Personal Assistant to Director - Policy Directorate

In this role, you will support the Director of IPD as part of their busy private office. Carefully managing their time, through flexible diary organising and administrative support is fundamental to ensuring they can be an effective leader and decision maker. Key to this is building an understanding of the Director’s role and priorities to be able to understand the importance of meetings the Director is invited to. In doing so, you’ll be at the heart of important policy and strategy work. You’ll gain insight into the way key decisions are made, and the policy and design issues affecting HMRC and, more broadly, government departments across Whitehall.

The IPD private office is a small and friendly team that works flexibly and supports one another to deliver objectives. The work is high profile, fast paced, and carries a significant degree of ambiguity and complexity. You will need to be someone who can thrive on that way of working. In exchange, you will be trusted and empowered to help shape your own role so as best to provide the support needed.

The Private Office is critical to the smooth running of the Director’s teams. You will need to plan, coordinate and prioritise the Director’s time, supporting her and ensuring the resources available to her are used effectively as she leads her teams through their challenging work. You will have first‑class organisational skills, plus the ability to build working relationships across a range of colleagues, including senior officials in both HMRC and HM Treasury and their private offices.

• Diary management for the Director – including organising meetings with senior colleagues in other business areas, HM Treasury and external stakeholders; identifying appropriate deputies and supports; effective and proactive forward planning; ensuring that the Director’s time is used effectively, and priorities met.
• Inbox management for the Director – supporting the Director’s Private Secretaries in triaging and flagging incoming mail; ensuring papers are filed and available for meetings.
• Some routine HR tasks on behalf of the Director; travel arrangements and expenses for the Director.
• Day‑to‑day business support for IPD, record keeping and budget management.
• Other ad‑hoc support tasks as they arise, such as covering for the Assistant Private Secretary when required.
• Strong organisational skills.
• Possess sound judgement and ability to build an understanding of the Director’s priorities.
• A proactive individual with a strong ability to plan, coordinate and prioritise your own and the Director’s time.
• Ability to work flexibly at pace in an ambiguous and changing environment, responding quickly and appropriately to instructions given verbally or in writing.
• Ability to communicate confidently and effectively with a wide range of colleagues and stakeholders and build good working relationships.

• Delivering at Pace
• Making Effective Decisions

• Alongside your salary of £29,475, HM Revenue & Customs contributes £8,538 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.
• HMRC operates both Flexible and Hybrid Working policies, allowing you to balance your work and personal commitments.
• We offer a generous leave allowance, starting at 25 days and increasing by a day for every year of qualifying service up to a maximum of 30 days.
• We make contributions to our colleagues’ alpha pension equal to at least 28.97% of their salary.
• Family friendly policies.
• Personal support.
• Coaching and development.

A name‑blind CV including your job history and previous experiences. Your CV should focus on experience that is recent and relevant to the Person Specification part of the advert.

A 500‑word personal statement which should demonstrate how you meet the Essential Criteria using examples with impacts and outcomes.

In the event of a large number of applications being received, an initial sift may be held on your Personal Statement.

During the panel interview you will be assessed on Behaviour, Experience and Strength based questions. There is no expectation or requirement for you to prepare for the strengths‑based questions in advance of the interview, though you may find it helpful to spend some time reflecting on what you enjoy doing and what you do well. As part of the interview process, we will ask you to demonstrate your suitability for the role through a “scenario” style question. This would be the Experience part of the interview and would ask you to explain how you would react to, and deal with, a fictitious workplace situation relevant to this role. Further information will be provided to candidates who pass the sift, once invited to interview. Interviews will take place via video link. Sift and interview dates to be confirmed.