We are seeking an experienced writer to join an account team working on a
broad range of mostly business-to-business accounts.

WRITER/ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE

If you are appointed to this post you will play a key role in a growing team.

You will deal primarily with clients in the engineering, environment, construction and social housing sectors, producing a wide variety of written material ranging from websites to brochures and from press releases to newsletters. The target audience is similarly varied – sometimes social housing tenants, sometimes local media, sometimes technical personnel within our clients’ customers. You will therefore need to be able to adapt your style to suit the needs of individual clients and tasks.

Person specification:

First and foremost, you will need first-class writing skills.

Ideally you will be able to demonstrate that you have used these skills effectively in a technical, business or journalistic environment.

We don’t expect you to be a rocket scientist but it would be useful if you have some understanding of basic engineering and technology and/or of the building and construction industry. It worries our clients if they see your eyes glazing over when they lapse into the jargon which they use in their businesses every day!

Substantial inter-personal skills are also important. You could be interviewing anyone from the janitor to the chairman in order to write newsletters and releases. It would also be good if you could get on with the mix of personalities which we have in the team already!

Other useful attributes (but not essential requirements) would include:

• Some experience of public relations – ideally in an agency environment.
• Some experience as a journalist.
• Membership of CIPR.
• Education to degree level - ideally in a discipline relevant to one or more of our areas of business specialisation.
• A formal qualification in journalism, marketing or public relations.

Salary, etc:

The salary for this post will be between £22,000 and £25,000 depending upon skills and experience.

Hours of work are Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:30 – but flexibility is essential to meet the needs of clients and you will sometimes be required to start earlier or finish later. Initial holiday entitlement is four weeks per year (rising to five weeks for longer-serving colleagues) plus statutory and bank holidays.

There is a stakeholder pension scheme and company health insurance scheme, contributions to which are voluntary and deducted from salary. The company makes no contribution to these schemes.

Selection process:

Selection from a shortlist of no more than five candidates will initially be by interview. No more than three candidates will then be invited back to spend half a day with us, to meet members of the team and undertake a couple of practical writing assignments.

Timetable:

We hope to complete the selection process during August 2010 (but will be flexible to accommodate people’s holiday plans) and to get you ‘on board’ as soon as possible after that.

Interested?

If you would like to be considered for this post, please email your CV to Judy Anderson (judya@smye-holland.com) with a no more than 200 word (we’ll count them!) statement of why you think you’re the right person for this job. We need to receive your email no later than Friday 6 August.

Company background:

If you explore the rest of this website you'll find out a little more about us and our clients.

Established as a partnership in 1987 we became a limited company in 1999. We are a small (eight people) and friendly team with an age range from 20 to 50-plus.

We are based in a converted Victorian house in the centre of Peterborough which is a great city in which to live and work. It's a non-smoking office with a 'smart casual' dress code (but 'suit and tie' or equivalent for client meetings).

We work hard (we are driven by a philosophy of client service and achieving real, measurable results to meet our clients' objectives) but we try to have fun while we're doing it.

A note to recruitment agencies:

We are happy to consider candidates put forward by recruitment agencies subject to the following:

• We will not enter into any exclusive arrangements with recruitment agencies.
• CVs and other information about candidates should be emailed to Judy Anderson
  (judya@smye-holland.com) together with a note of your terms of business.
• Please do not submit terms of business unless you submit CVs at the same time. We simply do not have the time to read documentation which may never be relevant. If we are interested in any of the candidates you put forward, we will agree terms of business at the time we ask you to arrange interviews. We are not trying to be difficult or to drive down prices - we'll pay a fair price for a job well done. We are all very busy here (that's why we are recruiting!) and we are just trying to save you and us potentially wasting a great deal of time.
• For the same reason, if you have any queries, please email rather than telephone. We will respond as soon as we can.
• Telephone calls will seriously hinder, not enhance, your candidates' chances of success. Our email system usually works - you can assume that if you sent us an email, we received it. There is no need to ring to check. If we have not responded to an email it is because we have not had time. We will reply to every email containing a CV as soon as we can.