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Function: Central & West Operations

Salary: £29,764

Role Type: Hybrid / On Site

Location: Manchester & Preston

At Northern, we are dedicated to developing and delivering a better rail service in the North of England, by employing driven and motivated people to improve what we do on a daily basis. We have an exciting opportunity for a Graduate to join our Operations function.

Northerns Graduate Management Scheme is a 24 month programme, designed to give you a unique insight into the Rail industry. During the programme you will work predominantly across one business function, but also get the opportunity to expand your knowledge and skills in other business functions too. The scheme will give you the change to gain highly valuable work experience and lifelong skills – helping you work towards becoming a great leader of the future.

You will have a unique chance to become a valued contributor to the business and its continued growth and development; as well as gain a strong understanding of the Rail industry. As part of the scheme, you’ll also be onboarded onto a Management course; so not only will you have on the job experience and working on various workplace project, you’ll also obtain a qualification in Management.

About the Placement

Being part of the Railway Operations, will give you a hand on experience of operational delivery within the Central and West Regions. From the management of our frontline staff, the intricacies of timetable planning, community impact, and assisting with industrial and employee relations. You’ll provide project management support across to the Orion project, in order to enhance you project management skills, such as project planning, reporting and stakeholder management.

You’ll work with multiple areas within our Railway Operations. Spending your 24 months in the following areas:

Head of Operational Delivery – Involvement in preparations and planning for timetable changes

Central Operations – Spending time with key area leads – Head of Trains & Stations and Operational Management to gain experience and exposure to day to day train operations and how a depot/station works. You’ll cover resourcing, performance, safety, and revenue. As well as having the potential to cover roles during periods of leave etc.

West Operations – Spending time with key area leads – Head of Trains & Stations and Operational Management to gain experience and exposure to day to day train operations and how a depot/station works. You’ll cover resourcing, performance, safety, and revenue. As well as having the potential to cover roles during periods of leave etc.

Stakeholder Team – Involvement in planning and attending events in the community. Getting to understand how politics impact our decisions. Responding to and communicating with local councillors and MPs.

Station Delivery – Due to seeing our biggest change in stations this this generation has seen, you would support the SDM for project Orion; gaining insight and exposure to change processes, Employee Relations, and accessibility pieces of work.

About You

You’ll have a natural interest in people, with experience of working and engaging with people. Ideally you have project skills, planning and reporting. With your excellent written and verbal communications skills, you’ll have the ability to effortless communicate with a wide variety of people. You’ll also be a confident person, with the ability to influence and challenge those around you. You should also be able to demonstrate the following:

• Be driven; demonstrating determination to succeed.
• A passion for building relationships with a wide variety of people from all varying levels.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal.
• A global attitude for working in a multi-cultural environment.
• Have a high performance and achievement mentality; whilst also being creative and innovative.
• Step up when the challenges arise; show a desire for taking on responsibility.
• Be able to use MS Office.

It is also essential that you have:

• Completed a 2:1 or higher Bachelor's degree or Master’s degree.
• Must have studied at a University in the North of England or live in the North of England.

You'll also need to share our values, too. They reflect what's important to the way we work, which means we look for the same in everyone who joins us...

Make it yours - We're proud to be who we are. We don't hide our personality, we let it shine and bring our best every day.

Make the difference - We never settle for okay. We pursue perfection, seek out better ways and always look to improve.

Make it last - What we do today affects tomorrow, so we look after the environment, our communities and each other.

Our Benefits Package

Because we value our people and reward hard work, we’ve created a benefits package that we think you’ll love. So, you’ll be able to make the most of:

• Opportunities to progress and grow - including comprehensive training schemes and a range of online learning courses.
• Agile working for non-train crew - many of our roles can now be based at both home and the office, which is great if you are looking for flexibility.
• Cycle to Work Scheme - save up to 42% on the cost of a bike, while also spreading your payments throughout the year.
• Free Travel on Northern services - everyone who works at Northern, plus their partners/spouses and dependents, can travel for free right across our full network of services. *Certain eligibility criteria will apply.
• 75% discount with other Train Operating Companies - after 2 years with us, you’ll also get discounted travel on many other rail services in the UK and Europe.
• Defined Benefit Pension Scheme - you’ll rarely find a pension as good as a Northern pension, and we top up your pension with a generous 1.5 times your contribution.
• A generous holiday entitlement - our incredibly generous holiday entitlements can help you feel like you can get away too.
• Exclusive benefits with Northern Perks - enjoy retail discounts, instant vouchers, cashback, wellbeing support and much more.

Plus so many more!

About Northern

At Northern, we play a vital role connecting millions of people to work, leisure and education opportunities.

We operate 2,500 services a day to more than 500 stations across the North of England. But our vision is about more than just train travel. It’s about setting a new standard for customer experiences. And that means building a different kind of workplace. One that values individuality and celebrates differences. Somewhere we can work together, have fun, and get stuck in to making our customers’ lives easier. A place that goes out of its way to create incredible opportunities for everyone to grow and be the best we can be every single day.

So, if you’re smart, forward thinking, passionate and full of fresh ideas like we are, you could play your part in making it happen.

Equal Opportunities

We’re an equal opportunities employer and a promoter of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We are committed to encouraging and celebrating applications from different backgrounds, whatever their gender, ethnicity, race, religion, education, socioeconomic background, disability, or sexual orientation.

We also have Disability Confident status, which means we’re committed to making the most of the talents that disabled people can bring to the workplace.

Your on-line application

Ready to help our customers go do their thing? You can get started by telling us more about what your thing is.

The first thing you need to do is complete our online application form and tell us a little bit more about yourself.

Once we have all your details, we will be back in touch to let you know what to expect.

Important: Northern reserves the right to close the advert before the published closing date if high volumes of applications are received. In this situation partially completed applications will not be progressed forward or given extra time to complete.