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secretary London, England
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Secretarial
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About the job
Job summary
As a Private Secretary working closely with one of our Directors, you will be a key point of contact – acting as a high-level gateway throughout the organisation and wider government, ensuring effective prioritisation of the Director’s time. You will have experience working at pace with confidential and sensitive information.
Day-to-day, you’ll be ensuring papers, briefings and submissions meet quality standards and expectations, providing feedback as necessary to teams, so that the Director is well briefed on the issues at hand. You’ll also have a solid understanding of the Director’s views and working style and provide teams with a reliable steer accordingly.
As you will be managing senior relationships both within Ofgem and beyond the organisation, you will need to possess excellent communication and relationship building abilities. You will pride yourself on your time management, organisational and influencing skills which will be utilised fully in Ofgem’s fast-paced collaborative environment.
If you are looking for a role that is fast-paced, has highly varied work where every day is different, enjoy building and managing relationships, and are assured in engaging and influencing at senior levels we would like to hear from you.
Ofgem is reliant on having a team who are passionate about their work. As such, we know it is important that we are reflective of society, so we welcome candidates from all backgrounds, and especially welcome individuals from underrepresented groups. We will also support you with excellent training and development opportunities, plus a competitive benefits package.
Job description
Ofgem is looking for six Private Secretaries to support senior leaders across the organisation. The roles are an opportunity to work at the centre of the organisation, either in a Private Office or in the CEO’s Delivery Unit, and will involve working closely with Ofgem’s senior leadership team, as well as with teams right across the organisation, on a number of challenging and high-profile issues.
As Private Secretary, you will act as a high-level gateway between the senior leader and their teams, the wider organisation, and the external environment, ensuring that their time is optimised, information flows are prioritised, and teams are steered to deliver the right outputs on time. You will need to develop expertise quickly, ensuring that you’re able to dive into some areas in more depth when required, coordinating progress and ensuring delivery on some high profile, cross-cutting areas. You will have a key role to play in driving high performance and ensuring the organisation operates effectively, which is key to delivering on our goals of protecting consumers and facilitating the net zero transition. If you thrive on fast-paced, highly varied work where every day is different, enjoy building and managing relationships, and are assured in engaging and influencing at senior levels this role is for you.
We welcome candidates from all backgrounds, and especially welcome individuals from underrepresented groups. While these are full time role, flexible working patterns are welcome.
Key Responsibilities
Act as a conduit for the senior leader across the organisation, representing their views effectively to steer teams, and filtering and synthesising information coming in.- Bring organisational and coordination skills to cross-cutting areas as required, setting timetables and milestones and ensuring delivery to time.
- Ensure papers, briefings and submissions meet quality standards and expectations before submission, providing feedback as necessary to teams.
- Review, summarise and advise on submissions, correspondence, briefing and speeches as necessary, on a wide range of topics.
- Proactively build effective relationships on behalf of the senior leader with staff at all levels within Ofgem, regulatory bodies, government, and external stakeholders as necessary – and where necessary represent them in meetings to ensure their views are represented and any actions tracked to completion.
- Attend meetings, ensuring the senior leader is briefed, providing on the spot advice as required and actions are tracked to completion.
- Work collaboratively with the Private Office network across Ofgem.
Key Outputs and Deliverables
Play a key role in the immediate and wider Private Office and Secretariat network, supporting others and ensuring delivery of the team’s shared objectives.- Delivery of any relevant coordination projects to time and a high standard.
- Smooth running and efficient administration of relevant Private Office tasks.
- A solid understanding of the senior leader’s views and working style and provision of reliable steers to the organisation.
- Strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders – underpinning resilience in a crisis or when dealing with sensitive or contentious issues.
- Senior leaders well briefed on relevant issues in a timely manner.
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Person specification
Essential criteria:
- Excellent organisational skills with proven ability to identify priorities and support senior leaders to oversee their portfolios of work (lead).
- Strong interpersonal skills with significant experience developing and managing effective working relationships and networks with a range of internal and external stakeholders.
- Proven ability to assess and judge a situation, providing challenge and fresh ideas to leaders in response to issues.
- Ability to work at pace in a constantly changing environment.
- Confident presentation, oral and written skills.
Desirable criteria:
- Experience of working with or in a government department.
- Experience of working with or in the energy sector.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Communicating and Influencing
- Working Together
- Managing a Quality Service
- Delivering at Pace
Technical skills
We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- Please refer to the attached Candidate Pack for full details
Benefits
Things you need to know
Selection process details
You will then be asked to provide a 1250 word ‘personal statement’ evidencing how you meet the essential and desirable skills and capabilities listed in the role profile. Please ensure you demonstrate clearly, within your personal statement, how you meet each of the essential and desirable skills and capabilities.
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
Security
See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).
Nationality requirements
This job is broadly open to the following groups:
- UK nationals
- nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
- nationals of the Republic of Ireland
- nationals from the EU, EEA or Switzerland with settled or pre-settled status or who apply for either status by the deadline of the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
- relevant EU, EEA, Swiss or Turkish nationals working in the Civil Service
- relevant EU, EEA, Swiss or Turkish nationals who have built up the right to work in the Civil Service
- certain family members of the relevant EU, EEA, Swiss or Turkish nationals
Working for the Civil Service
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).
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