Full Time or Part Time / 40 or 20 Hours Per Week / Permanent
Play a key role in providing reading resources to children and their families across the city.
Our Children’s Bookbus is a mobile library, bringing books for children, from babies to the end of primary school, to the heart of Leicester’s communities. The BookBus plays a vital role in our reading strategy for children and supports important partnerships with schools, early years setting and a variety of other agencies.
Join us to support delivery of library services to children 0-11 years old at ‘street stop’ locations around the city and raise the profile of library services by driving the BookBus to a variety of festivals and events. This post offers a unique combination of driving and frontline public services, and we can promise you that no two days will be the same.
We would consider offering this post on a full-time basis, working 40 hours per week. Or a job share for two 20 hour posts. This can be discussed at the interview.
What you’ll be doing:
At the start of your shift, you’ll collect the BookBus from the garage and carry out vehicle checks to ensure it is safe and ready to take out. Some remedial cleaning and tidying may be required, and for festivals and events, you may need to load equipment onto the vehicle. You’ll then drive the vehicle to the agreed destination. Destinations may include the children’s library team base to restock with books, the first stop in a series street stops on one of our established routes, or to an event site. In the case of our street stops, you’ll follow an established timetable of stops and at the end, return the vehicle to the garage. For festivals and events, you’ll drive to the event site and set up the vehicle and the outside area around it. This might include setting up the awning and erecting a gazebo. In all cases you’ll support the library assistant in ushering members of the public safely on and off the BookBus.
Your tasks will include managing BookBus library stock at our children and young peoples team base, processing new books and adding them to stock, re-stocking the BookBus, removing and deleting old and damaged stock. You will also accompany the BookBus on its routes and serving members of the public at the BookBus library counter, issuing, and discharging books and joining new members.
What you’ll need
You’ll have experience of working with the public in a customer facing role. You will be passionate about promoting books and reading to children and their families and have an understanding of why that is important. With excellent communication skills, you’ll welcome them onboard the BookBus and encourage family engagement with both BookBus itself but also the whole range of library services in the city. Your IT skills, with training provided, will be sufficient to maintain library records on our Library management system and to keep other library records as required. You will have a positive attitude to problem solving and will be able to work effectively as part of a team.
You’ll be competent and experienced driver with a clean C1 licence category, you’ll have or be able to complete 35 hours of periodic training to acquire, a Driver Certificate of Professional Competence (CPC) card. Confident in speaking with members of the public of all ages and backgrounds, you’ll demonstrate a problem-solving approach in assisting them to get the best out of their library service. Punctual and reliable, you’ll be dedicated to providing good customer service in a safe, secure and friendly environment.
What we can offer you
As well as the satisfaction of helping to improve thousands of lives across Leicester, you can look forward to a work environment that encourages a healthy work/life balance. You’ll enjoy generous annual leave, membership of the Local Government Pension Scheme and the option of flexible working. We’ll also give you the chance to develop your skills and expertise with a variety of training and development opportunities. In addition, you can choose from several flexible benefits, including discounts on city buses and trains. For an illustrative value of your benefits package, take a look at our benefits calculator.
Join us
We’re committed to recruiting a diverse and highly-talented workforce as we continue to build a council that is fitting and representative of our great city. That’s why we’ve designed our recruitment process to put you at your ease, make you feel welcome and bring the best out of you. We’ll do all we can to make our recruitment process as fair as possible. To help you with your application, take a look at the ‘our approach to recruitment’ page.
For a chat about this post, please feel free to contact Matthew Vaughan via email to [email protected] or call 0116 4543548
Shortlisted applicants will be offered an interview and if successful, will be required to complete a driver competence assessment (carried out by an external provider)
Interviews / Assessments will take place on week commencing 15th of June
