About The Role

We’re offering the opportunity to work at an award winning company which has great potential for positive news stories. It’s an opportunity to get frequent national media coverage highlighting messages that will make a difference to people’s finances – and their lives. It’s an opportunity to work collaboratively, to be creative and imaginative and to try different ways of achieving eye-catching results.

We are looking for someone to join our small but growing in house press office and raise the profile of the Society across local and national print and broadcast media. You’ll be working closely with colleagues in internal comms, marketing, digital, product and beyond to make sure we make the most of all our opportunities. The Media Relations team works across the whole organisation, so building influence with people at all levels will be an important part of the everyday job.

Developing an understanding of the financial services industry and being able to identify – and anticipate - risks and opportunities is a vital part of the job. A creative mind is needed but equally so is a safe pair of hands and dealing with reputational issues both in and outside of normal working hours is expected.

You may be required to act as a spokesperson but it’s more likely you’ll need to advise and coach our existing spokespeople and identify new ones. You’ll need to get to know all the journalists on your beat, know what they are writing or talking about and understand what they are looking for from Coventry Building Society and its spokespeople.

About You

We’re looking for a good writer, a creative mind and a safe pair of hands. We want someone who has tasted success in their PR career and wants to keep going. You'll preferably have experience working as part of an in house press office (even better if it’s in financial services) and will have a range of experience getting results across local, national and trade media.

You’ll need to be comfortable dealing with senior stakeholders and journalists, managing your workload independently and responding to short deadlines. You’ll be resilient when you need to adapt your approach, and work with tact and diplomacy at all times. A ‘can do’ attitude and sense of ownership are essential skills for becoming successful in the role.

Most importantly, you’ll seek out and establish relationships in teams across the business to make sure collaborative work is the norm, not the exception. You’ll be comfortable reading the personal finance pages and trade press so you’re the first to know about news relevant to your stakeholders. Having a good grasp of social media will help.

You’ll have experience using human interest case studies, ONS data, and everything inbetween to make a story fly. You don’t need to be amazing at maths but you do need to be able to work out a percentage for your PR campaign analysis and you’ll need to know your mean from your median when you’re looking through the latest omnibus poll or national statistics for a news angle.

The closing date for applications is 5th January 2020

About The Company

 Coventry Building Society is the UK’s 2^nd largest building society, providing savings accounts and mortgages to around two million members across the country. It is the seventh largest lender in the UK with a large share of the Buy to Let market and a suite of highly competitive savings accounts.

Customer service is paramount and colleagues across the branch network, call centres and head offices pride themselves on putting members at the heart of everything they do. It is recognised as being one of the best places to work, making it to number 47 in the Sunday Times Best 100 Workplaces list. It has made the top 100 list for the past three years running.