EVENTS MANAGER
Muddy Matches (www.muddymatches.co.uk) is a country-focused online dating site and events company operating from the rural village of Podington on the Bedfordshire/Northamptonshire border.
A fantastic opportunity has arisen for a friendly and well-organised Events Manager, with a combination of events organisation, marketing and administration experience, to join our small but expanding team.
About Our Events
After launching the website in March 2007, we held our first Muddy Matches event in April 2008 and have been growing the events side of the business since then. In 2009 we organised 30 events across the UK and Ireland and, with your help, we are looking to at least double this in 2010.
To date, we have organised a wide variety of events, including dinners, walks, clay shoots, race days, speed dating nights, activity weekends, sailing trips and more recently a ski trip, as well as our big Mud Lovers Ball which is an annual event.
Our aim is to continue organising fun, country-focused events that give our members the opportunity to meet new like-minded people across the UK and Ireland.
About The Role
Ultimately, you will be responsible for managing the majority of our events through their full lifecycle, from concept to completion. However, many of the 2010 events have already been organised so, initially, you will be working closely alongside Emma and Lucy, the company directors, to learn the ropes before assuming full responsibility for the role towards the end of the year.
This is a brilliant opportunity for an experienced Events Manager to work in a varied, challenging, creative and sociable role in which you will have the opportunity to see many different parts of the UK and Ireland and meet a lot of interesting people along the way.
The position is full time and, due to the nature of the role, a lot of travel and evening/weekend work will be required. When hosting an event, you will be given time off in lieu during the week, however, you will need a certain degree of flexibility regarding your working hours. Salary on application.
Your main duties will include:
- Researching events, contacting suppliers and cataloguing any information you obtain for the team’s reference in the future.
- Putting together a draft calendar of events for the end of 2010 onwards and making sure the UK & Ireland is evenly represented and that the events don’t clash etc.
- Preparing budgets - preparing a ticket pricing structure, and preparing and presenting for approval a comprehensive budget for each event.
- Deciding, with Emma and Lucy, on a final calendar of events.
- Putting together a detailed plan for each event and posting them online.
- Marketing the events – from writing the event copy on the website to creating a timetable for marketing each event and deciding who to target from our database, it will be your responsibility to ensure that each event is attractive to our members and is well-attended.
- Completing all event administration, including answering any questions from our members.
- Liaising with the suppliers and/or hosts in the run-up to the event to make sure that everyone knows what they are supposed to be doing. Keeping a detailed working document of all the relevant information for each event so that, should the designated host not be able to attend the event for any reason, someone else could easily take their place.
- Arranging all the necessary items needed for the event, from decorations and name badges to promotional material and cash floats.
- Following budgets - being responsible for, and controlling, income and costs according to the budget for each event. Putting together monthly reports to show profitability.
- Hosting events – for the first year you will be expected to host a lot of the events. To start with you will shadow Emma and/or Lucy, before taking over the responsibility yourself. However, as the company grows, we will be looking to take on regional representatives to help host future events.
- After the event – receiving and dealing with any feedback and forwarding any relevant feedback (good and bad) to suppliers. Deciding if the event was a success, whether we should do it again and, if so, what (if any) changes we should make.
- Attending, where necessary, events organised by other companies to review their operations and participants.
- Organising, if and as required, stands at shows and events organised by other companies to promote the Muddy Matches events.
- Working alongside Emma & Lucy to develop an events strategy for 2011 and beyond. You will also be involved in recruiting and training the team of regional representatives.
- As we are a small team, it will also be important that you ‘muck in’ with things that aren’t necessarily part of your job description.
About You
To be considered for this position you must have extensive events organisation, marketing and administration experience. You will also need to demonstrate excellent spelling and grammar, good problem-solving skills and an eye for detail, as well as the ability to work on your own initiative.
Highly organised and creative, you will be unflappable under pressure with superb communication and team working skills. As very much a client-facing role, you must be friendly, approachable and well presented, whilst demonstrating a good knowledge/understanding of the countryside. Experience of working within the rural community is also desirable.
As the role involves a lot of travel, you will also need a full clean* driving licence.
*if you think you are the right person for the job but your licence is not completely clean, we may still consider you for the role but please disclose how many points you have on application.
How To Apply
To help us ensure we select the right candidates for interview please send us:
- your CV
- a covering letter focusing on what makes you ‘muddy’, why you are the right person for the job and what salary range you would ideally be looking for
- a document outlining what you believe to be the 10 most important things when organising an event from scratch
Application deadline: Friday 8th January 2010.
