Performance, Leadership and Capability Coordinator at QUT: What the Job Involves

Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has opened applications for a Performance, Leadership and Capability Coordinator in its people and culture function. It is a professional staff appointment, not an academic one, and the title makes the brief clear enough: the job exists to keep the performance cycle moving and to coordinate leadership development, then to produce reporting that tells the university whether either one is working.

QUT runs campuses at Gardens Point and Kelvin Grove and employs thousands of professional and academic staff. Development at that scale does not happen through goodwill. It requires someone who treats a workshop registration list and a probation completion report as seriously as a dean treats a curriculum approval.

What the role covers and what it tells you about the university

The position sits in the organisational development and capability part of the HR function, the part that worries about whether managers can give useful feedback and whether staff have the skills the institution will need three years from now. That work splits into familiar pieces: the performance review calendar, leadership program logistics, capability frameworks, learning systems and evaluation data.

A title like this also reflects how QUT manages professional development. When a university folds performance and capability into a standalone coordinator role, it is making a statement about resourcing. The institution is not expecting a generalist HR adviser to run leadership cohorts between recruitment tasks; it is paying someone to carry the operational load.

The administrative spine of the job

Most of the actual work is coordination rather than training delivery. On a Tuesday, the person in this role might chase three outstanding probation reviews, update the participant list for a women in leadership program, draft a reminder to heads of school about incomplete performance discussions, and prepare a dashboard for the next people committee meeting. The visible outcome is a workshop that starts on time. The less visible outcome is the attendance record and evaluation data that show who was in the room and whether it helped.

• Maintaining the performance and development cycle: deadlines, templates, completion reports and follow-ups with managers.
• Coordinating leadership development programs, including nominations, calendars, venues, facilitators, materials and participant communications.
• Supporting capability frameworks by mapping identified skills gaps to induction, online learning and targeted programs.
• Preparing data and reports for HR business partners and faculty leaders.
• Answering queries from staff and supervisors about performance processes, probation and learning systems.

Australian universities often call the annual conversation a performance and development discussion, or PDD. The coordinator is the person who makes sure the forms exist, the deadlines are met, and the discussion is recorded somewhere more useful than an email inbox.

Who should apply

This is not a senior leadership appointment. The title says coordinator, and the likely competition will include learning and development administrators, HR officers, project coordinators and executive assistants who have run training calendars or supported performance review processes. External applicants who have done similar work in government, health or large corporates often transfer well.

The useful evidence is not enthusiasm for staff development. It is proof of logistics under pressure: a program you scheduled, a system you maintained, a set of completion rates you improved, a report you wrote that someone actually used to make a decision.

• Experience with an HR information system, learning management system or event registration platform.
• Written communication clear enough to turn a policy requirement into an email a busy supervisor will act on.
• Stakeholder management with staff at every level, from casual employees to senior executives.
• Data reporting skills, including the ability to spot a missing record before it becomes a compliance problem.
• An eye for equity: who gets nominated for programs, whose performance conversations keep slipping, what the data says about it, and which staff groups never appear in the reports.

QUT classifies professional staff roles under its enterprise agreement. Applicants should check the position description for the exact HEW level and salary range, because the same coordinator title can sit at different levels depending on the portfolio and reporting line.

How to apply and what the panel will look for

The application is hosted on QUT's recruitment portal. You will typically need a cover letter, a current CV and a written statement addressing the selection criteria, but the portal is the only reliable place to confirm the required documents and closing date. Some QUT roles close earlier than planned if the response is strong, so do not treat a distant deadline as extra time.

The same opening is listed on AcademicJobs.com's university jobs board, which can be a quicker way to compare the role with similar positions while you prepare your application. For employment conditions, QUT's Working at QUT page is worth a read before you commit to the statement.

• Use the selection criteria as headings in your statement. Do not leave the panel to find the evidence.
• Give one concrete example per criterion: the situation, the action you took, the measurable result, and what you learned from it.
• Name the systems and platforms you have used, and say what you did with them, not just that you used them.
• Show scale: how many participants, how many records, what completion rate, what error rate.
• If you have worked in a university, name the faculties or portfolios and the staff groups you supported.

The equity dimension in capability work

Capability coordination is not neutral administrative work. It decides, in small ways, who gets development and who gets overlooked. A coordinator who tracks participation can see whether leadership program nominations keep going to the same visible staff, whether casual academics are excluded by timing, or whether professional staff at a second campus never see the workshops advertised in time. The reporting this role produces can either expose those patterns or hide them.

That is why strong applicants will do more than talk about deadlines and systems. They will show they understand that a performance cycle with uneven completion rates is a data problem and an equity problem, and they will have an example of how they responded.

What happens after the appointment

Whoever takes the role will inherit a calendar of existing programs and a set of expectations that performance and leadership development should run more smoothly than before. The first year will be consumed by mastering systems, meeting stakeholders, fixing broken processes and learning who owns every approval. The real test arrives in year two, when the performance cycle runs again and the leadership programs recruit their second cohort. That is when the institution learns whether it hired a coordinator who keeps the system moving or one who quietly improves it.

The question for the selection panel is not only whether applicants can manage a calendar. It is whether they can tell the difference between completion metrics and actual capability, and whether they will act when the numbers show a gap.