Executive Assistant

You will need to be either UK-based or have the right to work in the UK for this role. This role and the whole business are fully remote.

Ellipsis is a world-class SEO Content agency. SEO is winner-takes-all, and we make our clients the winners. We produce SEO Content that achieves top rankings for clients at scale.

Ellipsis is a world-class SEO Content agency that’s on a mission to be the best in the world at SEO Content. We are a modern, fully remote team and business, and operate a fast-paced, supportive, and ambitious environment.

We’re seeking an Executive Assistant. You will be our first hire focused on operations and will be critical in ensuring we work efficiently.

Ellipsis is a 100% remote team, and we’ve been fully remote since our first day 6 years ago. We lean into the best things about being remote: we balance collaboration, “Deep Work”, regular team retreats, and we put a lot of work into a supporting and inclusive culture where everyone can do the best work of their careers.

We’re distributed across the world, but our core collaboration hours are GMT/UTC-based. We often meet up with colleagues for team meetups and conferences.

Our SEO Content work is branded as Content Growth, and clients engage us to produce a set number of posts each month on retainer based on an SEO Content strategy we formulate for them, which is focused on bringing them impressive results.

With Content Growth, we take care of everything end-to-end, from high-level SEO strategy, keyword selection (which is powered by our proprietary FALCON AI), content briefs, content production, publication, promotion and link building, rank tracking, and troubleshooting SEO queries. Our Content team leads these projects and takes care of the content production, and our SEO team takes care of the SEO requirements.

Ellipsis is growing quickly. We do outstanding work and are building something special. It’s an exciting time to join us.

–

As our new Executive Assistant, you’ll support the Managing Director and business. Ellipsis’ Managing Director, Alex, is also the Founder of the business.

You will be the metronome that keeps the business ticking. Your work will be extremely high-impact, and you’ll be involved at a high-level across the business.

You will be our first hire solely focused on the internals of the business. We don’t have any internal operations or finance functions (they’re currently either done by others internally or outsourced), and you’ll take on much of these roles.

This position can be broken down as follows:

• 30% meetings – prep, attendance, follow-up
• 30% process-driven company / MD admin
• 40% reactive work and special projects

Remote work requires trust and in this role this will be absolutely critical. Trust is built over time, and accordingly your responsibilities will grow over time. Our hope is that you will prove indispensable to the operation of the business, but we understand it will take months to get to this place. Thus, below is a list of some of the responsibilities you’ll be able to grow into over time.

Meetings

• Prepare for meetings, including ensuring slides and agendas are prepared, and internal notes are prepared. Your goal is to ensure we utilise our meeting time most effectively and are able to put our best feet forward.
• Attend meetings and take minutes, or listen to recordings of meetings and take minutes. You should be extremely comfortable with crafting accurate, effective, and useful minutes.
• Triage next actions arising from meetings, including assigning or drafting follow-up emails or tasks.
• Recommend opportunities for efficiencies which can improve future meetings!

Sales and marketing admin

• Ensure CRM, notes, etc are updated following meetings.
• Respond to new enquiries and facilitate sales meetings.
  • Most of this is done by our automation, but with your intense attention to detail, you’ll make sure nothing gets missed – and instead of just flagging it, you’ll proactively suggest or draft a next action.
• Draft sales emails, primarily as follow-ups from the MD or Head of Partnerships’ meetings.
  • You’ll be expected to take the initiative. For example, we might tell a client on a call we’ll draft a quote. You’ll need to draft the quote based on pricing you’ve found for similar previous projects, for the MD to review.
• Ensure all follow-ups are delivered in a timely manner, roping in stakeholders if and where necessary and taking the responsibility for delivery.

Finance and company operations admin

• File company expenses
• Collect invoices from contractors
• Draft invoices for clients
• Draft batch payments for review
• Coordinate payroll and pensions with our accounts, including uploading information
• Ensure on-time payment from clients and chase late payments
• Misc paperwork including dealing with compliance requirements and associated deadlines

Emails

• Assist the Managing Director with maintaining an organised and efficient inbox, including drafting replies or responding directly on his behalf at times
• Effectively triage emails, understand possible courses of action, and present information to the MD in a way that lets him quickly provide a batch of responses that unblock you

Special projects

• Assist the MD with tasks day-to-day. The remit of this role is not “follow this clearly defined process every time”, but “take this mostly finished project and figure out how to proactively take it to completion”. These tasks might touch project management, writing/editing, triaging information, and ensuring action is taken. Some examples:
  • We are on the pathway to becoming a B Corporation and this requires a lot of paperwork. You’ll lead the work to comply with B Corp standards This will involve a lot of project management, coordinating new policies, delegating tasks and follow-up to ensure projects are done on-time and successfully.

• Put together the company monthly newsletter from content provided by the MD or Strategy team: load into our email software + WordPress and schedule, draft and schedule social media posts (including Thought Leadership style LinkedIn content) based on the newsletter (this requires understanding which parts of the content work as standalone pieces, liaising with our Graphic Designer to get assets), and schedule content across company and personal LinkedIns.

• You will be responsible for organising our (typically twice-a-year) company meet-ups, including researching and budgeting locations, booking flights and hotels for 15+ people, finding and booking restaurants, meeting rooms, and activities.
  • You’ll need to mix effective research skills with organisation. What’s the best compromise for a hotel, between the cost of 15+ rooms, travel time from our meeting space, and the need for a comfortable stay? How will we get from the hotel to dinner if it’s raining? Where will we find a local photographer? Are there enough restaurants that meet everyone’s dietary requirements? These are all questions you’ll need to proactively deal with to ensure we have a productive  and smooth trip.
• On a smaller scale: members of the Leadership team travel a couple of times a year for conferences. You’ll be responsible for (remotely) assisting them with travel, hotels, and client dinners/gifts.

Ellipsis is a fully remote company with team members across the globe. Ellipsis operates a generous flexitime policy and is currently trialling a once-a-month 4 day work week! You will be eligible for both! Your role, however, requires some flexibility to match the MD’s meeting schedule in particular.

This often involves meetings 4-6pm UK with follow-up immediately after, in order to have overlap with clients in California. Your assistance may be required to prepare for, minute, and follow-up with these meetings (if urgent this needs to be done immediately, otherwise it can wait until the morning). Meetings are not typically scheduled later than this, but you will need to be flexible from time to time. Where your hours differ from a 9-5.30 working day, you’ll be able to use time off in lieu.

This is a business-focused role and the overwhelming responsibility is with the business. You may be occasionally asked to take care of personal admin for the MD.

Requirements: hard skills

• 3+ years experience in an Executive Assistant or similar role; similar roles might include “Project Manager”, “Operations Manager”, “Client Services Manager”, or “Team Lead”
• Impeccable English editorial skills
• Proven experience writing, proofreading, and editing
• Meticulous attention to detail
• Experience working remotely full time
• Availability to work on UK time, with some flexibility for meetings
• Some knowledge of SEO, CRO, and marketing methodology

Requirements: soft skills

• Fantastic communication skills: Remote work relies on mutual trust, so frequent and clear written communication is essential
• Receptive to feedback and solutions-oriented: We share and learn from each other honestly, openly, and easily
• High level of self-awareness: a “people person”: You’ll be dealing with Content Managers and Writers on a daily basis, so this is an integral part of the role
• Proven organisational skills: You must be obsessive with deadlines, managing and updating tasks, and totally reliable
• Self-driven work ethic: You need to be self-motivated, comfortable taking the initiative, and see projects through to completion
• Unwaveringly professional: You’ll be dealing with confidential information constantly and must be discrete and professional with this

Bonus points if you have:

• Experience in a fully remote-work environment
• Digital marketing agency experience

• This is a full-time, 100% remote role. Work from home, or the beach! You must have the right to work in the UK for this role.
• Competitive, full-time salary with pension, benchmarked to UK rates and based on experience. The range for this role is: £38k-£43k/year
• 28 days of paid holiday
  • An additional 1 paid holiday day a year with each year of tenure, up to a maximum of 5 additional days
• 4-day work week, once a month (we are trialing this from January 2024!)
• Genuinely flexible working, although noting the meeting schedule requirements above
• Regular team retreats (~2 per year); last was Madrid, next is Edinburgh!
• Time and budget for learning and development
• Enhanced maternity/paternity leave, and good sick pay
• You’ll work for a sustainable, ethical company: we are aiming to become a B Corp by the end of 2024

The application process

It’s important we find the best candidate for this position, and our selection process will reflect this.

Much of our company Wiki is externally accessible, and you’re encouraged to read through this before applying. We have a very useful guide to our interview process available here. This tells you what we’re looking for and reading this will significantly increase your chance of success!

We’ll review applications on a rolling basis but interviews start after the closing date. There’s thus no benefit to rushing to apply: we will bias heavily towards your application’s answers rather than your CV, and we’d love for you to take your time.

We’re fortunate to receive a large volume of applications. You can make your application stand out by paying special attention to the main responsibilities of this role, and the information on the Wiki. If you think you’re a fit, or could be a fit – go for it!

We use video calls for interviews. You’ll have video interviews using Google Meet, including with members of the Leadership team and the Managing Director.

We understand that this is as much you interviewing us, as the other way round. Throughout the interview process, we’re extremely happy to answer your questions about the business, working here, and the future of the company.

The final stage of our hiring process is a paid test project, which will be similar to work you could expect to do if you were hired. We’ll give you a week to complete the project, but expect that you’ll only need ~4 hours.

Following the completion of trial projects, we’ll ask for professional references from a previous manager and co-worker. We ask candidates to introduce us to their references, for a 10 minute call or email conversation. We then expect to move to make an offer quickly.

We do great work for clients and are building an ethical business that lets everyone do their best work. If you think you could be the next person to join our team, please apply 🙂

How to apply

Please apply through Workable: https://apply.workable.com/getellipsis. We will decide who progresses to the next stage based on the form you submit, and your CV. Please give us a good reason to select you! Taking the time to research the role, what we’re looking for, what we do, and what you can do for us will increase your chance of success. Your cover letter is where you have the space to do this.

Ellipsis is an equal opportunity workplace and is committed to equal employment opportunity.

Whilst we love technology and sit at the leading edge of its adoption (we automate hundreds of thousands of actions a month internally), we want to hear from you rather than from ChatGPT.

We will be screening applications for AI-generated content and will automatically disqualify AI-generated applications.

The deadline for submission is the end of the day, on 15th January 2024. We’ll be in touch with all candidates, following the close of applications.