About Us  

The King’s community is dedicated to the service of society. King’s Strategic Vision 2029 sets out our vision for the future, shaped around five priority areas: educate to inspire and improve; research to inform and innovate; serve to shape and transform; a civic university at the heart of London; and an international community that services the world. Our ambitious Education Strategy sets out the actions that we must take to transform how we teach, how and where our students learn and how we support them during their time with us. 

The Student Knowledge & Information department brings together colleagues who are focussed on helping students to get the information they need quickly and easily and also to engage with their programme and university life more broadly, through management of inbound enquiries and service requests, static and dynamic digital content, and outbound communications. Our remit covers all King’s students, from enrolment to graduation. 

Student Knowledge & Information is part of the Students & Education Directorate, a collection of wide-ranging professional services in place to support King’s students and their education. As a directorate we manage the student lifecycle from application to graduation, to ensure a coherent and seamless student experience and effective administrative processes, working closely with King’s faculties to do so. 

About the Role

The Student Content Manager oversees delivery of innovative, digital-led and student-focused content to equip King’s students with the non-academic knowledge and information they need to complete their studies and get the most out of student life.  

Contributing to development and directing implementation of the student content strategy, the Manager ensures quality and efficiency in planning, creation and maintenance of multi-channel content/communications supported by customer relationship management (CRM) and other software. This includes operational emails and newsletters, articles on the Student Services Online knowledge bank (supporting enquiry management), communications campaigns around particular aspects of the student lifecycle (e.g., welcome), external and internal webpages, social media, and mobile app functionalities. They lead on measuring effectiveness and identify and enact opportunities for continuous improvement. 

The Manager leads a team of Senior Officers, each with similar responsibilities and skills but a distinct remit of content themes, allowing them to gain expert knowledge and act as main point of contact for particular teams while maintaining flexibility. Remits include: 

• Student Operations (e.g. exams, timetabling, graduation) 
• Student Services (e.g. counselling, disability, wellbeing) 
• Student Success (e.g. underrepresented groups) 
• Community Building (e.g. student news) 
• Mobile Apps 

This is an exciting opportunity for candidates looking to gain experience in content management for students, and who wish to utilise their skills and expertise in getting the best out of a team. This is an opportunity to grow your skills in the planning, execution and review of content and communications campaigns. 

We encourage applications from candidates who have experience from both within and outside of the Higher Education sector where they can demonstrate the skills needed to succeed in this role. 

This post will be offered on an indefinite contract. 

This is a full-time post, but we welcome applications from candidates seeking a flexible work pattern within our necessary service operating hours of 10am – 4pm.

Key responsibilities 

• Provide support, guidance and a point of escalation or decision making for Senior Student Content Officers in the planning and delivery of specific pieces of content/communications work and broader campaigns or customer journeys, across multiple channels.  
• Contribute to the development of the student content strategy and direct its implementation in defined annual plans. 
• Proof, edit and optimise the team’s output for web, email and other channels using Microsoft Dynamics and other relevant systems, ensuring high quality, full accessibility, maximised customer/student engagement and alignment with strategy.  
• Line manage and motivate team members through effective objective setting, clear definition of roles and responsibilities, communication of relevant strategies and plans, and commitment to professional development and review processes, including regular 1-to-1 and team meetings. 
• Lead monitoring, analysis and reporting on the performance and effectiveness of content through quantitative metrics and qualitative feedback; make evidenced recommendations for change, present these clearly to senior leadership and direct implementation in a continuous cycle of improvement. 
• Work closely and build effective relationships with colleagues across the university (especially teams elsewhere within the Students & Education Directorate, for which we manage content and provide direct support, and in faculties) to ensure that our output is accurate, accessible, consistent, engaging, effective and compliant with legislation like GDPR. Act as our main point of contact for Corporate Communications on operational matters, to effectively manage any reputational risk.  

The above list of responsibilities may not be exhaustive, and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks and responsibilities as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post.  

Skills, knowledge, and experience 

Essential criteria  

1. Relevant work experience and/or education: We think a wide range of different work and educational experiences could support you to be successful in this role. Relevant work experience might include work in content planning and delivery in higher education, or leading a content/communications team in large and complex organisations. Relevant educational experiences might include higher education in a related discipline, professional qualifications or other training. 
2. Experience of leading the planning and delivery of effective multi-channel communications campaigns and workstreams for diverse audiences, in alignment with defined strategy. 
3. Experience creating engaging content for different platforms and using customer relationship management (CRM) systems and/or content management systems (CMS) for delivery. 
4. Experience of people management and ability to independently direct own work and the work of a team, especially multiple direct reports working to varied projects. 
5. Experience in collaborating well with a diverse range of internal and external stakeholders, showing diplomacy, tact and influencing skills. 
6. Experience proofing, editing and optimising content for varied channels. 
7. Ability to analyse, interpret and report on complex quantitative and qualitative data, with strong presentation skills. 
8. Ability to communicate with all students and staff with excellent written/verbal skills and attention to detail, capable of synthesising complex information in a way that is accessible for a variety of audiences. 
9. Knowledge of and enthusiasm for higher education and improving the student experience. 
10. Effective knowledge of key programmes in the Microsoft Office suite like Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams. 

Desirable criteria

1. Experience of planning and delivering automated customer email journeys in customer relationship management (CMS) software, ideally Microsoft Dynamics. 
2. Experience of using Microsoft Dynamics as a content management system (CMS) and/or Contensis CMS. 
3. Understanding of the diverse make-up of our student population, especially how the lived experience of students from underrepresented backgrounds is affected by structural inequality in higher education. 

Further information

Please submit a personal statement when applying for this vacancy, clearly setting out how you meet the essential criteria, as this is how we shortlist applications. Learn more about how we recruit, including tips on writing your application and supporting statement on our website:   https://jobs.kcl.ac.uk/gb/en/applying     

Interviews will be held using Microsoft Teams and will consist of competency-based questions linked closely to the essential and desirable criteria mentioned here. 

Although we have made improvements over the last number of years, our team is still under-represented in terms of staff from global majority ethnicities, LGBTQ+ identities, and from people with disabilities. We encourage applications from all backgrounds, communities and industries, and are committed to employing a team that has diverse skills, experiences and abilities. 

Interviews are scheduled to take place on Thursday 1 September 2022.