Executive assistant (12 month FTC)

Closing date for applications: 26 January 2026

Salary: Up to £40,000 dependent on experience and location (+bonus +benefits)

Location: The role will be based at our London office, with a blend of in-office (3 days) and homeworking (2 days) per week

Are you experienced in supporting senior staff, with brilliant problem-solving skills, highly organised and an interest in book publishing?

Hachette Children's Group is one of the UK's largest children's publishers, our mission is to make it easy for children and young people everywhere to access books and see themselves reflected. We aim to maximise our readers' life chances by inspiring a lifelong love of reading, publishing books for every stage of their journey to adulthood from Enid Blyton to Alice Oseman's Heartstopper. Hachette Children's Group is a division of Hachette, one of the largest publishing groups in the UK, with 10 publishing divisions and over 60 imprints. Everyone here is proud to be in the business of opening doors and minds.

What you'll be doing

You will provide administrative and organisational support to the managing director of Hachette Children’s Group. Key responsibilities of the role include but are not limited to:

• Managing the MD’s complex diary
• Booking and co-ordinating travel
• Managing the slides, agenda, and minutes for meetings
• Supporting the MD with office operations, reviewing and updating employee guidance notes, org charts and procedures
• Supporting the other members of the HCG Board, as needed from time to time
• Processing invoices and expenses
• Arranging schedules for book fairs and other events
• Booking author/agent lunches/dinners

Who we are looking for

This 12-month parental leave role requires strong communication, problem-solving and project-management skills, attention to detail and the ability to be flexible, adaptable and thrive in a fast-paced hybrid office environment. What really matters is that you are calm and professional, take initiative, enjoy a challenge, enjoy working with a wide variety of people and projects and take pride in improving processes.

Key attributes include:

• Significant office-based work experience, supporting a senior manager or team or both
• Demonstrable experience of organising a complex administrative workload and juggling deadlines and priorities
• Discreet and capable of dealing with commercially or personally sensitive information at the highest level
• Demonstrable experience in communicating appropriately, unambiguously, and effectively with colleagues and third parties at a variety of levels, both verbally and in writing
• Complex diary management and travel itinerary experience
• Confident in the use of key IT programmes and able to adapt to using new systems and processes with ease
• Outstanding interpersonal skills

What we offer

Our staff are our greatest asset, and our benefits reflect this:

• 28 annual leave days per year, increases to 29 days after 2 years' service and goes up to 30 days after 5 years' (+ bank holidays)
• Generous pension schemes
• Rent deposit loans
• 2 community days per year
• Summer hours (finishing at 1pm on Fridays during the summer months)
• Retail discounts through Hachette rewards
• Cycle to Work scheme
• Eye care vouchers
• Wide-ranging training library
• Development programmes (including mentoring)
• Up to 70% off book purchases
• A charity bookshelf
• 12 Staff-led employee networks that are voluntary, including AgeWise, Gender Balance, Thrive, Pride, All Together, Wellbeing and religious networks
• Season ticket loans
• And much more!

Our commitment

The Book Trade Charity offers financial support to people looking to enter the book trade but who may struggle to afford the costs of attending interviews and undertaking junior roles. For more information visit www.booktradeentrysupport.org

Hachette employs people on the basis of their abilities. We aim to attract and develop talent from a base as broad as the world of readers we want to reach, with a wide and representative range of age, faith, disability, race, gender, sexuality and socio-economic, regional and cultural backgrounds. If you are shortlisted and need us to make any adjustments to help you attend for interview, please let us know.

Please include in your application that you found this role through Creative Access.