Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS) at The University of Manchester is seeking to appoint a dynamic and experienced Head of Marketing, Communications and Recruitment (AMBS) to join the senior leadership team at a truly exciting time for the School and University.
In 2025, AMBS marks its 60th anniversary - a milestone that celebrates our legacy of innovation, impact, and global influence. As we look to the future, we are also contributing to the University of Manchester’s ambitious Manchester 2035 strategy, which will shape the next decade of the University’s development.
This is a pivotal leadership role for an ambitious professional who wants to make a lasting impact - building our reputation, driving engagement, and enhancing recruitment at a time of celebration, reflection, and bold vision.
As a key member of both the School’s senior leadership team, AMBS professional services leadership team and Humanities Marketing, Communications and Recruitment leadership team, you will lead a talented team in shaping the voice, vision, and brand of AMBS – both internally and externally.
Against a highly competitive business education market, you will oversee all marketing, communications, and recruitment activities for AMBS’ MBA & Global Programmes, Executive Education, and ensure coherence with undergraduate and postgraduate taught (Masters) strategies across the Faculty.
Key Responsibilities:
• Lead the development and delivery of AMBS’ internal and external communications and marketing strategies, including clear objectives, priorities, and evaluation metrics.
• Oversee all marketing and recruitment priorities, ensuring alignment with School, Faculty and University strategic goals, and establish robust mechanisms for performance evaluation.
• Direct and manage the Marketing, Communications and Recruitment Team, including target setting, staff development, workflow management, and budget oversight.
• Champion evidence-based marketing, using insight, benchmarking, and ROI analysis to inform planning and evaluate campaign success.
• Maximise AMBS’ reputation through strategic communications and media activity.
• Oversee the activity of the school’s external PR agency and media relations strategy to promote the school’s work and manage reputation.
• Provide professional advice on communications and marketing strategy to the Head of School, Director of School Operations and other senior stakeholders.
• Collaborate with sales colleagues to support Salesforce CRM development, ensuring marketing and recruitment alignment and improved data-driven decisions.
• Explore and integrate artificial intelligence (AI) tools into marketing activities to drive innovation, engagement, and personalisation.
• Shape pricing, discounting, and international market priorities; coordinate with international centres to support global recruitment.
• Nurture prospective students through structured lead scoring and engagement.
• Collaborate with Faculty and University teams to support strategic marketing and identify opportunities for joint activity and intelligence gathering.
• Act as brand manager and custodian of AMBS and UoM’s visual identity across all materials.
• Oversee the corporate events strategy, supporting corporate relations and reputation.
Essential skills:
• Educated to degree level or with extensive experience, ideally combined with a marketing communications qualification.
• Extensive experience in integrated strategic marketing and communications within complex organisations.
• Proven interpersonal and communication skills to build and motivate teams and external partners.
• Resilient under pressure, with effective issue and crisis handling skills.
• Deep understanding of media relations and strategic PR.
• Persuasive, tenacious, highly visible, and comfortable operating across departments and at senior levels.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Experience of leading teams and managing budgets.
• Excellent copywriting, proofreading, and IT skills.
• Ability to represent AMBS professionally at all times.
• Awareness of the international business school landscape is desirable.
As one of the leading Universities our employees enjoy exclusive access to excellent benefits and schemes including:
The University of Manchester is part of the prestigious Russell Group of universities and highly respected across the globe as a centre of teaching excellence and research innovation and discovery.
With 25 Nobel Prize winners among our current and former staff and students, we have a history of world firsts, with our impact ranging from splitting the atom to giving the world graphene.
Our purpose is to advance education, knowledge, and wisdom for the good of society, putting our three core goals of research and discovery, teaching and learning, and social responsibility at the heart of everything we do.
As an equal opportunities employer we welcome applicants from all sections of the community regardless of age, sex, gender (or gender identity), ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation and transgender status. All appointments are made on merit.
Our University is positive about flexible working – you can find out more here
Blended working arrangements may be considered
Please note that we are unable to respond to enquiries, accept CVs or applications from Recruitment Agencies.
Enquiries about the vacancy, shortlisting and interviews:
Name: Jen Pass, Talent Acquisition Business Partner
Email: Jennifer.pass@manchester.ac.uk
General enquiries:
Email: People.Recruitment@manchester.ac.uk
Technical support:
Jobtrain: 0161 850 2004 https://jobseekersupport.jobtrain.co.uk/support/home
This vacancy will close for applications at midnight on the closing date.
Please see the link below for the Further Particulars document which contains the person specification criteria.
