PERSON SPECIFICATION

We want to employ people with a wide variety of experiences. We welcome applications from all sections of the community regardless of sex, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, trans identity, relationship status, religion or belief, caring responsibilities, or age. We are particularly seeking applications from candidates who come from backgrounds that are underrepresented at the University, including people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities.
We are looking for a team player who will work with colleagues to provide a great service to staff and students. You don’t need to have worked for a University before; this is an opportunity to show your potential and start or continue your career at Cardiff University.
This role may be an opportunity for you to build on your experience from working in a previous administrative role or environment with particular interest in financial administration, showing your transferable skills and aptitude to be successful in the role. You should be enthusiastic about developing your knowledge and skills to become a valued member of the team.
Your application will be assessed against the following essential and desirable criteria for the role. Please copy and paste this section into a new document and give clear examples of how you can evidence meeting each criteria by writing under each one. You can draw on elements from any aspect of your life (e.g. work, home, education/qualifications or community life) as long as you focus on their relevance to the role.
Please save your supporting statement in a separate document with the title [YOURNAME-BR NUMBER-JOB TITLE] and attach it to your application in the recruitment system, available here.
Please note that these are also the criteria shortlisted applicants will be assessed against at interview and/or by other means (e.g. a skills test).

Essential Criteria

• Ability to communicate in writing clearly, concisely, and effectively to provide detailed advice and guidance on financial administration.
• Evidence of a good standard of numeracy and IT literacy.
• Experience of working in an administrative role or environment and ability to set up standard office systems and procedures, making improvements to these as appropriate.
• Specialist knowledge of financial administration.
• Ability to communicate specialist and complex information effectively and professionally to a range of customers with varying levels of understanding.
• Ability to advise and influence key stakeholders in your area of work.
• Ability to explore customers’ needs and adapt the service you provide accordingly to ensure a quality service is delivered.
• Ability to use your initiative and creativity to solve problems, respond to queries and make recommendations, identifying and proposing practical solutions.
• Ability to work unsupervised to deadlines, planning, setting and monitoring your priorities and those of the team.

Desirable Criteria

• Experience of working in a similar role or environment, e.g. Higher Education.
• Ability to speak/understand Welsh or a willingness to learn.

JOB PURPOSE

Providing comprehensive and professional support to the Centre for Medical Education, School of Medicine, providing support and guidance on operational management of GP SIFT (Service Increment for Teaching).
This role is eligible to be offered on a blended working basis, meaning that as well as spending time working on campus you can also choose to spend some time working from another location, e.g. your home. The University is committed to offering this flexibility, wherever the role and business need allows, supporting work-life balance.
As the biggest university in Wales – and a major employer, with more than 7,000 staff – we are an ambitious and innovative university located in a beautiful and thriving capital city. We can offer you the chance to work in a vibrant organisation, with great benefits and opportunities for progression.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Key Duties

• Provide detailed advice and guidance on GP SIFT processes and procedures to internal and external customers (staff, students or members of the public), using judgement and creativity to suggest the most appropriate course of action, and contributing to the solving of more complex issues.
• Work with others to make recommendations to improve our ways of working.
• Establish productive relationships with key individuals (University colleagues and external contacts) to help improve the level of service the team provides to its customers.
• Perform a variety of administrative duties to support the team and department achieve its objectives.
• Gather and analyse data (e.g. GP SIFT expenditure) so that informed decisions can be made, establishing basic trends and patterns in the data and providing reports and recommendations for management.
• Instruct and guide colleagues across the University within financial regulations as required.

Specific Duties

• Collating basic finance information on accounts for the Director of Community Clinical Learning and working closely with the Operations Manager to provide essential financial information and advice.
• To provide specialist advice to colleagues and students by providing guidance on travel expense / approval requirements in line with the University’s Financial Regulations and School policies.
• To hold a level of budgetary authority for transactions related to GP SIFT expenditure.
• To support the operation of the financial reporting, planning and monitoring progress of the GP SIFT grant within the Centre of Medical Education.
• To support the Operations Manager in the management of research grants, ensuring that all expenditure is appropriate, monitoring spend and ensuring that appointments are made in a timely fashion.
• Collate basic finance information to prepare financial forecasts on GP SIFT budget.
• Lead on the administration and provide advice and support to students on NHS Bursaries.

General Duties

• Abide by all University policies and undergo appropriate personal and professional development.
• Perform other duties which are not included above, but which will be consistent with the role.
• Uphold the Professional Services Values & Behaviours or local equivalent.

HOW WE WILL SUPPORT YOU IN PERFORMING IN THIS ROLE –

There are some things that you must have before you can start this role (see ‘Essential Criteria’), but other things can be developed either through training, or just by general on-the-job experience. We want to support and develop you once you have started in the role using a combination of the following to get the best out of you:

• Regular one-to-ones with your manager
• An experienced and supportive team around you
• Supporting you through job-relevant training and development that you may require
• A mentoring scheme