Associate Resourcing Administrator in Guildford

At AQA we are committed to advancing education and to our people. As the largest provider of academic qualifications in the UK, we mark over 10 million exam papers each year and it is our people who make this happen. Want your day-to-day work to play a key role in making sure over a million young people receive fair, timely exam results each year.

As our Associate Resourcing Administrator you will play a vital role in supporting the delivery of high-stakes qualifications that impact more than one million young people each year in the UK and overseas. Working at scale in a fast-moving environment you will help ensure that the right expertise is in place at the right time so that results are delivered with confidence, fairness and quality. This is an opportunity to use your organisational skills, curiosity and resilience in a role where your work has real-world impact.

In this role you will be part of the Associate Resourcing team responsible for building and sustaining a large community of examiners and moderators who mark and award AQA qualifications. Your work will help ensure that assessments are delivered smoothly and that high standards are consistently met. You will work closely with colleagues across our scheduling, training, standardisation and marking teams, helping to forecast demand, manage risk and support a positive experience for every associate working with AQA. By doing so you will directly support AQA’s mission to enable students of all abilities to fulfil their potential.

• Ensuring a sufficient number of suitably skilled associates are invited, contracted and allocated so that all assessment activity is delivered to schedule.
• Managing resourcing activity across multiple components using data and management information to monitor demand, identify risks and put effective contingency plans in place.
• Providing a high-quality service to associates and internal stakeholders through clear communication, accurate administration and timely issue resolution.

You will thrive in this role if you enjoy working collaboratively, managing detail and seeing complex activity through from start to finish. You will bring:

• Experience in a customer-facing role with the ability to build positive professional relationships.
• Confidence working with systems, spreadsheets and data and using information to make informed decisions.
• The ability to balance multiple priorities and manage competing deadlines effectively.
• Resilience and tenacity with the motivation to keep going when plans change or challenges arise.
• Curiosity and a desire to improve how things work, with an interest in making processes simpler and more effective.

This is a role where you can see the impact of your work and continue to develop your skills in a supportive environment. You will benefit from:

• The opportunity to contribute to work that supports learners and educators on a national and international scale.
• Exposure to large-scale operational activity and collaboration across multiple teams.
• Opportunities to develop your skills in data analysis, stakeholder management and continuous improvement.
• A culture that values teamwork, learning and shared success.

At AQA we are committed to fostering a workplace that celebrates diversity and promotes equity and inclusion. We believe that a diverse team brings richer perspectives and drives better outcomes. Our ED&I strategy ensures that everyone – regardless of religion, ethnicity, gender identity or expression, age, disability, sexual orientation or background – is valued, respected and empowered to thrive. We actively promote inclusive language, avoid stereotypes and strive for representation across all dimensions of diversity. We welcome applications from individuals of all backgrounds and lived experiences.

To apply please submit your CV and cover letter by 23:59 on Sunday 08 February. Interviews will take place in our Guildford office on 18 and 20 February.

The Associate Resourcing Administrator plays a critical role in ensuring we have the right resource in place to deliver our exam series activity. Reporting to an Associate Delivery Lead and working in a team focused on a small group of subjects, the Administrator is the front line in understanding required demand, issuing contracts to our associate colleagues, processing their response and ensuring they are effectively onboarded onto our systems ready to begin training and standardisation. They also support payment calculations and process claims, working closely with our finance team. For many of our associates the Administrator is their first point of contact and they provide an important role in answering queries and supporting examiners through our contracting and onboarding year.

AQA works with a community of around 39,000 Associates to design, produce, mark and award high-stakes qualifications for more than 1 million young people both in the UK and overseas. The majority of these examiners are qualified teachers and academics; responsible for marking student exam scripts to set mark schemes enabling us to deliver results including GCSEs and A-Levels. Some use their expertise in curriculum design, assessment writing and pedagogy to design and develop our specifications, our assessments, our CPD offering and supporting our customer.

Our Associate Management team is responsible for resourcing, contracting, onboarding and relationship management with this vital community. Working alongside internal departments such as Assessment Design, Assessment Production, Marking Preparation, Moderations and Post-Results, our team ensures that requirements are captured, demand is forecasted, resource is made available and that our Associates have a positive experience working with AQA. Our team comprises around 30 core colleagues (which increases at times of peak activity) and is part of a wider department of around 50 including colleagues focused on Contracting & Fees, Associate Training, Process Development and Associate Experience.

• Invite sufficient and suitably skilled examiners, ensuring all scripts are allocated to schedule with no examiner shortages on the examination date, based on agreed quotas.
• Act upon requests from colleagues to provide additional examiners as required.
• Invite new associates to work with us from the Recruitment holding pool by transferring them from one system to another and issuing contracts.
• Encourage high levels of response to invitations, following up by email, SMS and telephone as required.
• Contribute to and deliver component-level contingency plans in areas where resourcing levels do not meet requirements, using MI to inform decisions and activities.
• Work with other teams such as Marking on plans for in-flight incentives to complete marking, ensuring quality and retention of associates.
• Manage the team email inboxes and answer incoming phone calls from associates and other internal teams, ensuring high customer satisfaction.
• For visiting, moderated and non-examined components ensure that appropriate allocations are made that are compliant with regulatory and procedural guidance.
• Issue and report on results of the annual Expression of Interest survey, analysing the data to understand indicative resource levels for the upcoming year.
• Proof check the wording of contracts for the allocated subject portfolio, ensuring correct dates reflect the published Key Activity Schedule, correct fees listed, and other details are accurate.
• Manage the rollover of panels in the system from the previous series and work with Lead Examiners on the hierarchy of examiners for individual components.
• Maintain databases and records for generating management information to enable managers to assess performance.
• Process requests to mark alternate components, withdraw from marking or rescinded contracts in a timely manner and capture reasons for analysis.
• Issue contract variations as required, ensuring details are correct and understood.
• Process data relating to quality of marking to maintain accurate records in our database.
• Process payment of examiners’ fees and expenses in accordance with AQA policies, ensuring data passed to Finance is accurate and complete.
• Support new team members with training and induction, ensuring policies are well documented, shared and consistently applied.
• Identify, document and mitigate risks; ensure regulatory requirements are met and AQA Quality Management processes are followed.
• Other duties as required commensurate with the role.

• Experience in a customer-facing role; able to identify and address the needs of our customers and build positive relationships.
• Experience of working with systems, data and spreadsheets; able to analyse a number of data sources and understand what’s needed from you.
• The ability to prioritise tasks and juggle multiple demands.
• Resilience and tenacity; the ability to keep going through a long project lifecycle with obstacles and setbacks.
• Curiosity and a desire to make things work better, with an interest in Continuous Improvement.
• Experience of working in a team to deliver a successful outcome, taking ownership for your part of delivery.