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Consultancy Title: Subject Matter Expert for SBC Emergency and Development Roster Interviews

Section/Division/Duty Station: Social & Behaviour Change Section, Programme Group  –HQ New York (Remote)

Duration: August 1, 2022 to November 15, 2022 (35 days)

About UNICEF

If you are a committed, creative professional and are passionate about making a lasting difference for children, the world's leading children's rights organization would like to hear from you. For 70 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children's survival, protection and development. The world's largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations, and governments. UNICEF has over 12,000 staff in more than 145 countries.

BACKGROUND

There is an unprecedented level of interest in the international development community for more effective interventions and strategies to increase demand generation, facilitate social and behavior change, and promote empowerment and community led accountability across all programmatic areas. UNICEF also has a significant role in the humanitarian space and in the Risk Communication and Community Engagement Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

SBC and related community engagement strategies are central to achieving each of the five goals of UNICEF’s new Strategic Plan 2022 – 2025. SBC is a cross-cutting, evidence- based process that uses a mix of communication tools, channels and approaches to facilitate participation and engagement with children, families, communities and networks, for positive social and behavior change in both development and humanitarian contexts.

As part of the strategic vision of Social and Behavioral Change on institutional capacity building, the SBC Section is currently expanding two distinct consultant rosters: (1) the SBC Regular (Development) Roster for candidates with proven expertise in a wide range of SBC services in non-emergency, development programming contexts; and (2) a Humanitarian Roster for candidates with expertise in delivering SBC in humanitarian, disease outbreak, conflict, and other emergency contexts.

The expansion of the Humanitarian Roster is crucial in order to scale up the emergency response to the unprecedented humanitarian and public health emergencies linked to the COVID-19 pandemic and other disease outbreaks such as Ebola. This requires, among other critical response efforts, the need to deploy SBC/RCCE expertise to strengthen coordination, collaboration, and implementation of community engagement interventions.

The expansion of the Regular (Development) Roster is also critical as there is a need to align SBC human resources and capacity development with the growing demands for technical support and leadership in key cross-cutting areas, such as social norms, community engagement and systems strengthening. There is an urgency to prioritize and raise the profile of human resources from junior to mid-level and more senior technical staff. This staffing would be in line with the evolving engagement that is required for leveraging government resources and influencing policy dialogue for social and behaviour change programming. SBC is placing increased importance on the continuum, or nexus, between SBC in humanitarian response and in development programming. SBC needs to be able to plan more seamless connections between its development and emergency responses. It is therefore an imperative to expand both the

Regular (Development) Roster and the Humanitarian Roster in tandem, so that regional and country offices have the facility to rapidly draw upon SBC expertise in both emergency and non-emergency contexts.

The process for expansion of the rosters began in April 2020 and is unfinished. What remains is the pre-screening of the remaining applications and interviewing of the short-listed candidates. The SBC Section has engaged the service of an HR Consultant to lead this process, who will screen the remaining applications and will develop a ‘long list’ of candidates. The Interview Panels will consist of the HR Consultant, the Lead Subject Matter Expert (SME) and a second SME (alternating members of the SBC Team). This consultant will serve as the Lead SME, working closely with the HR Consultant to support the interview and selection process for both the Humanitarian and Regular (Development) rosters.

Scope of Work:

• Conduct the review of the long list of candidates provided by the HR Consultant in order to establish the final short-list of candidates to be interviewed. The review will be conducted based on the specific requirements set out in the vacancy announcement. The final short-list of candidates to be interviewed contains approximately 90 names. Additional candidates might be shortlisted based on a new bidding to be launched in July 22.
• Review and provide technical input to the proposed interview questions prepared by the HR Consultant as well as to the tailored reference check questionnaire.
• Serve as lead SME for all interviews (minimum 4 per day), taking notes on candidate responses as relevant to the competencies/technical expertise being assessed and, with the second SME and HR Consultant, making recommendations for inclusion/non-inclusion of interviewed candidates to the rosters.
• Write up a summary of each interview for the HR Consultant to use in the final report
• Make recommendations, if any, to the SBC Specialist on areas for capacity development as identified through the interviews.

WORK ASSIGNMENT OVERVIEW

Milestone 1:

• Participate as Lead SME in recommending candidates for inclusion/non-inclusion in the rosters
• Deliverables/Outputs:

a) Notes on candidate responses during interviews.

b) Recommendations for inclusion/non-inclusion in the rosters.

• Timeline: on or before 30^th November 2022

Milestone 2:

• Review and provide technical input to the selection reports provided by the HR Consultant
• Deliverables/Output:

a) Endorsement of the selection reports (which will be prepared weekly by the HR Consultant).

Timeline: on or before 30 November 2022.

Terms of Reference / Deliverables

Tasks/ Milestone

Deliverables/ Outputs  

Timeline

Participate as Lead SME in recommending candidates for inclusion/non-inclusion in the rosters

• Notes on candidate responses during interviews
• Recommendations for inclusion/non-inclusion in the rosters      

30 days

Review and technical input to the selection reports provided by the HR Consultant 

• Endorsement of the selection reports (which will be prepared weekly by the HR Consultant).

            5 days

Qualifications

 (1) Education

• Advance level university degree (Masters) in Business Administration; Human Resource Management; International Development; Social and Behavioral Change

2) Work experience

• Advanced degree in a related field such as social/behavior change, communication, or development
• At least 15 years of proven experience in C4D, social and behavior change communication, and related approaches with demonstrated application in both development and humanitarian settings
• Demonstrated experience of implementing C4D programmes in diverse subject areas (health, nutrition, immunization, violence against children, gender, adolescent engagement etc.)
• Experience of recruitment processes, preferably for a UN agency.
• Written and spoken fluency in English. Spoken fluency in French.
• Experience of working with UN agencies, experience of working with UNICEF is an asset.
• Excellent writing and communication skills.

3) Competencies

• Work collaboratively with others
• Drive to achieve results for impact
• Think and act strategically

 Requirements: 

• Completed profile in UNICEF's e-Recruitment system and provide Personal History Form (P11) Upload copy of academic credentials
• Financial proposal that will include:
• your daily/monthly rate (in US$) to undertake the terms of reference (can be downloaded here: https://www.unicef.org/about/employ/index_consultancy_assignments.html 
  • travel costs and daily subsistence allowance, if internationally recruited or travel is required as per TOR.
  • Any other estimated costs: visa, health insurance, and living costs as applicable.
  • Indicate your availability
• Any emergent / unforeseen duty travel and related expenses will be covered by UNICEF.
• At the time the contract is awarded, the selected candidate must have in place current health insurance coverage.
• Payment of professional fees will be based on submission of agreed satisfactory deliverables. UNICEF reserves the right to withhold payment in case the deliverables submitted are not up to the required standard or in case of delays in submitting the deliverables on the part of the consultant.

U.S. Visa information:

With the exception of the US Citizens, G4 Visa and Green Card holders, should the selected candidate and his/her household members reside in the United States under a different visa, the consultant and his/her household members are required to change their visa status to G4, and the consultant’s household members (spouse) will require an Employment Authorization Card (EAD) to be able to work, even if he/she was authorized to work under the visa held prior to switching to G4.  

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s core values of Commitment, Diversity and Integrity and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results. View our competency framework at: Here

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles.