Personal Assistant

Location: City Centre Campus/City South Campus

Birmingham City University is seeking an experienced Personal Assistant to join the Library & Learning Resources (L&LR) department for a maternity cover contract until 29 September 2026.

You will be responsible for supporting the Director of L&LR and working alongside the library's Senior Leadership Team.

We are looking for highly organised and proactive candidates to work closely with the Director providing a confidential and high level of support. This pivotal role demands exceptional communication and organisational skills, a keen eye for detail, and the ability to manage a dynamic and fast-paced workload with professionalism and efficiency. 

Reporting to the Director of L&LR, you will have the ability to organise your own workload and manage a complex diary. You will have a flexible approach to your role, where you will work with the Director and the library's Senior Leadership Team to ensure the business needs and key university and department-based activities and deadlines are met. The ability to form positive working relationships with key internal and external stakeholders will be key to your success.

Key responsibilities will include:

• Providing a high quality secretarial and organisational support service.
• Effective management of electronic diaries, assessing priority of appointments and reallocation as necessary. 
• Providing support for an extensive range of meetings. This will include scheduling, preparing agendas, pre meeting briefings and meeting papers, noting action points and following them up. 
• Drafting correspondence, reports and preparing presentations. 
• Acting as a key liaison point between senior managers and other key parties, setting up meetings as appropriate and maintaining good communications.
• Sorting, distributing and responding or drafting responses to incoming mail in a timely and efficient manner.

Amongst other essential criteria, the Personal Assistant will:

• Have previous working experience as a Personal Assistant.
• Possess excellent IT skills including advanced knowledge of word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software packages, preferably Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
• Have experience of electronic diary management. 
• Be able to demonstrate excellent team working skills with the ability to work collaboratively and cooperatively with colleagues. 
• Be able to assimilate large quantities of written and verbal communication quickly in order to produce accurate, timely minutes.

For informal enquiries, please contact Sarah Pittaway, Director of Library & Learning Resources sarah.pittaway@bcu.ac.uk

The appointed candidate will normally be employed through our subsidiary company BCU Support Services Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Birmingham City University. Appointees with prior LGPS membership who wish to enter the LGPS scheme will be able to do so and will be employed by Birmingham City University directly. 

We are committed to equality, diversity and inclusion and to an environment that supports lawful free speech and academic freedom. We will continuously review and improve our policies, practices, and procedures to ensure that we are promoting these in all aspects of our operations. We believe that by working together, combining our many different backgrounds and life experiences, we will empower each other to reach our full potential. 

Further Details: Job Description  

Closing Date: 23.59 hours GMT on Thursday 22 January 2026

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