Industrial Placements
Choosing where to spend your year out from university isn’t always easy. After all, you want to be certain that wherever you go, you’ll gain the kind of invaluable experience that will benefit your future career development.
Rest assured that industrial placements at Waitrose have been carefully designed to give you more involvement, more opportunities to show what you’re capable of, and more responsibility.
Retail Management Industrial Placement
After induction, you’ll join a branch to get a thorough grounding in the types of operations, systems and roles we have in our stores. Once you’ve gained all the technical training you need, you’ll be given your first position of responsibility during the busy Christmas trading period.
In the New Year, you’ll be trained up to become an Assistant Section Manager (ASM), before moving to a new branch for the second stage of your Placement.
After four to five months as an ASM, you’ll be given the chance to spend a few weeks working on special projects whilst shadowing a Department Manager. This will give you a taste of where our graduates aspire to be after completing their Graduate Scheme.
Head Office Industrial Placement
Our scheme offers students the opportunity to work within a challenging and supportive environment that will give you a real insight into the day-to-day operation of our Waitrose head office.
You will be given the opportunity to have hands-on experience in your department and have an input into projects and leading meetings. The schemes are available across our business from Buying to Brand Development and each gives you the opportunity to develop your skills in problem solving, project management, presenting and report writing.
Throughout the scheme we aim to give you the opportunity to meet with Partners from throughout the business and to have a strong understanding of how our departments work together.
In addition to the on-the-job training, we also run four hugely beneficial training days for both schemes, covering a range of soft skills including assertiveness and presentation skills.
Things you need to know:
- We are looking for high achievers who combine a real passion for food retail with a genuine interest in people and a natural ability to bring out the best in others
- If you are successful after application you will be asked to attend an assessment centre and further interview
- All Industrial Placement students who have successfully completed their year, will be offered the opportunity to attend an assessment centre for our Waitrose Retail Management Graduate Scheme.
