Executive Assistant

Overview

We are looking for an Executive Assistant to the COO and EMEA MD at Journey, joining our expanding London Studios and supporting the delivery of an ambitious portfolio of global design projects across industries and markets. The successful candidate will play a key role in the business-critical coordination and administration of the executive’s time and capacity planning, communication, and travel. A particular challenge is balancing the needs between both busy executives. 

This is an opportunity to join a fast-paced and growing team and a globally recognised studio. Excellent organisation skills, strong initiative, clear and efficient communication skills, and close attention to detail are key requirements for the role, as well as a good ability to use a range of IT tools and software.

We are looking for a candidate with demonstrable experience in a similar or equivalent role in a fast-paced and entrepreneurial environment, ideally working with multiple individuals and balancing the requirements and priorities effectively. Experience working in the creative industries is desirable. 

We actively encourage people from a variety of backgrounds to apply for this role. We believe a diverse range of voices, experiences, and skills will help to inform, enrich, and develop our working practices.

Contract type: Permanent
Salary: £38,000-£45,000 dependent on experience
Reports to: COO and EMEA MD at Journey
Place of work: Flexibly working across Journey's London Studios

Key Responsibilities 

• Working closely with the COO and MD to understand priorities for time and preferred working style, adapting to each individual need.
• Complex global diary coordination, organising meetings—both conference/video calls and in-person—and being reactive to schedule and/or availability changes.
• Screening and triaging emails, calls, and coordinating enquiries and requests.
• Welcoming guests to meetings and arranging catering, refreshments, and/or restaurant bookings as required on behalf of the COO and MD.
• Assisting the executives and their team with meeting preparation, including collating materials and information ahead of time or preparing decks or reports on their behalf.
• Minute-taking in meetings and noting action points as required, disseminating those action points to other team members.
• Booking flights/accommodation and producing travel itineraries.
• Managing and submitting in a timely manner all business expenses for the COO and MD
• Ad hoc internal project management on behalf of the executive, ensuring internal special initiatives with multiple senior stakeholders remain on track and raising issues to the executive if any are blocked.
  
  

Requirements 

Essential

• Demonstrable high-level experience (approximately 3+ years) as an Executive Assistant supporting at Founder, Director, and/or C-Suite level.
• Excellent organisational and prioritisation skills with a proven capability to multitask, coordinate a demanding workload, and remain agile to evolving and ever-changing circumstances.
• Experience supporting a business leader to deliver business-critical information across their interactions, including but not limited to creating presentation decks.
• Experience minuting meetings and diligently drawing out action notes for follow up.
• Experience acting as the first point of contact for a business leader, deciphering communication priorities.
• Experience sustaining key relationships with a variety of stakeholders and business-critical networks, including hosting and catering as appropriate.
• Demonstrable experience managing complex travel and accommodation arrangements, including producing travel itineraries.Experience project managing operational initiatives.
• Ability to treat confidential information with absolute discretion.
• High levels of flexibility and adaptability.
• Strong interpersonal skills and attention to detail.Numerate, with coherence around business financials in order to populate metrics in reporting packages from tools like PowerBI (Training will be given).
• Strong skills across Google Suite tools, Slack, CRMs, and other organisational software.
  
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.

Desirable

• Experience working as an EA to multiple Directors and/or C-Suite.
• Experience using presentation tools.
• Experience in a design studio or similar professional creative environment.

Owing to the nature of our work, this role will require majority in-person attendance at our London studios in East, South and North London and some flexibility out of standard hours on occasion.

Key Dates & Deadlines

Online Recruitment Webinar: Monday 1st December, 5pm
Please find the recording of the webinar at the link here

Application Deadline: Thursday 4th December, 9am  

Interviews:
Round 1 - Tuesday 9th December & Wednesday 10th December, 10am-1pm
Round 2 - Friday 19th December, 2pm-5pm

(If you are unable to make the scheduled dates, please let us know within the content of your cover letter)

The interview panel will include members of Journey across the two rounds of interview. Interviews are held in-person at one of our London Studios in order for candidates to meet some of the team, however they can be arranged online if there are geographical considerations.

Our interviews are built as two way conversations to better understand each other’s work and aspirations, and may include  a task to better understand the candidate's process. We operate equal opportunity interviews and, for the initial round of interviews, we typically share elements of question topics in advance with candidates.

How to Apply

Please submit a comprehensive CV/Resume in addition to either a Cover Letter (maximum two A4 sides) or up to three minutes of audio (instructions in the application section) describing your suitability for the position, how your skills and experience match the person specification and why you would like to work in this role at Journey. Please find the upload fields at the bottom of this page. 
We do not accept applications by any other method.

Within the various elements of your application (namely your letter or audio), please outline clearly how your previous work relates to the requirements listed for this role. Having clear examples and explanations will be beneficial for your application. Additionally, why you are interested in working for Journey would be a very helpful thing to include.

Applicants should provide contact details for two references. We will seek your permission before making direct contact with any referees. 

All applicants must be eligible to work within the UK.

If you would like a brief call with our team to discuss specific queries you have about the opportunity (including queries regarding accessibility), please email [email protected] / [email protected] (cc'ing [email protected]).

Other resources for this role may become available so we would encourage you to check back on this post for more details between now and the deadline.

Acknowledging the resources that go into attending interviews, we are very happy to reimburse expenses for extensive travel incurred through travelling to/from your interview with us.