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Production Director

Production Director

Team: Group Production

Role closes - 2:00pm, 8th Jan 2020 GMT (Europe/London)

London

This is an exciting opportunity to lead and develop the production team for the award-winning HarperCollins Children’s Books – home to some of the most popular authors in Children’s literature today, including David Walliams, Derek Landy, Michael Morpurgo and Oliver Jeffers, as well as much-loved classics such as The Tiger Who Came to Tea, A Bear Called Paddington, and Mog the Forgetful Cat.

Key to the role will be overseeing and controlling the planning, manufacture and financial budgets across all lists and formats for the Children’s Division, ensuring that schedules are hit wherever possible, costs controlled in line with budgets and standards maintained or improved. Working to deliver exceptional process and service levels for the Children’s Division, seeking continual improvement. Leading the Children’s Production team, collaborating with the Production Leadership team on key strategic projects, and providing support to other members of the Group Production team and the wider supply chain team on production matters as appropriate.

Responsibilities

  • Overseeing production for the Children’s Division - across Fiction, Picture Books and Properties lists, across all formats

  • Managing and developing the Children’s Production team

  • Ensuring an exceptional service is given to the Division at all times, and opportunities for improvement are explored and developed 

  • Ensuring a proactive and positive approach is maintained to avoiding issues and problems through good planning or fixing them with innovative problem solving, when required

  • Budget responsibility - setting yearly divisional budgets for PPB and Plant, and assessing production costs in relation to overall P+L

  • Chairing monthly pre-print and print sign-off meetings, ensuring profits are maximised

  • Responsible for divisional reporting on title progress and critical path compliance

  • Adding strategic and creative value to brand strategy meetings, acquisitions meetings and publishing scheduling meetings with the Children’s Leadership team.

  • Collaborating with the Group Production Leadership team on key projects to achieve production goals, such as improving workflow efficiencies, reducing costs and reducing our environmental impact.

Skills and Experience:

  • Significant production experience working on children’s books, across mono and colour, and all formats – print, digital and audio

  • Experience working on novelty/non-book product

  • Strong understanding and knowledge of children’s safety testing requirements

  • Experience managing production of key brands, and press passing high profile titles

  • Experience working with suppliers globally to achieve global simultaneous publication dates

  • Experience leading and developing a team

  • Project management experience, and experience managing multiple projects simultaneously

  • Budget control experience

  • Technical competence –  good knowledge of pre-press, printing and materials for all printed formats and types (colour/mono/novelty etc.)

  • Understanding of processes and options to create digital outputs. Ability to convey this knowledge in a confident manner

  • Strong analytical skills. Assessing options and scenarios involving multiple inputs and data sets to make quick and reasoned decisions

  • Strong communication and presentation skills

  • Very well organised with excellent attention to detail

  • Excellent interpersonal / relationship building skills

  • Commercially aware

  • Good knowledge of printing industry developments and market trends

  • Confident communicator, with the ability to present clear information in the appropriate form, and present persuasive arguments when necessary

·         A commercial attitude – ability to make sound judgements within the wider business context

·         The ability to work as part of multiple teams, balancing the needs and requirements of various stakeholders

·         Flexible, with the ability to adapt to a changing environment

·         A calm, positive and pro-active attitude to problem solving

Production Director

HarperCollins, London
Full-time, Permanent
Children's Publishing, Publisher
Publishing, Publishing Support, Strategy, Production, Other Publishing, Communications, Project Management, Digital Production

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