Right now, organisations across Queensland are working hard to support people experiencing unmet housing need and homelessness, and they need more skilled and passionate people like you to help them into safe and stable homes. 

With roles varying from frontline homelessness response services and community housing management, to supporting roles behind the scenes in administration and managerial roles - there's something to offer almost everyone regardless of your background, experience and skills.

HomeNow is your first step to discovering everything our dynamic sector has to offer for careers that help to improve our communities.

Role opportunity: Centre Manager 

North East Community Support Group Inc (NECSG)

Part-time, Permanent. Brisbane

Seeking an experienced leader with neighbourhood/community centre experience to join our team and drive our strategic priorities. The Centre Manager is responsible for oversight of the organisation as well as delivery of the Zillmere Community Centre program.

Key attributes: Strong community development framework of practice and leadership style embracing organisational culture of relational work, connection and commitment to values and principles.

Transferable skills - what you can bring to the sector

Not having enough relevant or specific experience can sometimes be a concern when applying for a role in a new sector or industry. While many specialised roles in the housing and homelessness sector require particular qualifications or experience, many also centre around common transferable skills.

Transferable skills are a core set of skills and abilities not specific to any role or employer. Strong transferable skills can help you stand out when applying for a role, particularly if the role you're interested in relies on a certain ability or trait. Some examples are:

• Communication skills: A strong ability to write and communicate messages clearly is useful for many roles, particularly clerical and administrative work. If you're a confident speaker and a great listener, you may be suited to working directly with people—maybe with people seeking support for housing or by leading a team of colleagues.
• Creativity: Being able to think outside the box and develop new ideas is beneficial across the board. It might mean you're a great problem solver, or you may also have artistic creative skills - great for marketing and design work or creative therapy fields.
• Time management and flexibility: Our sector is dynamic and often fast-paced. In many situations and roles, people who are able to be flexible and switch between tasks will thrive in this sector. Being able to manage your time well to complete tasks to deadline is also important.
• Teamwork: Being able to work well with other people in small and large teams is essential for just about any role. Even if you're applying for your first job out of school, any experience you have in working in groups or playing in sports teams can go a long way in demonstrating your ability to be a team player.

There are many other transferable and soft skills relevant to working in the housing and homelessness sector. Understanding your strengths is important so you can identify roles that best suit you and address them specifically with examples in job applications.

The job search site Seek has developed a checklist to help you identify your transferable skills, which you can find on their website.

The Deck - free resources for the sector

Queensland's housing and homelessness sector thrives on collaboration, consultation and working together to solve one of the biggest challenges impacting our communities - unmet housing need and homelessness. The mindset of a team effort and camaraderie in working alongside each other to support people in need is one of the best things about working in this sector.

Sharing knowledge and resources across organisations to strengthen best practice and service delivery is one way the sector works as a team, and was one of the key reasons for the development of The Deck - a resource hub developed for Queensland's housing and homelessness sector.

Supporting the sector for the past five years, The Deck offers tools, templates, research and news articles, learning and development content, job ads and funding opportunity information. The Deck has been developed to be a collaborative space, where people working in the sector can upload and share relevant content as well as source and download resources.

The Deck has recently undergone a refurbishment, with improvements to accessibility and new resources on offer. If you're looking at working in the sector, it's a great place to learn about the issues impacting housing need and homelessness and the organisations working to help resolve them.

Role opportunity: Housing Officer

Community Housing Ltd (CHL)

Part-Time, permanent. Maryborough.

CHL currently has two Housing Officer roles available, to deliver high-quality tenancy and property management services. Tasks include property inspections, allocations of vacant properties, rental collection and chasing arrears, conducting condition reports, coordinating lease and rent reviews, and carrying out exit procedures.

Key requirements: Demonstrated experience in client-focused tenancy management services, and 
solid understanding of the Residential Tenancies Act.

Notice of recent compromise to HomeNow website

We wanted to let you know that the HomeNow.org.au website was recently compromised, and to recommend that you have your device checked for malware.

On 18 February, a pop-up was active on the website asking visitors to tick a box to "Verify you are human" with a message made to look like it was from CloudFlare. As soon as we were aware of this breach, we engaged our IT service, who took the site offline.

For anyone who did interact with the pop-up, there is a chance that it may have installed malware or other malicious code on their device. You can see an image of the pop-up below.

We wanted to alert you to this in case you were on the website at the time this fake pop-up was active. 

If you think you may have been on the site at the time, we strongly encourage you to contact your own IT service or professionals to have them assess the computers or devices you were using to access the website. We apologise for any inconvenience that this may have caused, and assure you that we have reviewed and enhanced the security processes on all our websites over the past two weeks, and the WellNow site is secure and fully operational. 

Please contact us if you have any questions about this incident.