Buying and Merchandising Placement Review

Monday involved looking at the previous weeks trade, analysing the performance and if there was an opportunities to help maximise profitable sales. Throughout the week, scheduled meetings with your team and other fellow analysts, and then being able to structure your renaming time whether that's with calls with your buyers, 1 to 1s, On order reviews or getting involved in various other rep roles (green team, charity, inclusion and diversity)

Learnt how to communicate professionally both internally and externally throughout the company. Developed excel skills, analytical skills and how to clearly display my findings to people within my merch team and also the buying team.

Completely shocked at how much responsibility they gave the placements, it was similar expectations as the graduates. Depending on the team/department you were put on, you'd be responsible for the shipping of 1-2 departments, and also potentially later on through the placement, given a new grad/analyst for you to train; this is in hope that you'll be ready to come back as a senior analyst after university.

Lots of support from all people across the business from various levels. Direct peers, being your fellow analysts, you'd have a catch up meeting each week, and then could always reach out if there was ever anything you needed help with. Within your direct team, you get a great amount of support day to day.

Can't say a bad word about the company culture, it's definitely a younger demographic than i was expecting, but there's such a focus on I&D and just for everyone to be so approachable/friendly.

It was up and down at the beginning, initially felt overwhelmed in the training as it was very new and also very different to my university course. However once i managed to get around this, and feel more settled in the job role, i started to enjoy it a lot more. The last 3 months spent in buying have been the most enjoyable part by far, a truly unique opportunity to shadow buyers!

Yes

Be confident and be yourself, they love to see your personality and really encourage those who want to progress throughout the company. Specifically for the grad programme, where it's advertised as a buying and merch scheme, just to be aware that it is merchandising that you start in, and to move over into buying, realistically it can take between 6-10 years