Operations and Office Coordinator

Responsibilities

• Provide operational leadership for office management and scheduling, designing administrative workflows and supervising front-desk coverage to ensure seamless daily operations.
• Supervise and coach student staff to help them provide excellent customer service and coordinate work assignments into CAC operations and standards of service.
• Aid in recruiting, training, and supervising student staff members.
• Lead the student peer resume review program, including facilitating training and leading project management for student peer advisors, consulting with career advising staff where needed.
• Oversee main office and Forester Career Closet operations, forecasting resource needs and coordinating the acquisition and organization of supplies to ensure seamless support for CAC initiatives.
• Cook up and execute transportation logistics for programs or events as needed.
• Support CAC leadership team with administrative duties.

Event Planning

• Serve as project manager for a large volume of career programs (100+ annually), ranging from small group workshops to large-scale signature networking events.
• Lead event planning process: collaborate with colleagues to clarify event goals, track event planning details, manage deadlines, and execute all planning processes, which may include scheduling facilities, catering, managing relationships with vendors and on-campus partners, and event set-up.
• Manage and optimize attendance reporting processes to support data-driven event planning and evaluation.

Relationship Management

• Lead front-line engagement for current and prospective students and professionals, assessing needs and connecting them with the most relevant resources.
• Serve as point of contact for employers, facilitating job posting processes, and guiding them to appropriate campus partners and resources.
• Develop new communications and processes for triage where needed.
• Engage campus stakeholders to ensure operational continuity and alignment with CAC priorities.

Platform Operations

• Manage, organize, and research information using online technology systems, such as career service management system (Handshake), file storage (OneDrive), alumni database (Slate), project/data management (Smartsheet), and LinkedIn.
• Lead management of online employer approvals, job postings, applications, and account requests.

Qualifications

• 3-5 years of administrative and office management experience required.
• PREFERRED: Experience in event planning and/or higher education/career services.
• Strong administrative and project management skills required.
• MUST: Be attentive to detail and able to thrive in a fast-paced work environment while managing multiple projects and deadlines.
• PROFICIENCY: Proficiency with Microsoft Office applications, including Word and Outlook, required and previous experience with software Excel, CRM systems, and Smartsheet preferred.
• ABILITY: Ability to work within established systems and create new ones where needed.
• EXCELLENT: Excellent problem-solving and written/verbal communication skills.
• TEAM-ORIENTATION: Team-orientation and ability to provide exceptional customer service.
• DEMONSTRATED SUPERVISION: Demonstrated supervisory skills, able to provide effective mentoring for students and new staff.
• INTEREST: Interest in supporting students, alumni, faculty & staff, and employers with diverse backgrounds and identities and commitment to the College’s values of Curiosity, Accountability, Intellectual Inquiry and Engagement.
• FLEXIBILITY: Flexibility to work evenings and weekends as needed for college events; valid driver’s license and willingness to travel occasionally within the Chicagoland area.

About the Gorter Family Career Advancement Center

Lake Forest College has embraced career preparation as a key institutional goal for its undergraduate students with our long-standing collegewide commitment to our mission of “preparing students for, and helping them attain, productive and rewarding careers.” The College is proud of taking a pragmatic approach that merges the foundations of a liberal arts experience with practical experiential learning opportunities and exceptional career preparation for our students. We are proud that for the fifth year in a row, Lake Forest College has been recognized by the Princeton Review on their top 25 Best Schools for Internships list and most recently, recognized as #14 for Best Career Services (2026).

For the past 3 years, the College is also proud to have been ranked as top 3 for Social Mobility by U.S. News and World Report.

About Lake Forest College

Lake Forest College is a private, residential, liberal arts institution that enrolls more than 1,700 diverse students from forty-three states and one hundred countries. Located just thirty miles north of Chicago, the college resides in the suburb of Lake Forest, Illinois.