Operations Manager;
• Admin the CEEALAR Discord server;
• Public communication (e.g. keeping the website up to date, posting updates to social media and the EA Forum).

Both:

• Working with the other managers to ensure that all tasks have someone taking responsibility for them, and none fall between the cracks;
• Covering holidays for other staff (food management, email/mail management), and ensuring your own holidays are covered;
• Ad hoc tasks as required (can be outsourced). This is an unusual role with a lot of facets, so prioritising among and figuring out how to do many tasks that aren’t on this list will be a big part of it.

We understand that moving to Blackpool can be a big change, but our centre is a diverse and lively place focused on both individual growth and solving pressing global problems. You can take a peek at your future coworkers and their projects, and find out more about CEEALAR, at www.ceealar.org. 

Requirements

This position does not require any specific experience or qualifications, but knowing how to get things done is a must! Prior experience with any of the following would be a nonessential bonus: 

• an operations related role in a start-up;
• business administration; 
• hospitality;
• catering;
• the Effective Altruism movement; 
• productivity technologies (not necessarily liking any particular ones – just having opinions);
• building maintenance/renovation/DIY;
• Community management. 

The ideal candidate will be service-oriented and excited to help forward the missions of our grantees. You’ll be living and working with the people in the hotel, so while you needn’t be a social butterfly (and should feel encouraged to take alone time and set boundaries when you need them), you should feel comfortable with regular social interactions.

Compensation and benefits

You will benefit from free vegan food and accommodation* (a room with an en-suite bathroom), and earn a starting salary of £35,000 – £44,300 per year (full-time, 40 hours a week; 5.6 weeks paid holiday per year), depending on experience, to scale upward with the expansion of the project. We also offer a budget of £1000 every 6 months for equipment and training for staff. 

Application process

Our application process is quick:

1. You fill in this short form. Deadline 13th September (end of the day in your own timezone). (By 15th September you will receive an answer as to whether you are invited to interview);
2. Interview with our team via video call (we estimate that it will then take 1 week to confirm whether you’ve been selected or not – we plan to make the hire by the end of September).
3. A 3-month paid work trial / probationary period on site.

*worth £7,000+/year.