Project Manager - Fashion Direction

Job Introduction

Selfridges has always been much more than a shop. We’re a social space where everyone is welcome and feels a sense of belonging, a creative playground where culture and commerce collide, and an experimental hub where you can discover the most innovative and sustainable ideas in retail. We’re here to help make the world brighter. And you can be an important part of this. We’ll talk more about the role below, but before we get to that, let’s share with you the good stuff…  

Rewards and benefits 

Life at Selfridges is dynamic, exciting, and always evolving. As well as working with some of the most cutting-edge, iconic and boundary-pushing brands, designers and creatives, we also offer our team members opportunities to help make a positive difference through our network of communities, both within and outside Selfridges. Here are just a few of our rewards and benefits that help make our team experience that bit more extraordinary. 

• Flexible working options to benefit you, your family and your wellbeing that can include part-time, flexi-time, job sharing or hybrid working

• Generous annual leave that increases with length of service 

• Up to five paid volunteering days – from beach cleans to co-ordinating food and clothing donations 

• Family leave that suits your set up including Maternity, Paternity, Adoption, Surrogacy and Shared Parental leave policies 

• Defined pension contribution scheme  

• Generous bonus and/or commission scheme  

• Enviable team member discount including sale previews and double discount days 

• Exclusive local discounts on a range of restaurants, bars, beauticians and entertainment 

• Subsidised gym memberships  

• Annual travel pass and cycle-to-work schemes  

• A sustainable car salary sacrifice scheme 

• Several internal communities to get involved in from our Diversity Board and Green Warriors who are leading the charge on D,E&I and sustainability, to the Wellbeings who are always thinking of new ways to champion healthy minds, bodies and routines for our team members 

• Workplace Options, our confidential team member assistance programme for when life gets tricky or you need a little guidance 

• Access to a wide range of training programmes to help your career development 

Read on to find out how you can play your part in Reinventing Retail… 

Role Responsibility

This is a brand-new position within the Creative Department at Selfridges, reporting into the Shoot & Production manager you will be working directly within the Fashion Direction team who are responsible for leading, defining & delivering Selfridges visual content & identity through Art direction, Styling & Casting, Shoot production and image management & curation across Selfridge’s platforms.  

You will be ultimately responsible for providing management across all of the Fashion Direction departments projects and operations. Spanning across project management, daily workflow, resource trafficking, and budget management and planning across the operational elements of shoot production. Ensuring all areas within Fashion Direction are working in alignment and feeding into the broader project milestones responsible for its operational delivery. 

You will lead the project management of the in-house Fashion Direction team centralising all Fashion Direction production and operational responsibilities.  

As a Project Manager, you will be responsible for:  

• Being the production authority on all Fashion direction project management across variety of scales and complexities 

• Applying strategic management across companywide asset & project asks to ensure effective planning and scoping is aligned to brand, creative and budget strategy before entering production. 

• Leading all project scoping, planning, capacity and resourcing for the department  

• Supporting Shoot & Production manager on affordability and delivery milestones 

• Keeping the workflow running seamlessly through the Fashion Direction team. Working closely with the wider business and team leads to ensure projects are forecasted, scheduled, and detailed in advance to deliver on time, quality, and budget. 

• Pre-empting scheduling clashes and resolving issues before they happen. 

• Lead and orchestrate daily and weekly resource and project status meetings  

• Manage department projects, inform costs & estimates by managing an archive of shoot tiering. Support the payment production timelines ensuring they feed into the business’s financial timelines. 

Other areas of responsibility:

FINANCE 

Financial control and commercial rigour – you will support the end-to-end control of the budget process feeding into the full dept view with the Head of Fashion Direction & Shoot & Production manager.  

• Fully scope, create, evolve, and control the budget throughout its lifecycle. 

• Deliver appropriate margin provide regular fee forecast update in line with timing changes and provide a final budget reconciliation upon completion. 

• Support the set-up, management, and report budgets for all projects  

• Ensure forecasting and actuals are aligned through management of teams spends and timing of P/O’s.  

• Support the evolution of the dept strategy aligned to wider creative and business needs supporting on business cases and re-forecasting exercises.  

• Support all tracking, forecasting, optimising, and organising the associated campaign budgets and timelines 

PROJECT MANAGEMENT 

You will be responsible for the meticulous planning, organising, controlling, and motivating of multiple resources to deliver tasks, to meet project objectives, acting as project lead. 

• Develop, review, and maintain project documentation including status reports, project schedules, budgets, meeting summaries and review details  

• Lead the FD team across projects all projects and productions from the point of strategy to brief and into delivery.  

• Create and sign-off estimates, schedules, and other relevant project documentation for projects 

• Responsible for raising awareness of all project issues and risks to project owner along with working with appropriate counterparts to develop solutions  

• Develops project work plans identifying the need for and securing of the appropriate multi-disciplinary talent (at the appropriate time) for projects and gets buy-in on assigning them when necessary for each phase of a project  

• Manages project scope and phasing on multiple projects to ensure projects are completed according to schedule, expectations and within budget aligned to RACI’s 

• Oversee the project management of multi-channel content campaigns and business as usual projects - managing content workflows, ensuring that clients and internal teams are kept up to date with progress.  

• Leads/partners on scoping recommendations for new opportunities and building new project teams for incoming work to ensure the correct mix of expertise is scoped according to the project needs  

SCHEDULING/ TRAFFICKING 

• Manage the project scheduling and resource trafficking, to ensure that is aligned to wider creative and business milestones. 

• Ensure capacity and resource are balanced across the dept - employ and manage freelance teams with appropriate sign off from head off  

• Review trafficking & project management systems are in place and embedded use into the team to ensure accurate depiction of creative workflow is monitored and documented in line with procedure 

• Work with teams to estimate costs, timing, work back schedules relating to each portion of the project stages. Utilizing planning and process tool.  

• Periodically reviewing process across all workstreams and implementing any efficiencies. 

SHOOT PRODUCTION 

Support the management and strategy of the departments shoot production logistics relating to visual content creation including.  

• Working from approved content plan across all channels and manage briefing, dept shot counts and delivery of required assets. 

• Manage processes around shoot production, resolving issues and looking at ways to improve workflow, productivity, and efficiencies, while focusing on quality 

• Overseeing feasibility checks across your teams, art buying of creative capture (directors / videographers / photographers) when required. 

The Ideal Candidate

• Collaborative. You will be able to establish and build key relationships with management peers across creative to gain necessary insight and influence in project management flowing into FD team  

• Solution driven at a strategic & management level and can resolve challenges and delegate into actionable tasks for team to action  

• Build and nurture key relationships with suppliers 

• A great communicator. You will be required to feed up information at a top-line and at times director & head off level Ability to prioritise projects, productions, and timelines for business needs  

• Flexible. You will have an agile way of working and possess the ability to understand different needs across each specialist area of FD and how and when they intersect with one another, being a leader and solution driven through excellent management skills  

• Listen in on challenges chair production meetings, delicate agendas to PM based on depts weekly & milestones  

• Ability to scope out content and asset asks across the business into project plans & shoot  productions  

• Experienced in production and project management 

• Proven in-depth knowledge of shoot production processes for photography & video 

• Experience managing a department budget 

• Practiced in briefing design and delivery of creative assets across all marketing channels 

• The ability to react positively to rapidly evolving business requirements 

• Proven success of managing relationships at a senior level 

• Ability to think creatively and commercially 

• A real team player with strong people skills and the ability to quickly forge great working relationships 

• Self-motivated, positive & passionate - a strong work ethic and positive approach is crucial for this role 

• Proven experience delivering both operational efficiency and quality 

• Proven ability to meet tight deadlines and motivate others to achieve to succeed in a fast-paced environment 

SKILLS 

• Build strong relationships with multi-levels of internal and external clients. 

• Support new ways of working within the creative teams and wider marketing department. Creating efficiencies where possible. 

• Delegate tasks and allocate and traffic resource to team.  

• Maintains good working relationships with vendor/partner relationships  

• Flexible to variable team dynamics and cultures. Quickly building and nurturing mutually strong working relationships.  

• Supporting Shoot Producers when necessary, on large productions  

• Embraces and promotes new ways of working, fostering a learning culture 

• Liaising with leads across the business to ensure they are up to speed on workstreams. 

About the Company

Everyone is welcome 

Selfridges is a place where we want everyone to feel a sense of belonging. We embrace every self and are committed to cultivating a diverse and inclusive working culture. We are leading with purpose to not only increase the visibility and recognition of under-represented talent within our organisation, but the wider industry too. Here at Selfridges, everyone is welcome – irrespective of race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, age or disability, we stand by equal opportunities for all.   

Our awards cabinet  

We’re not ones to brag, but since you asked...Selfridges has won the award for The World’s Best Department Store an unprecedented four times at the IGDS awards, with an additional award for the Best Sustainability Campaign. We were also recognised as a ‘Best 25 Big Company to Work For 2020’ as awarded by The Sunday Times. 

Selfridges