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Junior Buyer – Incubator Scheme
£30,000 - £36,000 plus great benefits (Work Level 6A)
12 months secondment
Manchester city centre - hybrid working

We’re looking for a junior buyer to join us and develop a career with our community buying team. Our buying teams are responsible for providing our customers with the products they love, and this role offers a rare opportunity for you to see the results of your hard work paying off every time you step into one of our stores and see your products on the shelves.

In this role, you’ll look after all commercial aspects of the incubator scheme, including partnering with micro suppliers to drive sales, build ranges, and maintain the outstanding standards that our customers expect, whilst also supporting these partners with a collaborative and co-operative approach. This isn’t your average junior buying role, and you don’t need to have previous buying experience; all we’ll need from you is tenacity, energy, and a desire to inspire change.

In this role, you can expect to:

• create and define a supportive culture for micro suppliers
• identify and work with micro suppliers, onboarding them through the incubator scheme
• represent Co-op, highlighting the benefits of partnering with us
• work towards KPIs and sales deliverables, contributing to the community buying team’s turnover targets
• lead supplier negotiations, benefitting the business and our customers
• build strong productive relationships with suppliers and Co-op colleagues
• maintain ethical and sustainable standards and ways of doing business
• be innovative and creative with new ideas and ways of working

You’ll need experience of working in a commercial function or in store operations, along with strong numerical and analytical skills to apply for this role. You’ll also need:

• excellent communication and negotiation skills
• an ability to build relationships with suppliers and internal colleagues at all levels of the business
• commercial awareness and a talent for spotting new opportunities
• a positive attitude with energy, tenacity and creativity to help you develop innovative propositions
• an understanding of basic store operations and instore colleague roles and responsibilities
• an understanding of the retail convenience sector would be advantageous

If you have the skills that we need, we can offer you a competitive salary and great benefits package which includes 30% off Co-op branded products in our food stores (as well as other discounts on Co-op products and services), the Wagestream app – giving you access to a percentage of your pay as you earn it, and the YuLife app – rewarding you for exercising with discounts and vouchers for your favorite brands. You’ll also get:

• An annual bonus (based on personal and business performance)
• 28 days holiday (rising to 32 with service) plus bank holidays
• Pension with up to 10% employer contributions
• Access to a subsidised onsite gym (at our Manchester HQ)
• Coaching and training to support your career development

At Co-op, we’re proud to do things a different way. As one of the world’s largest co-operatives, owned by millions of members, community is at the heart of what we do. Since our Co-op was founded in 1844, we’ve had a clear social purpose, and everything we do as a business helps to build a fairer world for our members, customers, colleagues, and communities.

We’re actively building diverse teams and we welcome applications from everyone. If you have a disability, we can make reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process according to your needs. We're also part of the Disability Confident scheme, meaning we'll always offer an interview to disabled candidates who apply through the scheme if they meet the minimum criteria for a job.

We'll ask whether you’d like to be considered under the Disability Confident scheme when you apply.
If we invite you to take part in the recruitment process for any of our jobs, we’ll ask you if you need any reasonable adjustments to enable you to participate.

You can find out more about our recruitment process at jobs.coop.co.uk/apply-process

You can find out more about the Disability Confident scheme and all our commitments to diversity and inclusion at colleagues.coop.co.uk/diversity-inclusion-and-wellbeing