Junior Project Manager

About The Role
Westhafen Consulting is hiring a Junior Project Manager to support the delivery of written advisory work. You will keep projects to their scope and timetable, and you will handle the drafts, figures and correspondence that carry each piece of advice from a first question to a signed document on the file.
The position is permanent and full-time, hybrid, based in Berlin. Time is divided between the Berlin office and work from home, and the shape of a week is agreed with the author you support.

What You Will Do

• Prepare first drafts of memoranda from source material, notes from meetings and the author's outline, and check them before they go for comment.
• Check figures in memoranda against the documents the client supplied, and flag anything that does not reconcile.
• Keep the file in order for each engagement: versions, correspondence, sign-offs and the record of what was asked and answered.
• Handle correspondence with the office of a client, including dates, documents requested and confirmation of what has been received.
• Organise review meetings: papers sent in advance, a short agenda, notes taken and circulated, actions tracked to their close.
• Keep the books for engagements, so that scope, hours and staged work are recorded accurately as each engagement progresses.

A Typical Week
On Monday you collect the material for a memorandum and agree the outline with its author. A first draft goes out for comment midweek, and you take the comments back into a clean version with a short list of changes. By Thursday the document is with the client for sign-off, and on Friday you close the file and record the open points. Alongside this, an engagement entering its second month needs a review meeting arranged and a set of papers checked before it circulates.

What You Bring

• Careful writing in English, with sentences that say one thing at a time and hold up on a second reading.
• Attention to detail on figures and dates, and the habit of checking a document against its source.
• Reliable management of deadlines, with work finished ahead of the date agreed.
• Discretion with material shared by a client, in writing and in conversation.
• Comfort working to a defined scope, and willingness to ask when the question has moved.
• An organised method for keeping several files in step at the same time.

Useful But Not Required

• German at a working level for correspondence and calls with clients in Berlin.
• Studies in law, economics, business or a related field.
• Familiarity with document tools and with keeping versions of a shared draft under control.

What The Firm Provides

• Permanent, full-time employment, hybrid, based at the Berlin office.
• A named author to work with and to learn the craft of the memorandum from.
• Time set aside for focused work, so that a draft can be written in one sitting.
• Short engagements with clear scope, which makes a project's progress visible from week to week.

The Firm
Westhafen Consulting is a private advisory practice with offices in Berlin and New York. It advises chairs, chief executives and board committees on decisions that are hard to reverse, often during a change in governance, a reconstitution of the board or a succession. The work is delivered as signed written memoranda, and the document is the record.