Career Opportunity

1314 (PEX)-Community Relations Officer, Dept. of Early Childhood

Recruitment: RTF0142083-01085547

Published: January 11, 2024

Apply using SmartRecruiters, the City and County of San Francisco's application portal.

About:

Application Opening: January 11, 2024
Application Deadline: January 19, 2024
Compensation Range: $109,434-$133,016
Appointment Type: Permanent Exempt
The individuals who are appointed to Exempt Positions are appointed at the pleasure of their appointing officer and are considered to be "at-will". This means that exempt employees are not protected by the same grievance and job protection rights as Permanent Civil Service employees.

About the San Francisco Department of Early Childhood 
The Department of Early Childhood (DEC) is a City and County of San Francisco Department dedicated to our young children's healthy development. As the City’s largest funder of early childhood, DEC is committed to creating a system that ensures every child can thrive and learn. We provide public investment, expertise, and leadership to put resources into the hands of those who care for our City’s youngest children. 

DEC is the result of a merger of two existing city departments, First 5 and the Office of Early Care and Education. Both First 5 and OECE have long histories of supporting young children and families in San Francisco through innovations in early care and education, family support services, and programs to support children’s healthy development. They merged to expand their capacity and funding and to better integrate the City’s early childhood services.

Racial Equity Commitment 
The Department of Early Childhood condemns all forms of racism, sexism, homo/biphobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, and other forms of discrimination; and affirms that all people including Black, Indigenous, and People of Color – have a right to be in our City and have a right to safe and affordable housing, neighborhoods free from pollution and violence, opportunities for educational advancement and wealth creation, healthy births, early childhoods with abundant opportunities to thrive free from the toxic effects of racism, and access to essential services such as parks, transportation, health care, and child care. The Department of Early Childhood is committed to the principles of racial equity and continues to implement new strategies to ensure that every child can learn and thrive.

Role description

The Community Relations Officer will coordinate, manage, and oversee the outreach/public information functions between DEC, parent and community to seek early childhood support and services. They will provide leadership in the development and implementation of communication strategies with focus with parents as a key audience.

The Community Relations Officer will partner with parents and community members to develop and implement an outreach and engagement strategy, which will include testing, iterating, and deploying messaging, products, content, and information with a lens of equity, accessibility and multicultural communications.

Developing communications will include simplifying complex program information into easy-to-understand accessible language and presenting the content that promotes DEC’s overall brand, messaging and strategy. The position will also support agency-wide multilingual communications efforts.

Important and essential functions of this position include:

• Develop and implement a comprehensive strategic communications, outreach, and engagement plan to build trust and effectively promote DEC programs and services with a focus on parents and families in San Francisco.
• Organize, convene, and lead listening sessions, feedback loops, and/or focus groups with parents and community members. Incorporate learnings to develop culturally responsive communications content, campaigns, and tactics, including dissemination on social media, newsletters, email marketing, community events, media relations, website, etc.
• Co-design innovative and effective communications and engagement strategies with parents, community members and community-based organizations such as peer-to-peer outreach, community building and networking, participation at fairs and neighborhood festivities, and other creative strategies. 
• Work with consultant to plan and execute community relations strategies and marketing campaigns.
• Research, write, and edit articles, stories and blog posts that highlight DEC’s impact and success stories.
• Collaborate with internal cross-functional teams and subject matter experts to gather information and ensure relevant information and compelling storytelling.
• Supervise subordinate staff to implement community relations and marketing projects.
• Develop and implement internal communication tools to keep staff informed and engaged.
• Serve as contributor and secondary lead to DEC’s social media platforms, including content creation, scheduling, and monitoring.
• Support management and maintenance of DEC’s website, ensuring content accuracy and relevance.
• Serve as primary lead for Department’s Language Access Ordinance policy, including compliance to City/County of San Francisco
• May perform other duties as assigned

How to qualify

Minimum Qualifications

Education
Possession of a baccalaureate degree from an accredited college or university

Experience
Four (4) years of verifiable full-time professional experience in public relations, communications, social media, digital engagement, or advertising. This experience must be equivalent to job code 1312 Public Information Officer for the City and County of San Francisco and must include at least one (1) year of experience in planning and conducting a public relations, public information, or public education program.

Substitution
1) Additional experience as described above may be substituted for the required degree on a year-for-year basis (up to a maximum of 2 years). Thirty (30) semester units or forty-five (45) quarter units equal one year.

2) Possession of a Master’s degree from an accredited college or university in public relations, journalism, mass communications or a closely related field may substitute for up to one (1) year of the required experience.

Desirable Qualifications

• Excellent time management, project management, organizational and communications skills, ability to influence and coordinate the efforts of multiple divisions and leaders in support of early childhood communications initiatives.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, including strong ability to craft compelling early childhood outreach and messages to diverse audiences.
• Proven experience in developing and implementing early childhood communication strategies and campaigns.
• High level experience in oral and written communications, public speaking and engagement skills.
• Experience working effectively and building successful partnership with parent communities in San Francisco.
• Ability to collaborate and partner with diverse stakeholders internally and externally, including community members, community-based organizations, residents, advisory committee members, and staff while building strong working relationships.
• Demonstrated ability to engage individuals representing different cultures and backgrounds with ease, adapting language and style to the context both in person and at a distance.
• Experience with style guide and brand management.
• Working knowledge of the Adobe Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign)
• Knowledge of early childhood and DEC’s mission.

Verification: Applicants may be required to submit verification of qualifying education and experience at any point during the recruitment and selection process. If education verification is required, information on how to verify education requirements, including verifying foreign education credits or degree equivalency, can be found at https://sfdhr.org/how-verify-education-requirements

Note: Falsifying one’s education, training, or work experience or attempted deception on the application may result in disqualification for this and future job opportunities with the City and County of San Francisco.

All work experience, education, training, and other information substantiating how you meet the minimum qualifications must be included on your application by the filing deadline. Information submitted after the filing deadline will not be considered in determining whether you meet the minimum qualifications.

Resumes will not be accepted in lieu of a completed City and County of San Francisco application. Applications completed improperly may be cause for ineligibility or disqualification.

What else should I know?

Additional Information Regarding Employment with the City and County of San Francisco:

• Information About the Hiring Process
• Conviction History
• Employee Benefits Overview
• Equal Employment Opportunity
• Disaster Service Worker
• ADA Accommodation
• Veterans Preference
• Right to Work
• Copies of Application Documents
• Diversity Statement

HOW TO APPLY
Applications for City and County of San Francisco jobs are only accepted through an online process. Visit careers.sf.gov and begin the application process.
• Select the “I’m Interested” button and follow instructions on the screen

Applicants may be contacted by email about this recruitment and, therefore, it is their responsibility to ensure that their registered email address is accurate and kept up-to-date. Also, applicants must ensure that email from CCSF is not blocked on their computer by a spam filter. To prevent blocking, applicants should set up their email to accept CCSF mail from the following addresses (@sfgov.org, @sfdpw.org, @sfport.com, @flysfo.com, @sfwater.org, @sfdph.org, @asianart.org, @sfmta.com, @sfpl.org, @dcyf.org, @famsf.org, @ccsf.edu, @smartalerts.info, and @smartrecruiters.com).

Applicants will receive a confirmation email that their online application has been received in response to every announcement for which they file. Applicants should retain this confirmation email for their records. Failure to receive this email means that the online application was not submitted or received.

HR Analyst Information: If you have any questions regarding this recruitment or application process, please contact the HR Analyst Lynn Tran at lynn.tran@sfgov.org.

The City and County of San Francisco encourages women, minorities and persons with disabilities to apply. Applicants will be considered regardless of their sex, race, age, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition (associated with cancer, a history of cancer, or genetic characteristics), HIV/AIDS status, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, military and veteran status, or other protected category under the law.