18th December 2020

Director, Financial Aid at OpenClassrooms

Director, Financial Aid

Job description

DESCRIPTION OF THE POSITION

There’s a revolution currently taking place in the education and training field and you want to be a part of it. You feel strongly about access to education and you may have even taken a few MOOCs or online classes yourself. Come help us make education accessible to all.

At OpenClassrooms, the Global Operations Team is here to guarantee ROI for our customers: students and employers alike. The Team ensures our students and employers get the best possible experience with us.

We are seeking an individual with significant business process automation and management experience to lead the Financial Aid pole of the Student & Customer Operations Team. The ideal candidate will bring along a mix of engineering/tech skills, and expert knowledge of the professional training world in France. Specifically, you should know the ins and outs of the administrative maze and workload behind the funding of professional training programs for both employees and job seekers. You excel at taking the administrative complexity out of complex processes and thrive when you’re constantly challenged to do more with less. Finally, the status quo is your worst enemy: you get excited about changing the way governmental institutions do things. You are ready to put your unique set of skills to the service of an agile and fast-moving structure, with the goal to make education accessible to all.

REPORTING LINE

Reports to the VP, Student & Customer Operations.

RESPONSIBILITIES

In this role, you will:

  • Your mission is simple yet complex: make the administrative workload involved in funding professional training programs for employees and jobseekers as paperless/automated and efficient as possible. Do the same with the contractualization process for apprentices, and with our entire billing processes. Your job is to automate everything between obtaining financial aid for a student all the way until we’re actually able to collect funds from the various sponsors
  • Be THE source of knowledge for everything that pertains to the public funding of professional training programs (in France at first, and abroad down the line). You will know, document, maintain up to date, and share every single detail pertaining to this topic across the organization
  • Support students and employers in filing for Financial Aid
  • Significantly increase our students’ financial aid approval rate, shoot for 100% approval rate
  • Ensure the highest level of quality and accuracy for all financial aid files and apprenticeship contracts
  • Make sure your team’s operations comply with legal and regulatory requirements
  • Answer students’, governmental institutions’, and employers’ questions regarding the status of their financial aid applications
  • Guarantee the timely access to our learning platform for all new students
  • Scale and automate everything your team does
    • Simplify and automate the hiring and contractualization of apprentices as much as possible
    • Continuously turn all existing time-consuming processes into sustainable and scalable automated tasks when possible and through multiple iterations if needed
  • Track and document the efficiencies and new processes your team creates

Job requirements

SKILLS REQUIRED

  • Strong management skills acquired through experience leading mid-size teams (10 to 20 employees)
  • Laser-focused and extremely high attention to detail
  • Exemplary ability to understand, digest, interpret, and use complex regulatory texts as needed to get things done
  • Exceptionally determined, almost stubborn. You don’t take “no” for an answer whether it is to obtain funding for a student’s training program or to eliminate a useless and time-consuming task
  • Extremely process-oriented: you can create processes and make them understandable to all with little to no effort
  • This is a global role. That said, we’d value deep knowledge of the key actors behind the funding of professional training programs in France: Pole Emploi, OPCOs, Regions, Organismes de Formation, and other relevant public institutions
  • Product specifications writing skills
  • Comfortable selecting, implementing and using multiple SaaS tools and platforms to increase efficiencies
  • Exceptional problem-solving skills
  • Superb organizational and project management skills
  • Automation mindset with business process automation experience
  • Ability to interact with both technical and non-technical stakeholders
  • Excellent English and French communication skills, both written and verbal (C1 level at the very least in both languages)
  • You must be a world-class individual contributor to thrive at OpenClassrooms, you will not just be here to tell people what to do

DESIRED EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE

  • 10+ years of professional experience
  • 5+ years of management experience
  • 3+ years of experience at either an OPCO, Pole Emploi, an Organisme de Formation, CFA, or any other relevant institution involved in the funding of professional training programs in France
  • 2+ years of startup experience
  • You’ve helped one or multiple functions within an organization go paperless before
  • A solid grasp of the apprenticeship landscape (“Alternance”) in France
  • Bonus Points if you have:
    • Because this is a global role international experience would be greatly appreciated

HIRING PROCESS

The journey starts with a videoconference with Yulia, Talent Acquisition Director

Then we plan other videoconference interviews with:

  • Jeremy, Chief Customer Success Officer
  • Pierre, CEO
  • and a few other people from teams across the organization

You will be asked to provide us with professional references contact detail.

WHAT WE OFFER

  • Public transportation in Paris and suburbs for free (Pass Navigo paid by OpenClassrooms)
  • Health insurance for free (“Mutuelle” monthly fee entirely paid by OpenClassrooms)
  • Meal vouchers (Employer contribution at the max authorized by law)
  • Access to gym for free
  • Unlimited days off and a 1.000€ premium once a year for 15+ days off taken
  • Access to remote working
  • A company MacBook
  • A work environment and a strong culture built on agility, openness, respect and high quality

OpenClassrooms is a French hyper-growth company eligible to the French Tech Visa program. That means, for foreign candidates, benefiting from the accelerated procedure to apply for a “Talent Passport” residence permit. There is also a simplified “accompanying family” procedure available for spouse and dependent minor children.