Personal Assistant

PA to Portfolio Office Director

Location: Cambridge/Hybrid (minimum of 2 days in the office)

Contract: Fixed Term Contract/ Secondment 12 months

Play a pivotal role in ensuring the Portfolio Office by assisting the director with various administrative duties. Plus, lend a helping hand to the Executive Assistant to the CIO with EA tasks. The Portfolio Office oversees the planning, creation, and management of an impressive portfolio of over 150 ongoing projects.

We are Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a world-leading academic publisher and assessment organisation and a proud part of the University of Cambridge.

About the role 

• Managing the Director's calendar, including facilitating adhoc bookings and proactively ensuring regularly scheduled bookings are in place with appropriate stakeholders.
• Providing support to the EA of CIO, performing EA tasks when needed.
• Scheduling and facilitating logistics for departmental events, such as away days, all-hands meetings, community support, and L&D opportunities.
• Overseeing the onboarding process for new joiners and the off-boarding process for leavers, ensuring line managers are aware of their tasks.
• Identifying department needs and suggesting improvements.
• Coordinating admin support for the annual Digital & Data Day corporate event.
• Supporting, chasing, and collating the monthly reports produced by the team.
• Minute taking in departmental meetings and preparing necessary printed materials.
• Coordinating with catering when necessary and supporting travel arrangements.

About you

We are looking for someone with extensive experience of MS Outlook and proficient use of the MS Office suite. Preferably, you will have experience in an office administrative role. Key qualities and skills we are looking for include:

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Strong interpersonal, diplomatic, and presentation skills.
• Excellent self-organisation skills.
• Ability to multi-task and manage multiple conflicting demands.
• Highly reliable and able to deliver to schedule.
• A can-do, positive attitude and ability to assist with project morale.
• Ability to adapt and/or improve working practices.

If you would like to know more about this opportunity and what will make you successful, please see the full job description attached to the bottom of this vacancy on our careers site.

Rewards and benefits

We will support you to be at your best in work and to live well outside of it. In addition to competitive salaries, we offer a world-class, flexible rewards package, featuring family-friendly and planet-friendly benefits including:

• 28 days annual leave plus bank holidays
• Private medical and Permanent Health Insurance
• Discretionary annual bonus
• Group personal pension scheme
• Life assurance up to 4 x annual salary
• Green travel schemes

We are a hybrid working organisation, and we offer a range of flexible working options from day one. We expect most hybrid-working colleagues to spend 40-60% of their time at their dedicated office or location. We will also consider other work arrangements if you wish to work more flexibly or require adjustments due to a disability.

Ready to pursue your potential? Apply now.

We review applications on an ongoing basis, with a closing date for all applications being 12 January 2025 although we may close it earlier if suitable candidates are identified. interviews are scheduled to take place on shortly after the campaign closes.

Please note that successful applicants will be subject to satisfactory background checks including DBS due to working in a regulated industry.

Please note, Cambridge University Press & Assessment is unable to sponsor this role under the Skilled Worker Visa route as it does not meet the minimum skill requirements.

Why join us

Joining us is your opportunity to pursue your potential. You'll belong to a collaborative team that's exploring new and better ways to serve students, teachers and researchers across the globe – for the benefit of individuals, society and the world. Sharing our mission will inspire your own growth, development and progress in an environment which embraces difference, change and aspiration.

Cambridge University Press & Assessment is committed to being a place where anyone can enjoy a successful career, where it's safe to speak up, and where we learn continuously to improve together. We welcome applications from all candidates, regardless of demographic characteristics (age, disability, educational attainment, ethnicity, gender, marital status, neurodiversity, religion, sex, gender identity and sexual identity), cultural, or social class/background.

We believe better outcomes come through diversity of thought, background and approach. We welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and communities, actively seeking to employ people from a wide range of different communities.