View Vacancy - BK - Private Secretary to the Ambassador, B3 (Internal Vacancy)

The British Government is an inclusive and diversity-friendly employer.  We value difference, promote equality and challenge discrimination, enhancing our organisational capability. We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds. We do not discriminate on the basis of disability, race, colour, ethnicity, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, age, veteran status or other category protected by law. We promote family-friendly flexible working opportunities, where operational and security needs allow.
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Operations and Corporate Services)
Private Office

The main purpose of the job is to lead the Ambassador and Deputy Head of Mission’s busy Private Office, represent the Ambassador’s views to both internal and external senior-most customers and provide the full range of administrative support, negotiation support, and tactical advice to the Ambassador.


Roles and responsibilities:

Organisation of the British Embassy Bangkok Private Office

Lead responsibility for managing and maintaining the highest level of organisation within Private Office, ensuring that the Ambassador and Deputy Head of Mission are provided with the full range of secretarial and administrative support.

Filtering and prioritising demands on the Ambassador and  Deputy Head of Mission’s  time and attention, keeping abreast of  key issues in order to prioritise correspondence, flagging up action emails/papers for Ambassador/ Deputy Head of Mission’s  attention and ensuring important and urgent work is done or delegated elsewhere as appropriate, particularly during their absences.

Overall Responsibility for managing the diaries of the Ambassador/ Deputy Head of Mission’s - forward planning, prioritising meetings, identifying clashes, offering solutions, ensuring relevant stakeholders are informed.

Drafting correspondence in both Thai and English; taking detailed minutes, including of technical meetings; organising complex meetings; fielding telephone calls from senior interlocutors; managing an extremely busy, and ever changing diary; meeting and greeting VIPs; facilitating duty visits both domestic and international.

Negotiation/Managing External Relationships

Proactively manage and organise logistics for public and private external events with counterparts within the Embassy, in other diplomatic missions, and with the senior staff within the Private Offices of Ministers and other VIPs, both English and Thai.

Represent the Ambassador’s views internally within the Embassy and externally, ensuring that his view is taken into consideration, especially when the Ambassador is absent. This includes Ministers and senior officials in the Thai government, where the importance of accuracy and sensitivity is of paramount importance.

Maintain excellent relations with Thai counterpart contacts and local key strategic contacts.

Advice

Commission and advise the Ambassador concerning speeches and briefing papers for his many public-facing events. This includes detailed guidance on the correct forms of address and advice on tones for Thai speeches, in multiple registers, both informal, formal, academic and, where necessary, Royal Thai.

Decisions on how to deal with last-minute, short notice requests to attend Royal/Government events; arrange senior programmes; and facilitate VIP requests. Because of the often immediate nature of Thai society, these sensitive high level decisions often need to be taken without consulting the Ambassador.

Project Management

Managing projects on behalf of HMA, including the coordination of Private Office’s contribution to the Queen’s Birthday Party and any other high profile Embassy events. This involves putting together action plans; delegating activity; tracking progress; and putting together detailed itineraries and briefing staff accordingly.

Overall Management of the Private Office Budget, including Business Hospitality, and Travel Budget.

Management and Coordination

Effectively line manage the A2 Executive Assistant(EA) in the Ambassador’s office, ensuring that the EA  is able to maintain a timely, high quality service to both the Ambassador, Deputy Head of Mission, and internal and external customers.

To ensure that the Ambassador’s Residence Manager and Embassy drivers are kept fully informed of all relevant diary events, and changes to the Ambassadors plans and movements; problem solving where necessary.

  • Fluent in spoken and written English. Minimum IELTS English Certificate level 8 or equivalent level.
  • Relevant working experience, preferably in an international organisation.
  • Strong capacity for working with IT with proficiency in using MS Office, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, web applications and proficient typing skills.
  • Proven record of taking responsibility and using initiative and of excellent self management, attention to detail, organisational and planning skills.
  • Experience working under pressure within a team, and an ability to plan and prioritise competing demands effectively
  • Experience of living in or understanding of the UK
  • Fluent Thai
5 March 2018
Executive Officer (EO)
Permanent
36
Asia Pacific
Thailand
Bangkok
British Embassy
1
THB
61,433
26 March 2018

The British Embassy offers a competitive remuneration package, including salary (will be abated for those not liable to tax), benefits, a leave entitlement, Health Insurance and comprehensive development programme based upon business need and individual staff requirements. 

Employment offers are subject to successful clearance of pre-employment and security checks. Staff who are locally recruited by the British Embassy are subject to Terms and Conditions of Service according to local employment law.

No accommodation or relocation expenses are payable in connection with this position. You must have or be able to obtain work authorisation in Thailand in order to apply. Any costs related to obtaining or renewing permits and visas are the responsibility of the successful applicant.

This vacancy is for British Embassy Bangkok internal candidates (only staff under notice of compulsory redundancy)

All applications must be received before 23:55 on  5 March 2018.

Incomplete application forms will not be taken into consideration, so please ensure you provide the information requested. We regret to advise that we will only be contacting short-listed candidates. Applicants called for an interview will be assessed on the core competencies listed above.


Reminder for existing Embassy staff who will be interested to apply:

Along with the completed online application form, candidates should upload their last two years End of Year Appraisals if applicable. If applicants have been employed for less than twelve months, they will need to provide permission from their Head of Section to apply and should attach this to their application. 

Guidance on completing competency based application forms and sitting Interviews can be found on the BE Website and also on the Civil Service Learning portal, Virtual Ashridge portal and Goodpractice.net (both accessed through the CSL). Staff are strongly advised to refer to these. 

We recommend all applicants to understand the Civil Service competences before applying for any role and in preparation for interviews. For more information, you can visit our website - https://www.gov.uk/government/world/organisations/british-embassy-bangkok/about/recruitment. 

Please check your application centre regularly for any update on your application 

Please be aware that you will only be able to apply to vacancies for Country Based Staff roles with the British Government through this official tal.net site (operated by Oleeo). Jobs may be advertised on third party websites, however our adverts will always link back to the official tal.net site. If you complete and send an application through any other site, we will not receive it.

This opportunity is closed to applications.