About the job

Summary

This role is being advertised on behalf of The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office. The Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Department for International Development (DfID) merged on 1st September 2020 to form the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). The FCDO pursues our national interests and projects the UK as a force for good in the world. We promote the interests of British citizens, safeguard the UK's security, defend our values, reduce poverty and tackle global challenges with our international partners.

Job description

Roles and Responsibilities

This is a varied and rewarding role working for a Senior Civil Servant in the FCDO.

The successful candidate will provide support to a Deputy Director who is blind. She is currently leading the FCDO’s COVID-19 Inquiry Unit, which will coordinate our response to the UK’s COVID-19 Public Inquiry. In the future, the Deputy Director may move to a new London-based FCDO role but, while the context of the work may change, the core duties of providing administrative and practical in-office support will not.

While the role is predominantly based in the FCDO’s offices in London, there may be opportunities for travel, including overseas, as COVID restrictions relax. Previous opportunities have included assisting the Deputy Director to visit the FCDO’s offices in Brussels, present at Civil Service Live in Glasgow and participate in the Global Disability Summit. Even when based in the office, no two days will be the same. The successful candidate will need a flexible approach and good interpersonal, communication and organisational skills. No experience of working with someone who is blind or partially sighted is needed as training and guidance will be provided.

The successful candidate will provide:

• Executive Administration: managing the Deputy Director’s inbox and diary, bringing important and urgent emails to her attention, setting up meetings on her behalf, managing diary clashes, ensuring she has the relevant papers (agendas, items for discussion etc.) in advance of meetings, and taking records at meetings.

• Information accessibility: converting graphical documents, such as PowerPoint presentations, into a format accessible to the Deputy Director (usually Microsoft Word), locating key documents on Teams and SharePoint sites and formatting Word and Excel documents produced by the Deputy Director so that they are professionally presented. (The Deputy Director uses a screen-reader which does not easily detect visible changes such as font type and size or line spacing).

• Practical support: guiding the Deputy Director to meetings in the FCDO’s offices and other buildings. Training will be available and further information on guiding blind and partially sighted people and on working with a guide dog owner is available from the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB)

• In-office IT support: ad-hoc assistance to the Deputy Director with accessing aspects of the FCDO’s IT system which are not fully or quickly accessible with her assistive technology (e.g. finding information on the FCDO’s intranet and reading Teams chat messages).

• Other administrative and practical support as required to enable the Deputy Director to do all aspects of her role. This may include accompanying her on visits outside London (and possibly overseas) and supporting her at receptions and conferences.

• Wider team support – there may be the opportunity to take on discrete tasks in support of the wider unit such as updating Intranet pages and organising team learning and development activities. Opportunities will also be provided for the successful candidate to learn about the wider work of the FCDO through job shadowing and training.

Responsibilities

Person Specification

It is essential in your application that you provide evidence and proven examples in each of the following Minimum Criteria and Behaviours as far as you are able to do so. These responses will be further developed and discussed with those candidates invited for interview.

Minimum Criteria

• Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to build and maintain constructive and collaborative relationships with a diverse range of stakeholders.

• A proactive, solutions-focussed approach with the ability to use own initiative to solve problems and to know when to refer to others for advice and guidance.

• Resilient and able to maintain high standards of service quality under time and workload pressure, maintaining accuracy and good attention to detail, prioritising effectively and meeting deadlines.

• Excellent oral and written communication skills, including the ability to explain graphical information in words.

• Commitment to continuous improvement, receptive to feedback and able to reflect and apply learning to improve self and service delivery.

• Good IT competence including being able to use the main functions of Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams to be able to produce Presentations and format other documents well for internal and external audiences.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Working Together
• Delivering at Pace
• Making Effective Decisions
• Communicating and Influencing

We only ask for evidence of these behaviours on your application form:

• Working Together
• Delivering at Pace
• Making Effective Decisions

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Motivation question - Motivation question at interview.

Benefits

· A Civil Service Pension.

· 25 days Annual Leave per annum.

· 9 days Public and Privilege holidays per annum.

· Learning and Development tailored to your role.

See the attached candidate pack.