What’s the job?
We are looking for an exciting and creative individual to join our team to look after our marketing and communications. The main parts of the role are:
- Planning and delivering our marketing activity, both for organisation wide activities such as our annual Student Elections and Freshers Week, as well as individual projects and campaigns we run throughout the year
- Be our brand guardian and ensure it is incorporated into everything we do – not just the visual aspects, but the language and feeling too, making sure our personality comes across at every interaction with our students
- Handling all of our graphic design work, whether that is creating graphics for social media posts or designing t-shirts for our volunteers to wear
Ideally the minimum we’re looking for is a marketing graduate that has some work place marketing experience through placements or internships.
This is a full time job – working 35 hours per week, usually Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm, although flexibility is expected depending on what we have going on so some evening and weekend work may be required with plenty of notice.
Who are we?
We are Heriot-Watt University Student Union - an independent charity that is run by and for students. While we are a charity we also run trading services (food & drink venues and shop) that aim to make a surplus. We use this surplus to invest in other vital student support services such as advice & support and volunteering.
Ultimately our main goal is to make sure that Heriot-Watt students have THE BEST TIME whilst studying here. Our purpose is clear and simple – to put Students First, Always. We live by five values – we are fun, welcoming, brave, empowering and student focussed.
You’ll join a friendly, hardworking and professional team and have a real opportunity to make a difference to our members – while having some fun along the way. We have a display of staff baby photos in our office, and a gallery of our photocopied faces which we will probably ask you to add to!
What do you get?
You will be paid up to £22,101 per year. 28 days holiday plus 9 fixed days (Christmas, New Year and Easter). Pension available plus you’ll get that warm fuzzy feeling inside that you’re helping the students of HW make the most of their Student Union.
What would a typical day look like?
You start your day checking our socials for comments / messages that need replying to. There’s one from a student needing help with an academic appeal so you forward their contact details on to the Advice Hub to help them out.
You have an email from the Vice President Community asking if they can grab 10 minutes to discuss promoting the beach clean up event they’re organising so you put a quick meeting in both your calendars for later in the day.
A student from the Business Society comes to the office to ask if they can get into the store cupboard to get some equipment out. You walk with them to unlock it and at the same time say how you’d seen their Instagram Reel from last weekend and tell them it looked really good and that you’d shared it.
The Union’s Volunteer Awards are coming up, so you settle in to create all the assets they need – certificates, posters, invitations, social graphics etc. Some of it is simply updating content from last year, but this year they’re also wanting roller banners so you find an artwork template from our suppliers and transfer the branding across to it.
It’s time for your catchup with the Vice President Community. It’s a short meeting, and you make sure that you write down the actions to take from it. You update your to-do list with things you need to do and add the activity to the comms schedule for the relevant dates.
You're heading to our Scottish Borders Campus tomorrow as we're hosting a wellbeing event where alpacas are coming to campus and you want to help make sure it runs smoothly, and capture it for our socials. You want to make the most of your time at the campus so have arranged to meet some students to gather feedback on the recent laundrette party, so you take some time now to plan what questions you will ask so you're prepared for tomorrow.
After lunch, you take a look at the comms schedule for the following week and check if there is any more information you need. You’re still waiting for a link for the elections, so you contact the Student Engagement Manager to chase it up. While you wait, you begin scheduling in the social posts for the week ahead – there’s a chance the schedule might need to be tweaked between now and then (it’s the nature of our business!) but getting ahead of the game is vital.
The sun is shining which makes a short walk across to the main University buildings even more pleasurable, so you head over to update the poster boards to make sure they’re current and fresh. You pop in to our shop while you’re there to say hello and find out what the new promotions will be so the point of sale artwork can be updated.
You’ve a couple of hours to go, so decide to get stuck in to looking at our insights across social media and the website – it’s something we try to do at least once a month and report it back to the Senior Managers. The last few weeks have all performed well, and you notice that content about what our Full Time Officers have been up to seems really popular so start looking at ways to get more of this content on a regular basis.
Phew, another great day over. You spend 5 minutes writing out your to-do list for tomorrow before one final check for any messages on our socials before you sign off.
Is this job for you?
Please download the Job Description below for a full list of the essential, desirable and person criteria to make sure you're a good fit. However before then, if you answer yes to these questions, then this job might suit you perfectly!
- Are you excited about creating marketing plans that will have a big impact?
- Do you have an understanding of what a student in 2022 is looking for and how to grab their attention?
- Can you write copy that is fun & playful yet oozes confidence and reliability?
- Can you be given an activity to promote, and immediately think of loads of different ways to get the message out there (not just by putting up a poster!)?
- Does working with a range of different people from different countries, background and cultures sound appealing?
- Are you able to confidently use graphic design packages like Photoshop and Illustrator?
- Are you the sort of person that makes sure you know everything that is going on, to see how you can input into it and to make sure it’s Instagrammed?
- Are you a planner AND a do-er?
- Does working pro-actively, rather than reactively, come naturally to you?
- Do you work well under pressure, delivering before deadlines and then going the extra mile?
If you’re not yet sure and want to have an informal chat about the job please contact Jamie Nutter, Deputy CEO on J.Nutter@hw.ac.uk.
Sounds great, what next?
If you think this sounds like the job for you then click Apply Now below and fill in our online application form. If you want to really stand out please take the time to tell us why we should pick you to work for us.
Downloads
Click here to download the Marketing Communications Coordinator Job Description