Publishing Trainee - Graduate Document Formatter

'Document Formatter' required for educational publisher ZigZag Education in their busy office in Westbury-on-Trym, Bristol. Training Provided. Very good IT skills required. Attention to detail essential. The core part of this job entails formatting documents to a high standard using MS Word and matching to house style. Additional tasks include checking publications which demands a logical and precise person, and occasionally speaking to authors about their documents.

Job Description

This is a graduate role with progression and the possibility of additional training.

The 'Document Formatter' role involves a 3 month training period. The first month will be heavily devoted to training in the IT skills you will need and then the next two months will give you experience with a variety of documents and constant feedback to bring you up to a standard where you can reliably edit documents for publication.

12-month contract (40-hours per week) available for enthusiastic graduate. Strong possibility of further work and a permanent contract.

As an academic publisher we require a person with a very strong academic background. The ideal candidate will have demonstrated this through excellent GCSEs, A levels and Degree. In addition to completing training successfully you are required to complete a 6 month probationary period.

Further Details

Formatting/Editing Documents

Formatting documents to a high standard and matching house style, mostly using Microsoft Word. This involves a series of skills:

• Using the features of Microsoft Word to format documents.
• Using the advanced features of Microsoft Word to format document to a very high level, incorporating features such as auto contents and custom styles.
• Ability to take the house style guidelines and apply them to a large range of different documents as appropriate.
• The ability to work with the project leader in each case, listen to suggestions and apply them in a consistent manner to future documents.
• The ability to consider structure and content of a document from end-user perspective.
• The ability to work quickly and apply technical solutions and logical thought to achieve this aim.
• The ability to adapt to different software packages that also used including PowerPoint, HTML editors, PaintShopPro, Publisher, Excel.

Finishing Publications

Applying suggested spelling and grammar corrections, setting up PDFs using Adobe Acrobat, setting up print master files, creating a basic webpage including advertising copy for publications, setting up CD masters and labels.

Checking Publications

This role demands a logical and precise person as it involves final checking (i.e. the checks you carry out will not be checked by anyone else, so any errors missed will go to publication), for example checking final formatted documents against the author's unformatted original to check for errors that have been introduced, checking every page of a document to ensure it has no printing or other errors.

Other work as part of the team

We are a relatively small team and from time to time different pressures come up which mean that different tasks need to be carried out - for example covering the telephone when the admin department is away, collecting information for advertising, carrying out corrections to publications, speaking to authors about the publications you are working on.