PR Executive

Job Details

Salary: Competitive per annum

Hours: 37.5 per week, Monday - Friday. Please note for 1 week in 6 you'll be on 24/7 call.

Location: Hybrid remote working with days in our VHQ Crawley, West Sussex - speak to us about what flexibility looks like for you.

Contract: Permanent

Closing Date: 1st October 2021

Many of our staff at Virgin work flexibly and in many different ways, including different core hours or remote working. Please talk to us at your application or interview stage about the flexibility you need. We can't promise to give you exactly what you want, but we are happy to explore what's possible for the role.

In a nutshell

At Virgin Atlantic, we’re just as passionate as we’ve always been about becoming the most loved travel company. One thing we know for sure – this last year has shown that when we combine our brand with the power of amazing people, we make something truly magical.

In this exciting role as PR Executive you will underpin the day to day smooth-running of the press office for Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Atlantic Holidays, managing issues and protecting the brand whilst also driving positive press coverage across a wide range of media. As a company we receive over.30,000 incoming requests per annum spanning every facet of the business. In this busy and varied role, you’ll be the first point of contact for media/influencers and responsible for ensuring all queries about the company are answered in a timely fashion.

Day to day

Some of your key responsibilities as our PR Executive will be:

• Owning relationships with key external partners including providers of media monitoring and journalist databases, you’ll take the lead on reporting the success of the PR team back to the business as well as keeping abreast of industry and media trends.
• Play a central role in the airline’s crisis communications response team, with the requirement to pick up out of hours on-call responsibility on a rota with the rest of the media relations team.
• Virgin Atlantic is famous for its bold PR campaigns and in this role you would be supporting the PR Managers, working on the next Pride Flight, the launch of a new route or the unveiling of our latest state of the art aircraft.
• You’ll also take responsibility for media travel requests, organising and running media trips to ensure the journalists have the very best Virgin Atlantic experience.
• As an experienced PR Executive, you’ll play a vital role in the Virgin Atlantic media relations team, working across major projects to drive our ambition to become the most loved travel company.

About you

In this role you’ll need to be confident, and experienced in dealing with journalists, as well as sound news judgement and knowledge of the UK media landscape.

You may come from a similar Press Office role or be an Account Executive looking to move inhouse.

Alongside the above we’re looking for our successful PR Executive to have the following:

• Educated to degree level
• Experience of maintaining relationships with journalists and social influencers, and leveraging them to place stories and create brand exposure
• Professional manner to handle sensitive and confidential matters
• Excellent written and verbal communications skills
• Exceptional organisation and administrative skills, with the ability to prioritise multiple tasks and projects within a high pressure environment
• A collaborative team player who can build consensus and work in partnership with diverse teams across overseas markets.

Does this sound like you? Are you excited to live and breathe our Virgin Atlantic brand? Then we’d love to hear from you!

Be yourself – Our differences make us stronger

Virgin Atlantic are committed equal opportunities employers and positively encourage applications from suitably qualified and eligible applicants regardless of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, religion or belief, marital status, pregnancy and maternity. Diversity brings strength which is why we strive to provide an inclusive environment where individuality is celebrated, and we can ignite the potential of our forward-thinking mix of people.

Please be aware as part of our recruitment process we may look to use a variety of resourcing tools to help us understand your skills and experience in relation to the role you have applied for. These may include application questions, video interviews or online testing. Please feel free to contact us at recruitment@fly.virgin.com if there are any reasonable adjustments to our process that you would like us to consider, for example use of hearing loops, sign language interpreter etc. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if there are any issues preventing you from being at your best during your application or assessment process. Any issues raised after your assessment is completed or once a decision has been made will be too late for us to consider within our process.

You'll be assessed against our values for a selection of your interview process, learn more about them here: Our Values