This person has three primary areas of responsibility:

1. Planning and running our conferences and events.

2. Supporting the marketing and business development of Pickle Jar Communications as a company.

3. Sometimes, you may be asked to jump in to help the team with work for our clients. But most days, our own company and events will be your focus.

This role is a key part of our team

Pickle Jar Communications specialises in content, communications and user experience in the education sector. We are entering an exciting time as we make a shift towards becoming a consultancy that specialises in experience design—a discipline that is all about designing for humans by understanding their needs, feelings, context and mindset.  

Part of this shift is educating our existing and future clients about experience design and how it could transform their institutions. Your work in marketing and business development is crucial to helping us do that.

In this role, you’ll report to our Director of Growth. We have ambitious growth goals in new countries and new pockets of the education sector. You’ll support the director with building Pickle Jar’s brand recognition in new markets and nurturing future and existing client relationships.

Our events and conferences are one fundamental way that we delight our clients and audiences. Feedback from past delegates is consistently emotive and joyous. Here, your organisational skills and empathy will be invaluable. 

What you’ll do (in more detail)

1. Event planning and promotion

Pickle Jar Communications owns and operates several events and conferences throughout the year, including the annual ContentEd conference and awards and Utterly Content. Everyone on the team contributes to the success of these events and the ongoing relationships with the community developed around them. This role will have primary responsibility for pre-event planning, promotion, and event management. Specifically, you will: 

• Lead on the event management for all conferences and events, including venue research, managing contracts, venue liaison, pre-conference planning, and logistics

• Support event and conference programme development and scheduling, and manage relationships and communications with speakers and potential speakers

• Secure and maintain agreements and relationships with event sponsors and partners

• Manage the ContentEd awards, including liaising with judges, entrants, and sponsors, plus the associated marketing and communications

• Develop a marketing and communications plan for all of the above and implement marketing activity across all channels

• Lead on planning and creation of any print materials for all events and conferences, including liaison with designers and printers
  

2. Marketing and business development 

We are a growing company. This requires dedicated efforts to support how we market and sell our services to our prospective clients. You would work closely with the Director of Growth to support the implementation of business development activities and lead our ongoing marketing and sales activity by:

• Developing and implementing marketing strategies and plans for Pickle Jar Communications, ContentEd and Utterly Content

• Coordinating publication of web content, blog posts, email communications and social media activity

• Ensuring Pickle Jar Communications is well represented and promoted at our events and other sector and industry events

• Leading on planning and creation of any print marketing materials, including liaison with designers and printers

• Identifying and nurturing new prospects and opportunities for the company and generating new leads 

• Creating a strategy to keep frequent and fruitful communication with past and current clients to encourage repeat business

• Creating regular metrics reports and making recommendations for new data-informed marketing activities for website, social, email and other marketing activity

• Supporting the development and implementation of systems to evaluate the impact of lead-generation activity and year-on-year performance. 
  

3. Supporting others in the team

Pickle Jar Communications is a small and close-knit team with significant overlap in roles and projects. As such, we support one another in many ways, in addition to the specific duties of our positions. While you will primarily lead on event management and marketing, you may occasionally be asked to contribute to client projects relevant to your areas of expertise. This could include, for example:

• Development of marketing plans and social media recommendations for clients

• Creating social media content for clients (or advising colleagues on best approaches)

• Carrying out social media reviews or competitor reviews

• Coordinating diaries for stakeholder meetings/phone calls with clients

• Involvement in team training activities, including delivery of training as required.
  

As our company grows and evolves, you may have to do work that isn’t described in this job posting but falls under marketing or events. If this happens, we will reprioritise your responsibilities with you, so the added work does not overburden you.

Know that we will be fully committed to who you are as a person and your professional fulfilment. You will be managed from a foundation of absolute trust and using a strengths-based approach. In this team, you will find mentors and friends that will take every opportunity to help you shine and succeed.

The person

You will thrive in this job if you:

• Enjoy creating events that delight speakers & attendees — in person and online

• Get excited about good marketing and sales results — especially as a response to your campaigns

• Believe in an audience-centred approach in all your work

• Work just as well independently as you do with a team

• Typically are thinking two steps ahead of everyone else

• Think of yourself as energetic, empathetic, curious, creative, determined, and organised

In your background, we’re looking for at least 2 years with a blend of some of the following activities:

• Event planning, management or support

• Budget management

• Working on content planning and/or creation for a range of platforms and channels from websites to email to social media to print

• Developing strategies and plans for digital communications, perhaps including the development of a content marketing plan or a social media strategy or campaign

• Developing paid digital advertising campaigns and implementing campaigns on channels such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google.
  

Ready to apply?

We are committed to making our application process inclusive and accessible. If you experience any barriers in our process that we may have overlooked, please tell us. We will absolutely fix it.

This is a two-way process. Our commitment is that this whole process allows you to shine, to have agency over how you present yourself, and assess if we’re the right team for you.

Step 1 — Submit application by 28 November.

Send the following by email to Day Kibilds (day@picklejarcommunications.com):

• An overview of your experience in whatever format best works for you (could be a CV or resume, or a video resume, or a portfolio if you already have one available)

• An outline of why you want this role, why you believe that you’re a good fit, and how you see it supporting you in your own career development and aspirations. It doesn’t have to be a letter. Feel free to structure this however you’d like (bullet points, mindmap, sketchnote, etc.).

We will review all applications and notify you by email (or another method if you specify otherwise) if you’ve been selected for step 2 by Friday, 3 December 2021.

Step 2 — Interview beginning week of 6 December.

If you’re successful in progressing to step 2, we will invite you into a conversation with us during the week beginning 6 December 2021.

We want to conduct a process that doesn’t ask you to do a lot of preparation or speculative work. We believe that such approaches are not particularly inclusive for people with existing time commitments and create inequality in the process.

We want to see what you’re like when you’re thinking and brainstorming. You can expect questions like: What’s the first thing you would want to implement at Pickle Jar? What makes an online conference stand out from the rest? We may also share some of our half-baked ideas and get your take on them. We also like to hear people speak about things they’re proud of, so we may ask you to share your favourite past work with us.

We care about who you are and what you want to be fulfilled. So, we will spend time getting to know you and your aspirations. You’ll also have the opportunity to really get to know us and to assess whether we’re a good fit for you.

Step 3 — Final decision by 17 December:

If we find a great match, we hope to offer the role by Friday, 17 December 2021. We would love for the person to begin sometime in January 2022 (though if you have a longer notice period, please don’t let that put you off of applying).

For any unsuccessful applicants, we will happily provide proper feedback if you request it. 

Want to know more?

If you have questions about this position, email Day Kibilds, Director of Growth, at day@picklejarcommunications.com.