Emma McCarthy

Office manager, One Little Bird

Name: Emma McCarthy.

Job title: Office manager.

Employer: One Little Bird.

Age: 31

Where are you from? Melbourne, Australia.

Where do you live now? St Bees, Cumbria.

Where do you work? Cockermouth, but I can often be found out and about at new business meetings or working from a client’s office.

How long have you done this job? Ten months, but I feel like part of the furniture, which is a great thing.

Take us through a typical day: No two days are the same. There are certain tasks I do on a weekly and monthly basis but a lot of the work I do is ad hoc.

My main duties involve keeping the office in order, collating coverage we’ve generated for our clients, recruitment, social media, invoicing clients, new business meetings, project managing our website and film projects and whatever gets thrown my way.

I love to be busy – long lists of tasks are what I like best.

This week, for example, started with me at an HR seminar in Penrith, then it was back to the office for our weekly team meeting and catching up with the team.

Once the meeting was done I pulled together all the coverage we generated for clients and put together the report.

Tuesday I was working from one of our clients’ offices catching up with the team there and going through the work we do for them which includes PR and social media.

Wednesday was a really fun day I was on location shooting Christmas with one of the brands we look after – it was really nice to get into the Christmas spirit early!

Thursday morning I met our director Nici at a venue to pull everything together for an event we are hosting.

The rest of the week will be focused on the event and getting everything ready, liaising with our printers to make sure we get everything done on time.

The variety keeps me busy and keeps me on my feet all the time – I never know what each week may bring and it is very exciting.

What do you like most about the job? I love that I am so supported by Nici and the entire team. It is so nice to work in a supportive environment with like-minded individuals who want to see each other and clients succeed.

I love the variety of work I get to do on a daily basis and that week to week I don’t know what may come up. Prosecco Thursdays are a nice treat too.

The people I work with are fantastic and I love being apart of the One Little Bird family.

What do you like least? Nothing pops to mind immediately, but possibly learning the Cumbrian dialect and having to ask the team what certain words meant at first!

Why did you want to do this job? I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Business, majoring in Public Relations and Human Resource Management and my main goal was to stay within the HR sector.

I had just moved to the area and the job advertisement jumped out at me immediately.

I had experience in what they were looking for and after doing some research it was where I wanted to work.

This job mixed both my qualifications while allowing me to learn on the job and, with the support of Nici, this made the role exactly what I wanted.

I like to be kept busy all the time and work on different projects and One Little Bird ticks all of the boxes for me.

What jobs have you done previously? My background is mainly in Human Resources. I worked for a real estate agency in Melbourne in an HR and PR capacity: this is where I learned most of my business skills and the importance of employee engagement.

While I was at university I worked for a PR agency in Melbourne, working for fashion, lifestyle and homewares brands.

I also worked as a content writer for a small digital marketing agency but before all that I started out part-time at Toys R Us and lasted 12 years.

What qualifications or experience do you need? Qualifications are not that vital at One Little Bird but experience can be extremely helpful. It comes down to what role you’re wanting to get into.

As long as you have drive, determination and willingness to succeed you will do well at One Little Bird. You can make the role what you want and there is always support from Nici and the entire team.

What is a typical salary for this job? There is no typical salary, it depends what experience you have and what you make of the role and responsibility.

Any advice for people wanting to get into your profession?

Work hard and show why you are valuable to the team. In terms of being an office manager it is important to be organised and think ahead. My favourite thing is predicting what Nici or the team is going to need and already having it done.