Media Relations Executive

Position - Permanent - Full time

Location - Hybrid working with 1-2 days a week in our Birmingham City Centre office

Salary - £28,261 per annum

Our Media Relations Executive will be key to delivering West Midlands Trains' media engagement strategy, promoting the business in a positive, balanced and well-informed way across local, national, trade and social media.

You'll be adept at drafting and securing coverage for press releases, briefing our spokespeople and managing our press office function efficiently, including the out of hours on-call rota. You'll be an enthusiastic and proactive member of the External Communications and Engagement Team working with our marketing and internal communications teams to identify media opportunities that create goodwill and deliver a positive reputation for WMT. You'll be involved in some exciting opportunities to promote our £1bn investment programme and will support activity around major events such as the Commonwealth Games.

This is a permanent role working 37 hours per week, with occasional out of hours working as required. We support hybrid working with 1 to 2 days in the office per week.

Key accountabilities:

• Work closely with the Head of External Communications and Engagement, and PR and Public Affairs Manager contributing towards the corporate PR and media strategy.
• Ensure all opportunities to build company reputation are optimised, via press releases, excellent media relationships (regional, trade and national), promotional initiatives, sponsorship, publications and other PR initiatives. Help ensure corporate PR and press initiatives support and complement wider business and marketing strategy. Optimise positive media sentiment scores.
• Research and write material to positively inform and influence internal and external audiences.
• Ensure all media enquiries are answered in a timely and accurate manner.
• Build relationships with media management peers and colleagues in partner organisations to support WMT’s drive to improve customer service, reputation and the WMT Investment Programme.
• Maintain effective systems for managing and measuring (traditional and social) media engagement including, but not exclusively, Mynewsdesk, Twitter and Press Data (or their successors).
• Support the Community Rail Strategy (including station adoption) by working with WMT’s Community and Stakeholder team to publicise service development on local routes through successful partnerships.
• Support the Head of External Communications and Engagement and PR and Public Affairs Manager to deliver the media training programme for the business. 

Person specification:

• Experience in Media management and PR campaigns.
• Effective communicator with the ability to engage and influence to various audiences.
• Ability to develop strong relationships and partnership working
• Good political awareness
• Commercial awareness and good financial management
• Experience of operating with senior managers and directors
• Excellent news sense and writing, oral presentation, and communication skills
• Researching skills
• Ability to understand and act on key business priorities
• Ability to work accurately and calmly under intense pressure
• Ability to secure delivery through all parts of the organisation
• Educated to degree level (or working towards) in journalism, communications, public relations or marketing, is advantageous.
• A professional qualification from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations or the Chartered Institute of Marketing or working towards, is desirable.

Please see attached job description for further information.

In addition to a competitive salary West Midlands Trains offers a wealth of benefits including free travel on Abellio trains for you, your partner, and dependent children, 75% discount on other train travel over most of the UK rail network, access to an Employee Recognition and Benefits Platform, development opportunities to help further your career with West Midlands Trains, and a defined benefit salary pension.

We reserve the right to withdraw this advert at any time due to high volumes of applications (please submit your application as early as possible to avoid disappointment).

Applications will be considered from internal colleagues with 6 months experience after completion of their probationary period and a full check of absence and disciplinary records.