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, 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 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 to a range of customers with varying levels of understanding.
• 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 programme 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.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Key Duties

• Provide detailed advice and guidance on taught undergraduate and postgraduate programme administration 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.
• Prepare programme documentation including timetables, handbooks and module descriptions.
• Prepare paperwork for, attend and service Examining Board Meetings/Committee Meetings.
• Support the School’s Extenuating Circumstances Committees
• Liaise with Academic Registry, Timetabling and other departments outside the School
• Processing student assessments including coursework and examinations
• To deal with student welfare issues with sensitivity and discretion.
• Provide an excellent level of support to staff and students
• Use of University systems including SIMS and Business Objects.
• Gather and analyse data 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 programme administration as required.

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 THIS ROLE

We want to support and develop you in the role, using a combination of the following to help you reach your full potential.

• Regular one-to-one meetings with your team leader.
• An experienced and supportive team around you.
• Support to undertake job-relevant training and development, as identified by your Line Manager. This could be informal or could be an apprenticeship leading to a formal qualification, such as Business administration NVQ.
• A staff mentoring scheme.
• Support to learn Welsh or to update language skills.