About the job

Job summary

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigates and prosecutes serious and complex financial crime, delivering justice for victims and enhancing the reputation of the UK as a safe place to do business.  We also pursue criminals for recovery of unlawful financial gains. The SFO is a non-ministerial government department, which is accountable to the Attorney General and employs about 500 civil servants.

We tackle top-tier fraud, bribery and corruption – crimes that are often high-profile and cover many international jurisdictions - combining the skills of lawyers, investigators, forensic accountants, specialist counsel and other experts. These teams work collaboratively with one another and with law enforcement agencies throughout the world.

This is an exciting opportunity to join the SFO as an Executive Assistant (EA). You will be responsible for providing comprehensive EA and administrative support to the Head of Division(s) to enable the Head(s) to undertake their duties efficiently.

Successful candidates will be resourceful and have excellent planning and organisation skills. You must be a clear and confident communicator in writing, in person and over the phone. You must also be able to exercise discretion due to the sensitive nature of the issues you will have sight of on a daily basis.

There are 2 positions available assisting two Heads of Division each.

Job description

As an Executive Assistant you will be responsible for:

• Providing full EA support, including diary management – making appointments and maintaining the Head of Division (HoD)’s diary. Managing their email inbox – dealing with incoming email to ensure that tasks are prioritised and dealt with in a timely manner.  Where appropriate, preparing responses or taking forward actions from emails on their behalf.
  
  
• Dealing with incoming correspondence and screening telephone calls, enquiries and requests - managing them where appropriate.
• Arranging travel and accommodation, ensuring the HoD has all the necessary details for travel.
  
  
• Organising and attending meetings – ensuring the HoD has all the necessary papers for their meeting and taking minutes where necessary.
  
  
• Producing documents, briefing materials, reports and presentations as necessary.
  
  
• Operating flexibly to complete other duties as required to assist colleagues and Senior Managers.
• Arranging the relevant Induction of new staff within the Division.

Person specification

See above and attached job pack

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £27,148, Serious Fraud Office contributes £7,329 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.

Application stage

You will first need to successfully complete the Civil Service Verbal Reasoning Test. Following this,

As part of the application process you will be required to provide:

• A 250 word example of how you meet the behaviour Working Together for the role at the required level.

The behaviour Working Together is a lead behaviour; this behaviour will be assessed first and candidates who do not meet the required standard will not have the remainder of their application considered.

• A personal statement of no more than 500 words that explains how you meet the following essential experience criteria: Experience of providing executive support to senior management including full diary managemen

It will not be possible to provide feedback to applicants who are unsuccessful at the application stage.

Interview stage

Behaviours and experience as outlined in the job pack will be tested at interview. 

Full details of the interview process will be made available to shortlisted candidates in the invite to interview.

Sift to take place from w/c 8th July. 

Interviews are expected to take place in person w/c 15th July. 

All dates are indicative and subject to change.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window). People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.