Careers Network

This role is located within Careers Network, which exists to help students and graduates realise the potential of their University of Birmingham experience and degree, helping them to positively shape the world around them. The team comprises circa 60 staff, across several specialist areas, supporting employability, enterprise, and entrepreneurship within and beyond the curriculum, while engaging with employers, alumni, and external partners to support this endeavour.

Role Summary

As a member of the Work Experience team, you will play a central role enriching the student experience and building students’ employability, by providing proactive administrative support to help operationalise a diverse range of work experience programmes and activities. This includes, for instance, internships, volunteering and work-based learning activities. You will be analysing and processing data for effective monitoring and evaluation, and will act as a key point of contact to students, employers and colleagues, fielding queries to offer a high quality service. Key responsibilities will be assisting colleagues in the delivery of our flagship internship programme ‘B-Experienced’. Utilising feedback and other sets of data, you’ll be suggesting improvements to help build on successes, with the shared goal of positively impacting on the students’ futures.

In this role, you will be able to develop a wide range of skills, both technical and administrative, and may also have the opportunity to lead on specific tasks within a team. You’ll be managed by a Work Experience Lead and could undertake activities related to other teams, and the wider University.

Main Duties

• Act as a point of contact to provide accurate and timely information and advice to internal and external customers and stakeholders on University processes and procedures, answering queries promptly, providing guidance and resolving queries from initial contact to resolution. This will include recognising when queries need to be referred elsewhere.
• Regularly communicate relevant information to students using the University system Verint and through other mechanisms to staff and external contacts.
• Provide administrative support for diary, event planning, programme delivery and evaluation.
• Process data (which may be financial, HR, student-related or other), monitoring accuracy, chasing up missing information, and escalating any issues as appropriate.
• Use a variety of complex University systems and processes to research, manipulate, analyse and interpret sets of data, and produce routine reports.
• Maintain working relationship with key stakeholders, fielding queries, receiving and dealing with any disputes or complaints and resolving promptly.
• Offer advice and support to others on area of activity.
• Review processes and tasks, and proactively offer suggestions for improvement and sharing best practice as appropriate.
• As required, provide a professional secretarial service to relevant committees and meetings.
• Supports equality and values diversity, moderating own behaviour to avoid unfair discriminatory impact or bias on others.

Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience

• Evidence of the skills and ability to undertake the role. Prior experience in projects, events or programme administration is advantageous.
• GCSEs to a minimum of grade C/4 in Mathematics and English or equivalent level 2 qualification.
• Good IT skills with working knowledge of standard Microsoft Office software and MS Teams.
• Good data management skills and the ability to organise processes and maintain accurate record keeping.
• Ability to take responsibility for specific tasks, carrying out duties without needing to refer to others, with scope for some choice and using your own judgment.
• Ability to work on your own initiative.
• Ability to proactively contribute to improving processes and for proposing new ways of working.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to communicate clearly and effectively with others.
• Well organised with the ability to prioritise work proactively, independently and as part of a team.
• A good understanding of how to deliver excellent customer service.
• Experience of using and maintaining complex work systems e.g. student databases/spreadsheets/finance record systems/HR systems or equivalent, and an aptitude for learning new IT packages and systems.
• Experience of supporting committees/meetings in a secretarial capacity, taking and sharing notes/minutes is desirable but not essential.
• The ability to cope with change in a fast moving, dynamic environment where change is often required immediately.
• An understanding of the importance of equality and diversity in the workplace.
• The ability to identify and respond to equality and diversity issues in line with relevant policies and procedures and how to respond to issues in line with relevant policies and procedures.

Informal Enquiries

To Sarah Garner, email: s.c.garner@bham.ac.uk

Use of AI in Applications

We want to understand your genuine interest in the role and for the written elements of your application to accurately reflect your own communication style. Applications that rely too heavily on AI tools can appear generic and lack the detail we need to assess your skills and experience. Such applications will unlikely be progressed to interview.

We believe there is no such thing as a 'typical' member of University of Birmingham staff and that diversity in its many forms is a strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation and debate at the heart of University life. We are committed to proactively addressing the barriers experienced by some groups in our community and are proud to hold Athena SWAN, Race Equality Charter and Disability Confident accreditations. We have an Equality Diversity and Inclusion Centre that focuses on continuously improving the University as a fair and inclusive place to work where everyone has the opportunity to succeed. We are also committed to sustainability, which is a key part of our strategy. You can find out more about our work to create a fairer university for everyone on our website.