Are you a natural networker? Do your colleagues consider you a skilled and versatile communicator? And does your brain kick into gear at the thought of setting up internal communications in one of the most dynamic places in Limburg? Wonderful – then we would love to welcome you in our team!

We’re Maastricht University’s Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE): the youngest and most international science, technology, engineering and mathematics faculty in the Netherlands. Following years of explosive growth, we now proudly call ourselves home to around 2800 students and 500 staff members spread out over four different cities in Limburg. As a faculty, we’re eager, deeply committed to both education and research, and a bit rebellious.

We are looking for an internal communications advisor who takes up the challenge of establishing our internal communications landscape. As internal communications advisor, you are a strong discussion partner for management and staff. You proactively connect colleagues across the university and anticipate the communication needs of our students and staff. You are both strategic and hands-on: your strategic side helps you establish the right channels and select the right tone of voice, while your communication skills enable you to create messages in a (visually) attractive way.

Your responsibilities
The scope of your responsibilities reflects our faculty’s research and education profile. Your most important target audiences are current bachelor’s and master’s students, scientific staff members, and support staff members. Apart from that, the position comes with a lot of freedom to plot your own course.

Your tasks vary on a day-to-day basis, and take place in three domains:

• Strategy: shaping our faculty’s internal communications plan, giving prompted and unprompted advice on the use of communication tools and the messages we want to convey
• Networking: liaising with study programme directors and colleagues from the Education Office, liaising with the central university internal communications team, proactively staying informed about developments across the university
• Execution: creating content, for instance for the monthly faculty newsletter, intranet, and Canvas, facilitating opportunities for colleagues to connect, coordinating and managing student assistants who support internal/external communications activities

As internal communications advisor, you join 11 other professionals in the Marketing and Communications team of the faculty. You work closely with the Faculty Board and with our colleagues at the Education Office, where you physically spend one day a week to immerse yourself in everything related to education. Within the university, you take part in the UM Expert Team Internal Communications, where you meet your peers from other faculties and the central marketing and communications team.

• You have an academic or HBO education level, with a relevant educational background in for example Marketing and/or Communications or Journalism, or several years of experience working in a relevant position
• You have strong communicative skills, both in Dutch and English (native or near-native level, both orally and in writing)
• Excellent writing skills
• You have experience with or are willing to learn more about Intranet, e-mail newsletters, video production/publication and digital editing programmes such as Photoshop or InDesign. Experience with Drupal is a plus

Your profile/competences:

• Organisational sensitivity
• Initiative
• Accuracy
• Team player, enthusiastic and energetic

Fixed-term contract: 1 year.

The terms of employment of Maastricht University are set out in the Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities (CAO). Furthermore, local UM provisions also apply. For more information look at the website www.maastrichtuniversity.nl > About UM > Working at UM.

We offer a position for maximum 0.8 fte starting as soon as possible. You will initially be employed on a temporary contract for the duration of one year. Beyond that, we offer excellent possibilities for contract extension and the prospect of a permanent position in case of a mutually positive assessment.

The salary is stipulated in the Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities: a minimum of €2.960,- and a maximum of €4.670,- gross per month, depending on experience, for a full-time position of 38 hours a week (CAO-NU scale 10). On top of this, there is an annual holiday allowance (8% of annual income) and an annual end-of-year bonus (8.3% of annual income).

The position comes with a number of additional benefits, including:

• Partially paid parental leave
• A pension scheme
• The option to participate in collective healthcare insurance
• A welcoming and open work environment with a high degree of flexibility

Full conditions of employment are laid out in the Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities, supplemented with local UM provisions.

Maastricht University

Maastricht University is renowned for its unique, innovative, problem-based learning system, which is characterized by a small-scale and student-oriented approach. Research at UM is characterized by a multidisciplinary and thematic approach, and is concentrated in research institutes and schools. Maastricht University has around 22,000 students and about 5,000 employees. Reflecting the university's strong international profile, a fair amount of both students and staff are from abroad. The university hosts 6 faculties: Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Faculty of Law, School of Business and Economics, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience. For more information, visit www.maastrichtuniversity.nl.

The university is renowned for its small-scale and student-oriented approach. UM placed #9 in Times Higher Education’s (THE) Young Universities Ranking 2021, and #121 in THE’s World University Rankings 2021.

STEM research in Maastricht | The Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE) is home to several outstanding departments and institutions covering education and research in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) as well as the liberal arts and sciences. We are a young and rapidly growing faculty, which currently offers both bachelor’s and master’s programmes.

https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/fse

Living and working in Maastricht | Situated in the heart of Europe and within 30 kilometers from the German and Belgian borders, Maastricht and its 120,000 inhabitants have a strong international character. It is a safe and family-friendly city with a history spanning more than 2,000 years. The city’s rich past is reflected everywhere in the streets: the ratio of monuments-to-inhabitants is roughly 1:73.