Senior Consultant – Service Design

The opportunity

We’re one of the biggest and most mature Service Design functions in the world, the elder statesperson of Service Design if you will. We’ve been around for 17 years, and been part of EY for the last four.

The work we do is big. Big in scale, big in ambition, big in impact – and big projects get taken seriously. We don’t create outputs for the sake of it. We don’t create work that sits in draws, never to be revisited. We create work that is driven to implementation.

The work we do is varied. We work across sectors (from government, healthcare to financial services and FMGC) and tackle a huge variety of problems in a huge variety of ways. One week you could be interviewing customers in their homes to understand how they make sense of their money, the next month you could be leading a workshop in Whitehall to articulate how a government department can embed innovation in their organisation.

We take our practitioners seriously and you will be given the freedom and support to develop your craft, your thinking, your work and your career in a way that suits you and delivers for the practice and your clients.

The role

We are looking for a Senior Service Designer to join the Service Design Practice at EY Seren.

This role is open to those with demonstrable experience of working as a service designer within industry. You will have a portfolio of projects that you can talk through and demonstrate how you have applied service design to business or organisational challenges either in house or within a consulting role.

There are a couple of things that we ask of everybody.

You will be endlessly inquisitive, and ruthlessly user focused and able to use a combination of logic, empathy, rigour and storytelling to articulate a customer or business problem before working creatively and technically to articulate a service that solves it.

You will be a natural collaborator. Ideas breed ideas, and so we work multi disciplinary teams and embed clients in our process. We work in the open, we share our thinking early and we build on each other’s contribution.

You will be visual. We work generatively. We create things to clarify thinking, align understanding and move towards a solution that works.

You will be iterative. No-one gets it right first time. We don’t expect to.

You will be ambitious yet realistic in your solutions. Our work sits in the sweet spot between desirable, viable, feasible and allowable. Getting it there is a big part of what we do.

You will be a doer AND a thinker, and know when to switch from one to the other and how to create time and space for both.

You will navigate complexity. People, organisations, technology, policies, regulations. Designing services puts you at the centre of complexity. We need to make sense of it all quickly, and flex and adapt to move through it effectively.

You’ll be fascinated by service in all it’s forms with a desire to deliver great solutions in the teams we put together for clients, to help them improve existing services, invent new ones, and ultimately grow businesses.

You will be competent in service design methods, and know how to shepherd clients through a service design process, creating good work and advocates for EY Seren as you go.

You will be a self starter and have an explorative mindset, creating new perspectives and identifying the spaces you can be impactful for both EY Seren and it’s clients.

Your key responsibilities

• Delivery of high-quality design assets that articulate customer insights, journeys and experiences
• Demonstrate consistent commitment to EY Seren and our professional standards, and enhance our brand with clients and other stakeholders
• Supervise project work prepared by junior consultants, providing feedback and guidance on quality outputs
• Focus team members on delivering quality and encourage them to ask critical questions and share their opinions, ideas and concerns openly
• Convey complex information by using compelling and visual methods and storytelling that is engaging for audiences
• Identify and promote opportunities for process improvements, experiment with ideas and review outcomes to deliver the best possible solutions
• Lead the development and delivery of client and internal communications (written, spoken or visual)
• Craft ideation requirements / briefs and work with the team to generate ideas that meet the brief
• Co-lead and support running and facilitation of workshops
• Apply an understanding of client needs to identify critical outcomes, barriers to success and changes in expectations or scope

Skills and attributes

• Build positive relationships with clients with integrity and authenticity; understanding the client’s perspective and organizational culture
• Deliver and promote exceptional service on engagements: apply an understanding of client needs to identify critical outcomes, barriers to success, and changes in expectations or scope
• Maintain open and proactive communication and build credible relationships with the client by demonstrating technical skills and knowledge
• Communicate with confidence, integrity and authenticity to build strong and positive relationships with clients, colleagues and project teams
• Demonstrate self-awareness when dealing with others and adapt own approach based on differences in individual styles and backgrounds
• Able to coach team members and undertake knowledge share with team

To qualify for the role you must

• Be able to describe EY Seren capabilities and commitments accurately when discussing possible business opportunities with external contacts
• Show that you have consistently produced service design work of high quality that is accurate, complete and compelling
• Demonstrate ability to lead a small (<3 designers) team and/or manage budgets (<£100k) effectively with some oversight
• Be able to create presentations that are clear and impactful, translating EY Seren’s services into meaningful value propositions for clients
• Show how you have contributed to a positive design team environment

We offer a competitive remuneration package where you’ll be rewarded for your individual and team performance. Our comprehensive Total Rewards package includes support for flexible working and career development, and with FlexEY you can select benefits that suit your needs, covering holidays, health and well-being, insurance, savings and a wide range of discounts, offers and promotions. Plus, we offer:

• Support, coaching and feedback from some of the most engaging colleagues around
• Opportunities to develop new skills and progress your career
• The freedom and flexibility to handle your role in a way that’s right for you