Applications for this job are now closed
Full-time annual salary: £13.15 per hour (£23,933 full time yearly equivalent)
Contract Length: 12 weeks (23 Sept – 13 Dec)
Hours: 7 hours per day, 3 days per week (Tues-Thurs)
Application Deadline: Wednesday 26 June 11:59pm (the vacancy may close early if we receive a high volume of applicants, so please apply early to avoid disappointment)
Interview dates: Approximately 7 – 21 August
Location: Hybrid: Stratford, London for 1-2 days per week and working from home the rest of the time (any home working needs to be in the UK)
Positions: 1
Please note: You must be eligible to work in the UK to apply for this vacancy. Cancer Research UK is not able to offer visa sponsorship.
We are now recruiting for our Autumn 2024 Internship programme!
We are now accepting applications for our September internship intake. We’re really excited to be recruiting interns and we have some great internships available across the charity.
Are you looking for an exciting internship opportunity at one of the UK’s largest health charities?
Why we need you
Cancer Research UK is the world’s largest charity dedicated to beating all types of cancer. We now have an opportunity for you to join us as an Environmental Sustainability Intern.
Role and Purpose
Cancer Research UK (CRUK) believes strongly in supporting high-quality research, underpinned by rigorous, efficient and sustainable research practices. Cancer research has an essential role to play in helping society live longer, healthier lives, but it can also have a substantial impact on the environment.
The environmental impacts of research, particularly biomedical research like that supported by CRUK, are not insignificant. This includes needing large amounts of energy to run high-performance computation, or the travel needed to share findings at conferences, both of which release carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. Research also consumes large amounts of water and natural resources, produces hazardous waste, and consequently harms biodiversity.
Whilst cancer research must continue at its current pace, if not further than it is already, it must also be conducted responsibly such that it is does not harm the environment. This is especially important as climate change will likely increase the risk of developing and dying from cancer, and environmental decay may impact on healthcare.
CRUK can use different levers and approaches to influence researchers and the organisations they work at to undertake more environmentally sustainable research practices. These include using the terms and conditions attached to our research funding to require higher standards of sustainability from both applicants- and holders of our funding.
In April, CRUK became a signatory to the ‘Concordat for the Environmental Sustainability of R&I Practice’, a sector-wide agreement amongst research organisations to deliver a more sustainable research system. As a signatory, CRUK will be required to develop and publish a plan every 12 months detailing how it will meet the five priority areas of the concordat (known as an ‘action plan’). This action plan will need to reflect the broad research activities we fund, support and undertake ourselves (through our laboratories at Cancer Research Horizons).
During this placement, the intern will work with the Funding Policy and Governance Manager to help develop our first concordat action plan with activities, responsibilities, metrics and a reporting framework and establish the foundations for a long-term strategy to achieve environmental sustainability in our research.
The intern will help initiate networks of researchers and research-adjacent professionals (e.g., university staff) interested in- and working with environmental sustainability to feed in insights and suggested activities for the action plan. Similarly, the intern will help consult colleagues across the R&I Directorate at CRUK to identify opportunities to embed sustainability in our existing research activities.
Separately, the intern will help develop an event programme, such as a webinar series, and written articles, inviting external contributors, to help publicise and promote the value of environmentally sustainable cancer research and to promote good practice case studies and resources for our research community.
The intern will gain skills and experience of stakeholder engagement, managing a project with strategic importance to CRUK, communicating with audiences with different expertise or backgrounds and working across different programmatic teams. They will also build an understanding of how funders support research and how different elements in the research system cooperate.
Key Responsibilities:
- Develop and organise networks centred around environmental sustainability in research
- Coordinate meetings, including scheduling events and creating meeting materials
- Coordinate workshops to consult internal and external stakeholders for developing a concordat action plan
- Summarise key objectives and tasks for CRUK to embed environmental sustainability in its Concordat action plan
- Develop and deliver webinars with the Research Brand and Communications team
- Develop blog articles with the Research Brand and Communications team, including inviting contributors from the research community within- and beyond CRUK
What skills are you looking for?
You’ll be able to bring to the role:
- Strong organisational skills, including coordinating events, people and digital materials
- Excellent interpersonal skills and the ability to develop effective working relationships with Cancer Research UK staff and external stakeholders
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
- Excellent IT skills, including MS Office, Word, Excel and PowerPoint
- Excellent prioritisation skills for effective management of a diverse workload
- Ability to work independently, managing own time and projects
- Keen interest in improving the environmental sustainability of the research system
- Be determined to make a difference and contribute positivity to CRUK’s wider objectives
What will I gain?
This role will add real value to Cancer Research UK so we want to ensure you’re getting a lot out of it too. As an intern you’ll go through a structured development programme with skills training in project management, CV writing and interview skills and you’ll have a buddy to help you settle in. You’ll be eligible for many of our benefits, including paid holiday, and you’ll gain key experience to help you launch your career.
How do I apply?
Please apply online by uploading your details and answering an application question. Please complete an application form for only one Internship role.
One of our values at CRUK is Being Human. Whilst we understand that AI has it's benefits, we want to hear about why you’re personally interested in CRUK and what is motivating you to apply. We have noticed some applicants being less successful in their applications when using AI due to lack of real life examples. To level the playing field and ensure fairness for all candidates, we strongly encourage responses to be written in your own words, drawing from personal experiences and knowledge. We discourage the use of AI when completing your application form and throughout the process.
Application Process:
Stage 1: Online application with SJT
Complete an online application form – you’ll be asked to answer a motivational competency question and upload your CV.
Once the roles are closed, you will then be invited to complete our situational judgment test. The test poses real life scenarios that a CRUK intern might be met with in their day to day role and asks how you would tackle that scenario. This is un-timed and multiple choice. Please let us know if you think you might require adjustments for this assessment.
In our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, we operate an anonymised shortlisting process. Please therefore ensure that you have completed the work history section of the application form in full and that you have answered all application questions, as this is the information we will be using to shortlist. CVs are required to be uploaded for all applications, as they will be collected for use later in the process. If you experience any problems submitting an application, please email earlycareers@cancer.org.uk
Stage 2: Audio Submission
If you are successful in the previous stage, you will be asked to complete an audio submission, answering competency-based questions. The questions will be emailed to you and you will have a few days to submit a response via an audio recording (no video required).
Stage 3: Interviews
If you are successful in the previous stage, you will then be invited to a face-to-face interview at our head office with representatives from the team you are applying to.
The Internship will start on Monday 23 September 2024.
Our vision is to create a charity where everyone feels like they belong, benefits from and participates in, the work we do. We actively encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and cultures, in particular those from ethnic minority backgrounds who are currently under-represented.
Unfortunately, we are unable to recruit anyone below the age of 18, so that we can protect young people from health & safety and safeguarding risks.
