Senior Executive Assistant

Our benefits

• We value our colleagues in Cambridgeshire County Council and have developed a number of benefits in addition to the basics like annual leave, sick pay, pension and mileage.
• A comprehensive wellbeing package to cover all aspects of wellbeing, both in and out of work, which can also be accessed by your family.
• Buy up to 4 weeks additional annual leave (pro-rata) through our salary sacrifice scheme.
• Take your bank holidays flexibly to better suit your personal circumstances.
• Make Additional Voluntary Contributions (Shared AVCs) to your pension with tax and National Insurance savings.
• Access to development opportunities, apprenticeships and qualified coaches to support your personal and professional growth.
• Paid volunteering hours each year so you can make a positive impact on our community during your normal working day.
• Access to Peer Support Groups through our IDEAL staff equality, diversity and inclusion network.
• Opportunities to nominate and receive Employee Recognition Awards.
• An Our Cambs Rewards account, giving you access to in-store and online discounts as well as our Car Lease and Cycle to Work schemes.

About the role

This is a rare opportunity to take on a pivotal role directly supporting the Chief Executive of Cambridgeshire County Council. As a trusted and discrete individual, you will thrive on problem solving as well as managing competing priorities and keeping a cool head under pressure. Exemplary organisational skills, time management, and well-developed attention to detail are crucial for this role, supporting the Chief Executive to effectively lead the organisation to deliver the Council’s vision, ambition, and priorities. The role is based in our Headquarters of New Shire Hall in Alconbury Weald, with the ability to spend some time working on a hybrid basis.

You will provide professional, proactive and confidential executive support to the Chief Executive, enabling them to focus on organisational priorities. This will include diary management and planning, organising appointments and travel, managing email accounts and other communications, and supporting key meetings. You’ll also have the opportunity to support projects and work across the breadth of the Council, in addition to the regular but equally critical aspects of the role.

You will report to the Corporate Business Manager and work alongside a team of Executive Assistants that form part of our centralised Executive Support Service. In addition, you will work closely with the Strategic Advisor to the Chief Executive ensuring that matters relating to the Chief Executive are well co-ordinated and organised. You will line manage the Personal Assistant to the Leader of the Council, working together to ensure that matters that involve both the Chief Executive and the Leader are managed effectively.

About you

You’ll need to be a highly accomplished and capable Executive Assistant, with Board level or C-suite experience, ideally within the Public Sector. You will be proactive, well organised and able to use your initiative to act on issues. You’ll be confident as an ambassador for the Chief Executive and as the primary point of contact for a wide range of internal and external stakeholders working with others to build strong working relationships. Importantly you’ll pride yourself on your communication and customer service skills.

This is a hugely varied role and will give you an insight into and a strong sense of the valuable work carried out every day to deliver on the Council’s ambitions. So, if you have proven experience, values, and commitment to making a difference every day that we do, then we would love to hear from you.

Please demonstrate within the supporting statement section of your application how you meet the criteria of the job description and person specification. Previous applicants need not apply.

About us

Cambridgeshire is a great place to work and live with a diverse population, an urban centre in Cambridge, historic Isle of Ely, Huntingdon and St Ives as well as more rural landscapes. We are Collaborative, Accountable, Respectful, and focused on Excellence. We are proud to serve the diverse communities of Cambridgeshire and want our workforce to be reflective of this diversity, which we firmly believe benefits our colleagues, the organisation and our communities.

If you don’t meet every single requirement in the job role but think this could be you, please don’t be put off. We are committed to building a workplace that is compassionate and inclusive as well as diverse, so if you think you could be a good candidate for this role please consider applying and speak to the recruiting manager if you have any questions.

Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, along with our employee network 'IDEAL' and self-organised peer support groups help us to foster an inclusive, supportive and safe working environment where people feel valued, respected, and empowered. We collect relevant diversity data for monitoring as part of the recruitment process to understand the diversity of our applicants and monitor any trends throughout the recruitment processes so that we can take meaningful action. We are proud to be a Disability Confident Employer. We fully support providing reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process, as well as when you join us, and we encourage candidates to contact the Hiring Manager, whose details can be found in the advert, to discuss any adjustment needs.