Are you an organizational and administrative talent with a drive for keeping everything on track? Do you enjoy working in an international environment with a passion for our green living environment? Then this could be an interesting next step for you!

We are looking for a proactive and reliable Management Assistant to support our academic and administrative teams. If you have a strength in taking minutes of management meetings, you excel at managing calendars and keeping track of important deadlines, and you get energy from organizing and facilitating meetings and small events, we want to hear from you!

The Soil Biology Group (SBL) is part of the Environmental Sciences Group (ESG) at Wageningen University & Research. SBL is a dynamic and internationally recognized research group that contributes to a sustainable and thriving environment through impactful research in soil health and biodiversity. We work for and collaborate with regional, national and international governmental agencies, private clients and other partners. The SBL team leads on five thematic areas: Fertile soils, Soils in a changing climate, Functional Soil Biodiversity, and Soil Biology and Land Management. In this role you will support both the Academic team and the Management team of SBL.

Key Responsibilities:

• Calendar Management: Efficiently manage the calendars of managers and team members, ensuring smooth scheduling and coordination.
• Meeting Setup and Preparation: Organize and facilitate meetings, workshops, and events both internally and with external international partners. Experience with workshop support tools like MIRO/MURAL is a plus.
• Minute Taking: Accurately take minutes during (management team) meetings highlighting actionable items, and follow up on them.
• Document Archiving: Establish and maintain a logical structure for archiving documents.
• Project Management Support: Handle basic project management tasks such as initiating workflows, time tracking, financial processing, expense claims, and planning in administrative systems.
• Deadline Management: Keep an overview of important deadlines and milestones for the team, ensuring nothing is overlooked.
• Event and Travel Coordination: Manage the event and travel agenda, including booking arrangements for managers and team members.

If you have a keen eye for detail, excellent organizational skills, and the ability to juggle multiple tasks effectively, this role offers an exciting opportunity to contribute to our team’s success. Apply now and be part of a pleasant environment with great societal impact.

• Proficient in English; a reasonable level of Dutch is a plus
• Strong communication skills, with a focus on hospitality and professionalism
• Highly organized, proactive, and sensitive to the needs of a diverse team
• Familiar with digital tools for calendar management, meeting facilitation, and note-taking
• Creative skills for making visuals and supporting the creation of presentation templates

Wageningen University & Research offers excellent terms of employment. A few highlights from our Collective Labour Agreement include:

• sabbatical leave, study leave, and partially paid parental leave;
• working hours that can be discussed and arranged so that they allow for the best possible work-life balance;
• the option to accrue additional compensation / holiday hours by working more, per week;
• there is a strong focus on vitality and you can make use of the sports facilities available on campus for a small fee;
• a fixed December bonus of 8.3%;
• excellent pension scheme.

In addition to these first-rate employee benefits, you will of course receive a good salary. Depending on your experience, we offer a competitive gross salary of between 2844,- and € 3420,- for a full-time working week of 38 hours, in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreements for Dutch Universities (CAO-NU) (scale 6). Initially, we offer you a 6-month contract for 16 to 20 hours per week.

Wageningen University & Research encourages internal advancement opportunities and mobility with an internal recruitment policy. There are plenty of options for personal initiative in a learning environment, and we provide excellent training opportunities. We are offering a unique position in an international environment with a pleasant and open working atmosphere.

You are going to work at the greenest and most innovative campus in Holland, and at a university that has been chosen as the “Best University” in the Netherlands for the 19th consecutive time.

Wageningen University & Research

The mission of Wageningen University & Research is “To explore the potential of nature to improve the quality of life”. Under the banner Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen University and the specialised research institutes of the Wageningen Research Foundation have joined forces in contributing to finding solutions to important questions in the domain of healthy food and living environment. With its roughly 30 branches, 7,600 employees (6,700 fte) and 13,100 students and over 150,000 participants to WUR’s Life Long Learning, Wageningen University & Research is one of the leading organisations in its domain. The unique Wageningen approach lies in its integrated approach to issues and the collaboration between different disciplines.

Read the 5 reasons why your future colleagues enjoy working at WUR and watch the video below to get an idea of our green campus!

We will recruit for the vacancy ourselves, so no employment agencies please. However, sharing in your network is appreciated.