Queensland University of Technology has a live Executive Assistant vacancy right now, and if you've been doing high-level administrative support in Brisbane for more than three years, you should read the position description before the panel shortlists. The role is advertised through QUT's standard recruitment portal, which means you'll need to create an account or log in before you can see the full details and submit an application.

Here's what matters. QUT is one of Australia's largest public universities. It runs its two main Brisbane campuses at Gardens Point in the central business district and Kelvin Grove a few kilometres north, plus a smaller presence at Caboolture. Around 50,000 students and several thousand professional and academic staff move through those campuses each year, and the executive layer — Executive Deans, Pro Vice-Chancellors, Directors of corporate portfolios, the Vice-Chancellor's own office — runs on the work of a relatively small number of Executive Assistants.

The title hasn't changed much in twenty years. The actual work has. A university Executive Assistant today prepares committee papers, chases action items from meetings, manages inbox triage for the executive, books complicated multi-leg travel, reconciles credit card statements and travel claims, and often coordinates the other administrative staff in the office. You are the person who knows where everything is, what's due, and what the executive cannot afford to miss. Nobody understands how much institutional knowledge sits in these roles until the person leaves.

Reading the QUT Ad Before You Apply

QUT's recruitment system follows the same structure most Australian universities use for professional staff roles. You'll see a position description that splits the role into key accountabilities, a longer list of selection criteria, and a reference number. The public preview doesn't always show which executive portfolio the role supports, and that detail changes the job dramatically.

Supporting an Executive Dean in a health faculty means committee cycles, accreditation documents, external partners and clinical stakeholders. Supporting a Director of a corporate portfolio like Finance or People means budget cycles, enterprise-level projects, a very different stakeholder set, and fewer student-facing touchpoints. Both roles are called Executive Assistant. Only one of them suits you, and you should know which before you spend three hours on an application.

The selection criteria are not window dressing. QUT panels score responses against them. If the position asks for experience preparing board and committee papers and you only mention diary management, you've missed the brief even if you're a brilliant diary manager. This is the biggest shift for candidates coming from the private sector, where a one-page cover letter and a resume are usually enough. University recruitment is criterion-referenced. Your application is evidence.

Pay, HEW Levels, and What 17 Percent Super Does to the Package

Professional staff at Australian universities are classified on the Higher Education Worker scale, abbreviated HEW. The scale runs from HEW 1 through HEW 10, and Executive Assistant roles at QUT and comparable universities sit between HEW 5 and HEW 7 depending on the size of the portfolio, whether the role has supervisory duties, and the reporting line.

Base salaries for HEW 5 through HEW 7 positions under current Queensland university enterprise agreements typically run from the mid-$70,000s to just over $100,000 per year. The position description will confirm the level. What won't be obvious unless you look is superannuation: Australian universities pay 17 percent employer super, well above the national legislated minimum. In a private sector job advertising the same base salary, your employer contribution might be 11.5 percent. Over a decade, that gap compounds into a substantial amount of money. You can check the classification structure and conditions in the applicable university enterprise agreement through the Fair Work Commission's enterprise agreements page.

The conditions matter too. Many Queensland university professional staff work a 36.25-hour standard week. Flexible work arrangements are negotiated and written into agreements rather than left to a manager's discretion, and leave provisions tend to be stronger than the private sector norm. If you're currently doing EA work for a law firm, an accounting practice, or a property group, the university base salary may look lower. The total package and the pace of the role may not be.

Building an Application That Gets Shortlisted

Most candidates who apply for university EA roles do two things badly: they write a generic cover letter, and they treat the selection criteria as a formality. The candidates who get interviews do the opposite. Here's how to be in the second group.

• Write the cover letter for QUT specifically. Reference the portfolio if you can identify it. Say in plain terms why supporting a senior leader in a large public university appeals to you. Experience in higher education, the public sector, health, or another complex regulated environment belongs in the first paragraph.
• When you address selection criteria, use the STAR structure — Situation, Task, Action, Result — and keep each response to one strong, specific example. A committee with 25 members across four faculties. A budget you helped administer. Travel for three executives across eight countries. Concrete details beat adjectives every time.
• Shape your resume around substance, not duties. Every bullet should tell the reader what changed because you did it. "Managed the Dean's diary" is weak. "Managed the Dean's diary across two campuses and rebuilt the standing meeting schedule, recovering four hours per week for research and external engagement" is stronger.
• Prepare everything as PDFs before you open the form. The portal will ask you to attach your documents, and the last thing you want is to close the browser looking for a file you haven't formatted yet.

Candidates who have supported an executive through a restructure or a major accreditation visit should lead with that story on the first page. Panels read dozens of these applications in a sitting. They remember the person who showed them a real situation with a clear result.

Why Strong Executive Assistants Are Hard for Universities to Find

Australian universities have struggled to fill Executive Assistant roles quickly in the past three years. The role has become more demanding — heavier committee loads, a growing stack of software systems, and compliance work that didn't exist a decade ago — while the pay bands haven't moved much relative to comparable private sector support roles. The strongest administrative professionals often move into project coordination or operations roles with clearer progression. Senior EA vacancies sit open longer than candidates expect.

If you're an experienced EA or a senior administrator looking for more responsibility, that's your opening. A candidate who can demonstrate real executive support experience, picks up new systems quickly, and writes a crisp, specific application is not competing against a hundred identical applicants. You're competing against maybe ten or fifteen serious candidates, and several of them won't have addressed the selection criteria properly. Queensland's labour market confirms the demand — the Australian Government's Labour Market Insights profile for personal assistants and secretaries shows sustained employment in the state, with Brisbane holding the largest share of roles. The work isn't disappearing. It's getting harder to staff well.

The live QUT Executive Assistant listing sits on the university's recruitment portal, and a cleaner summary of the same vacancy is kept up to date on AcademicJobs.com so candidates can review the requirements before committing to the full application.

How to Apply This Week

The QUT role is live now. The portal will ask you to register or sign in before you can complete the application, and you'll need your resume, a cover letter or statement, and your responses to the selection criteria ready to upload as PDFs. Prepare everything before you start the form. Recruitment portals time out, and you don't want to lose a well-written response to a session expiry.

Set aside two focused hours. Read the position description line by line. Draft your selection criteria responses in a separate document. Proofread. Then submit. If you know someone inside QUT, ask them about the portfolio before you write — a ten-minute conversation can sharpen your application more than another hour of rewriting.

Check the closing date in the listing and work backwards from there. If you're interstate and considering a move to Brisbane, look at the Gardens Point and Kelvin Grove campus locations and think about where you'd live and commute from. The panel can't help you with that decision, but it matters for whether you'd actually accept the role.