Personal Assistant to Director - Policy Directorate - Bristol
About the job
Job summary
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Individuals Policy Directorate (IPD) brings together all the policy and technical aspects of taxes and benefits that have an impact on individual customers. We are responsible for the overall integrity of these taxes and benefits, working in partnership with HM Treasury to advise Ministers, maintaining existing policies to ensure that they are applied consistently and as intended across HMRC, designing and delivering new policy, and also have responsibility for the NICs regime and several processes, including pensions, charities, and savings.
Around 400 people work in IPD and the Director has a wide range of responsibilities, including oversight of measures in development for fiscal events (e.g. on Income Tax, National Insurance, Child Benefit, Pensions, Saving and Employment status), maintenance of our relationship with HM Treasury, as well as ensuring successful delivery of some of HMRC's large scale change programmes (including changes to the administration of Pensions and ISAs).
To find out more about who are, what we do and our professions please visit the Customer Strategy & Tax Design Careers website.
Job description
In this role, you will support the Director of IPD as part of their busy private office. Carefully managing their time, through flexible diary organising and administrative support is fundamental to ensuring they can be an effective leader and decision maker. Key to this is building an understanding of the Director's role and priorities to be able to understand the importance of meetings the Director is invited to. In doing so, you'll be at the heart of important policy and strategy work. You'll gain insight into the way key decisions are made, and the policy and design issues affecting HMRC and, more broadly, government departments across Whitehall.
The IPD private office is a small and friendly team that works flexibly and supports one another to deliver objectives. The work is high profile, fast paced, and carries a significant degree of ambiguity and complexity. You will need to be someone who can thrive on that way of working. In exchange, you will be trusted and empowered to help shape your own role so as best to provide the support needed.
The Private Office is critical to the smooth running of the Director's teams. You will need to be able to plan, coordinate and prioritise the time of the Director, supporting her and ensuring the resources available to her are used effectively as she leads her teams through their challenging work. You will have first class organisational skills, plus the ability to build working relationships across a range of colleagues, including senior officials in both HMRC and HM Treasury and their private offices.
Person specification
Key Responsibilities
• Diary management for the Director - including organising meetings with senior colleagues in other business areas, HM Treasury and external stakeholders; identifying appropriate deputies and supports; effective and proactive forward planning; ensuring that the Director's time is used effectively, and priorities met.
• Inbox management for the Director - supporting the Director's Private Secretaries in triaging and flagging incoming mail; ensuring papers are filed and available for meetings.
• Some routine HR tasks on behalf of the Director; travel arrangements and expenses for the Director.
• Day-to-day business support for IPD, record keeping and budget management.
• Other ad hoc support tasks as they arise, such as covering for the Assistant Private Secretary when required.
Essential Criteria
• Strong organisational skills.
• Possess sound judgement and ability to build an understanding of the Director's priorities.
• A proactive individual with a strong ability to plan, coordinate and prioritise your own and Director's time.
• Ability to work flexibly at pace in an ambiguous and changing environment, responding quickly and appropriately to instructions given verbally or in writing.
• Ability to communicate confidently and effectively with a wide range of colleagues and stakeholders and build good working relationships.
Transitional Sites
For more information on where you might be working, review this information on our locations.
If your location preference is for one of the following sites, it's important to note that these are not long-term sites for HMRC and we will require you to move to a new building in the future, subject to our location strategy and the applicable employee policies at that time.
These sites are:
* Waterview Park, Washington - moving to Pilgrims Quarter, Newcastle
* Benton Park View, Newcastle - moving to Pilgrims Quarter, Newcastle
You will be given more information about what this means at the job offer.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
* Delivering at Pace
* Making Effective Decisions
Benefits
Alongside your salary of £29,475, HM Revenue and Customs contributes £8,538 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
HMRC operates both Flexible and Hybrid Working policies, allowing you to balance your work and personal commitments. We welcome applications from those who need to work a more flexible arrangement and will agree to requests where possible, considering our operational and customer service needs.
We offer a generous leave allowance, starting at 25 days and increasing by a day for every year of qualifying service up to a maximum of 30 days.
* Pension - We make contributions to our colleagues' Alpha pension equal to at least 28.97% of their salary.
* Family friendly policies.
* Personal support.
* Coaching and development.
To find out more about HMRC benefits and find out what it's really like to work for HMRC hear from our insiders or visit Thinking of joining the Civil Service
Things you need to know
Selection process details
This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Strengths and Experience.
How to Apply
As part of the application process, you will be asked to provide the following:
* A name-blind CV including your job history and previous experiences. Your CV should focus on experience that is recent and relevant to the Person Specification part of the advert.
* A 500-word personal statement which should demonstrate how you meet the Essential Criteria using examples with impacts and outcomes.
Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.
Artificial Intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.
Sift
In the event of a large number of applications being received, an initial sift may be held on your Personal Statement.
At full sift your CV and your Personal Statement, will be assessed, with the successful candidates being invited to interview.
We may also raise the score required at any stage of the process if we receive a high number of applications.
Interview
During the panel interview,you will be assessed on Behaviour, Experience and Strength based questions.
This is an example of a strengths-based question:
"It is often said that the customer's needs should come first. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?"
There is no expectation or requirement for you to prepare for the strengths-based questions in advance of the interview, though you may find it helpful to spend some time reflecting on what you enjoy doing and what you do well.
As part of the interview process, we will ask you to demonstrate your suitability for the role through a "scenario" style question. This would be the Experience part of the interview and would ask you to explain how you would react to, and deal with, a fictitious workplace situation relevant to this role. Further information will be provided to candidates who pass the sift, once invited to interview.
Interviews will take place via video link. Sift and interview dates to be confirmed.
Eligibility
Please take extra care to tick the correct boxes in the eligibility sections of your application form. We understand mistakes sometimes happen but if you contact us later than two working days(Monday-Friday) before the vacancy closes, we will not be able to reopen your application for you. If you do make a mistake with your eligibility form, please contact us via: - Use the subject line to insert appropriate wording for example - 'Please re-open my application - (insert vacancy ref) & vacancy closing date (insert date)'.
To check that you are eligible to apply for this role, please review the eligibility information before submitting your application.
Reserve List
A reserve list may be held for up to 12 months from which further appointments may be made for the same or similar roles - if this applies to you, we'll let you know via your Civil Service Jobs