Consultant
Position name & overview:
This new consulting position straddles two exciting worlds at EdOps: the new markets finance team, headed by our Chief Growth Officer, and the consulting team, led by the Director of Consulting. Our new markets finance team’s focus is on implementing new client engagements in developing markets with quality and then gradually releasing responsibility for those engagements to our broader finance team. The consulting team executes on a variety of shorter-term, project-based work that often spans multiple service lines.
Primarily, this position will be responsible for the initial implementation of our annual outsourced finance scope of work in new markets and supporting project-based consulting work for clients. This role is a great fit for someone looking to leverage their strategic problem solving, project management, and process optimization skills on behalf of schools.
Reports to the Director of Consulting and Chief Growth Officer. Flexible location and start date.
Who we are:
EdOps is Washington, DC-based B-Corp focused on minimizing the financial, operational, and compliance demands of running a school and supporting education leaders with data-driven insights to improve student outcomes. Simply put, we make it easier for school leaders to increase student achievement. Our growing team of 80+ professionals work with over 90 schools and school networks nationwide. We are serious about being the best possible partners to schools, and it shows in our 99% annual client retention rate and rapid growth rate. We work hard at being a rewarding, enjoyable workplace where staff can grow professionally and make an impact, and we were recognized as a Washington Post Top Workplace 2020. We are looking for education focused, data loving, collaborative people to join our team.
What you will do:
- Project Management (consulting initially; down the line, potentially new markets as well): Serve as project manager for consulting projects. Manage the development of work plans and timelines, track interdependencies, coordinate meetings, and help us to remain a learning organization by ensuring our work improves in quality and efficiency as we learn to do it better over time.
- Scope Implementation (new markets): Serve as a first-to-the-beach experienced financial resource who can successfully execute on the complexity of a new client engagement, organize and document client financial and operational requirements, and gradually release responsibility for executing on those requirements to a general team member over time.
- Client Process Improvement and Counseling (new markets): Related to the above, work with new clients to understand their needs and match those to EdOps’s approach and best practices. Craft recommendations for client process changes where appropriate. Convey the value of these recommendations to the client, and provide client counseling and support during implementation.
- Consulting (consulting, of course): Collaborate with EdOps colleagues and clients to develop strategies, solutions and tools to help schools solve tangible and immediate problems. As with all consulting, this work could take on many forms: conducting external research, interviewing clients and other external stakeholders, conducting qualitative and quantitative analyses, building financial models, modeling processes and recommending improvements, and, always, summarizing problems, recommendations & results in Powerpoint or memo format.
What you will accomplish:
- By Year 1 you will:
- Independently project manage numerous consulting projects
- Successfully execute on our standard finance scope of work for one standing client. This is meant to help you develop a deep understanding of our core finance work as a foundation for successfully leading implementations.
- Manage new client relationships and deliver excellent customer service and build brand credibility
- By Year 3 you will:
- Lead strategic consulting projects for EdOps
- Independently manage new school implementations for our standard finance scope of work
- Provide project management support for complex implementations
- Develop tools and best-practice processes for EdOps implementation specialists to use
Who you are:
- Care about education and outcomes for students as much as you care about well-crafted project plans, operational best practices, and smoothly running processes.
- Genuinely excited by a well-designed operational process. We love small efficiencies, a little automation, and a good flow chart; we want you to love it with us.
- Analytical and comfortable around numbers.
- Intellectually curious and a lifelong learner, because the best solutions require asking a lot of questions, and we are fascinated by many things.
- Don’t mind working under tight deadlines and within shifting requirements. At our core, we solve client problems, and by the time they hire us, clients are often anxious for a solution that fits. As we learn new information, we frequently adjust our approach, and those adjustments - in addition to resulting in high client satisfaction - can lead to deliverable revisions under tight deadlines and near-constant client contact to calmly and comprehensively explain our evolving thinking. The right fit candidate for this role will find this environment dynamic and exciting rather than hectic and stressful.
- Excited to join a small, entrepreneurial team within EdOps that is still iterating on its approach while delivering excellent results.
- Committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Open to learning and growing in these areas together so that each of us can contribute to building a culture of equity and support our schools in advancing these values. Please see more on EdOps's commitment here.
What you need:
- Experience leveraging project management tools and processes to keep projects on track, balanced with not being so tied to Gantt charts that you cease being responsive to ever-evolving client needs.
- Exceptionally strong organization and time management skills. There is a lot going on here, and we are bringing you onboard to help keep us organized.
- Relatedly, experience managing up and managing clients to ensure work remains on track.
- Strong finance and or/quantitative skills with an interest in developing them further. Our core competency as a company is in providing data-intensive business services support to clients. We aren’t looking for a CPA for this role, but we do want someone who enjoys and has an aptitude for quantitative work. We can teach you accounting as needed, but Excel should already be your good friend.
- Demonstrated out-of-the-box thinking when solving problems, coupled with an ability to problem-solve within constraints (constraints could be budgetary, staff capacity, software, etc.).
- Strong client communication and interpersonal skills. Ability to clearly present and explain information, both verbally and in writing, to people with varying levels of technical expertise and buy-in into what we are recommending. Lean towards empathetic listening, client counseling, and coaching rather than towards selling and convincing.
- Experience gathering requirements from multiple stakeholders, ability to ask the questions that will allow you to reconcile those requirements when they are in conflict with each other, and sound judgment to make the right call.
- General comfort with technology systems (Google suite, Excel are non-negotiable). We are not big fans of paper around here at EdOps.
- <Great to have> Knowledge of schools in the U.S. Empathy and creativity are easier when you know something about the inner workings of schools.
- Candidates for this role should have 5-8 years of work or post-secondary educational experience.
What you get:
- Purpose driven work focusing on student achievement through operational excellence. That is what it is all about.
- Chance to work every day with colleagues who are committed to kids and supportive of each other’s efforts.
- Opportunity to contribute to developing some key processes and approaches at a rapidly growing company.
- Check out other perks of working at EdOps here. And some details on benefits here.
We know that a team from a wide range of backgrounds with different life experiences, identities, opinions, and talents makes us better able to innovate and deliver on our mission of supporting schools to improve student outcomes. Every day we work to build an inclusive company culture where everyone can be themselves at work and do their best work.
Apply Now: LINK