PA to Head of School
Contract length: until 30th November 2026
Pay rate: £16.65/hour (PAYE)
Location: Edinburgh
Venesky-Brown's client, a public sector organisation in Edinburgh, is currently looking to recruit a PA to Head of School for a contract until 30th November 2026 on a rate of £16.65/hour (PAYE).
Responsibilities
- Administer the Head of School's calendar: this includes scheduling appointments and meetings with internal colleagues and liaising directly with external senior representatives from national and international private and government bodies. Prioritisation plays a major role in ensuring the best use is made of the time and decisions concerning this are made on a daily basis by the post-holder. Sourcing information to provide the Head of School with relevant facts in relation to correspondence, meetings and committee papers.
- Provide administrative support to Head of School including: collating, presenting and analysing data relating to the management of the School. Collation of honorary positions nominations, designing and creating spreadsheets and implementing data presentation from spreadsheets. Arrange Head of School travel and manage their expenses claims. Provide administrative support to Director of Professional Services (DoPS) including arranging meetings with direct reports.
- Organise School events: on behalf of the Head of School, including Professorial Inaugural Lectures, Staff social events. Liaise with relevant units, and external companies, as appropriate. Support in-person and virtual/remote and hybrid events, including arranging audio-visual support such as moderation, recording, break-out groups, as needed. Engage in other similar School projects from time to time.
- Committee administration: provide secretarial and administrative support (including wiki/MS Teams infrastructure) to the Engineering Development Advisory Committee, School Management Committee, School Health and Safety Committee, School General Purposes Health and Safety Committee, Senior Management Team Meeting and All-Staff Meetings, including the production of high quality minutes and action lists.
- Other relevant duties as they arise from time to time.
Essential Skills:
- School education to standard grade or equivalent plus at least 3 years' experience as a senior/executive PA
- Rigorous approach to dealing with confidential and highly sensitive matters, which the HoS handles on a regular basis
- IT literacy; (expert knowledge of Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, MS Teams, MS SharePoint and Visio applications)
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to communicate appropriately at all levels
- Ability to work using one's own initiative, unsupervised and under pressure, including ability to assess which matters can be dealt with without reference to the HoS, DoPS and others, and to take appropriate action
- Experience in making complex travel arrangements
- Experience of maintaining a very demanding calendar for senior postholder(s)
- Positive, confident, committed attitude to work
- Flexible approach to work.
If you would like to hear more about this opportunity please get in touch.