University Relations Manager

The Conversation is looking for a confident, highly organised, self-starting people person to become our University Relations Manager, responsible for managing day to day relations with our partner organisations, fielding enquiries, ensuring the take-up of member benefits, and maintaining and deepening those relationships.

The company

The Conversation is a news analysis and comment website where content is written by academic experts working with professional journalists who ensure that the pieces of timely expert analysis are comprehensible to a broad, international, non-specialist audience. The Conversation helps ensure that the research knowledge and expertise within universities is shared widely beyond the sector so that the public can learn from the latest insights into the important topics of the day.

The Conversation is a charity and membership organisation, funded largely by its university members with some funding from grants and from reader donations. We operate as a not-for-profit, with content freely available to all, and through publishing under Creative Commons licence, it is free also for other media to republish. Our aim is to ensure better understanding of current affairs and complex issues by publishing explanatory journalism. Our global site attracts around 22 million readers a month, and our work is widely cited.

The role

The Conversation’s UK edition is based in London but has staff working remotely across the country. Reporting to the Director of Operations, the role entails working with our 90+ university partners to manage and nurture those relationships, answering their queries, understanding their needs and strategies, finding out what they value most, and identifying how we can help them achieve their goals. The role requires keeping an eye on day to day tasks, while having sight of longer term goals and offering ideas and input on how we might improve our offer to members and add value to our relationships.

Salary from £30,000 p.a., with generous employer pension contributions, 25 days paid holiday, and flexible working options. We welcome applicants with experience working in universities or the higher education sector, or those with account management, membership management or community management experience.

Responsibilities:

• Manage The Conversation’s membership processes, including onboarding new members, record-keeping and updating the CRM
• Thinking creatively about how to help members make the most of membership
• Ensure that members receive the benefits of membership, this particularly includes managing the media training program of sessions for universities, working with the editors who hold these sessions to make the necessary arrangements
• Monthly and annual reporting
• Keeping in regular contact with members, responding to queries or complaints as they arise, and building new points of contact and networks of influence for The Conversation within an institution. Ownership of membership comms
• Take part in expanding The Conversation’s membership network; identifying target members and building a sales strategy (including upsell opportunities for existing members)
• Working where relevant with our opposite numbers at The Conversation’s other international editions worldwide
• Liaising with the finance team on invoicing

Essential skills:

• People person – enjoys meeting new people and resolving issues
• Excellent communication skills with a range of stakeholders, from Vice-Chancellors to academics and press officers
• Multi-tasker – able to work on multiple projects simultaneously
• Highly organised – able to keep track of 90+ university members
• Proactive – able to work remotely, plan and manage workload
• Able to consider different perspectives and manage and resolve sometimes conflicting priorities

The following would be desirable:

• Knowledge of the UK university sector
• An interest in the changing media landscape
• An interest in The Conversation and an understanding of its mission
• Familiarity with Google Workspace tools
• Good data analysis skills, such as using Google Sheets or Excel for example

We respect differences in all people at The Conversation, and encourage applications from candidates from diverse backgrounds or with diverse experiences. You must be legally able to work in the UK.

Please send a CV and cover letter to uk-jobs@theconversation.com via the ‘Apply’ button above.