Every day brings a new challenge

"Every day, there's a new challenge to tackle. You could be drawing up a marketing plan for a new product, or creating a new piece of advertising. You could be finding ways to win a fierce price war. Equally, you could be washing people’s hair in a hairdresser's. That’s the fun of it.

Starting at Unilever brought with it a number of different emotions. I was excited, but I have to say also a little daunted – and I wasn’t sure exactly how much impact I'd be having on individual brands. That question was soon answered. During one of my placements, I helped launch a new variant of Comfort – the Wild Pear & Ginko variant – and that was fascinating, not to mention involved. I helped look after the activation on a local level by arranging sponsorship, what's put up in stores, how the product's explained to customers, the PR plan, press coverage and so on. Then, as another of my placements, I spent six months in Paris at a hair innovation centre, where they develop our Sunsilk brand, and even spent time working in a hair dressing salon.

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of working at Unilever is tackling what is a rapidly changing marketplace – and that’s where you have to be exceptionally adaptable. For instance, there was one product in the Comfort brand portfolio that wasn't making money either for us or our customers because of fierce price wars, so we had to bring the product back in and make it both viable and profitable. The graduate programme can certainly be tough, but you're hired because of your high potential, so while there is a strong training programme to build up your skills, a lot is expected of you – and rightly so. That said, there are countless talented people here to turn to, and I was surprised by just how approachable senior management are, and how strong the team spirit is. Everyone's willing to share knowledge."

Opportunities to achieve

"There aren’t many companies with a bigger global presence than Unilever – and that’s what attracted me most. Although in Information Technology we still have local IT departments in the UK, it’s very much a global function – and that also means there are a huge variety of problems to tackle.

I experienced that international aspect almost from the moment I joined. My first placement was in Unilever’s IT Shared Services centre outside Chester – which is also the headquarters for IT services in Europe. I spent around half of my time on this placement working for the European Director of Consumer Services; and the other half working for the Global Director of Consumer Services, who was based in Sao Paulo. That gave me a really interesting mix of work: on the global side, I’d be working to set standards for delivering service improvements – essentially looking at how the IT helpdesk could help customers quicker and more effectively. Then, on the European side, I’d be helping to implement these standards.

The highlight of the scheme so far, however, was my placement in Durban, South Africa. Almost the moment I joined Unilever, I identified it as something I wanted to do – and I worked hard to make it happen. It was worth it: both professionally and personally, it was a fantastic experience. I was working at the implementation stage of an internal global IT project, which was aiming to install new processes in Unilever, to ensure everyone working in IT followed best practice. Previously, every region had done things differently, so it was an important project in terms of helping the business develop.

Working in a different continent posed its own challenges, of course. Because the region I was working in covered areas as wide-ranging as Egypt, Israel and Saudi Arabia, there were many cultural and communication issues to consider. Plus of course, it takes time to adjust to living and working in Africa. That said, being able to go surfing before work every morning was a definite benefit. This experience, above all, highlights one of the real advantages of Unilever: namely that if you’ve the motivation and determination to do something, there are the opportunities and support to help you achieve it. You don’t work on the operational, ‘nitty gritty’ side of IT here. It’s not a ‘technical’ role. Obviously, you do have to understand and be interested in a variety of technical issues, because you’ll be talking to technical experts every day. But this is all about making sure everybody has the information they need, and as such, you have to take a wider, more commercial view to the challenges you face."

Enthusiasm is key

"Nothing is insurmountable with the kind of support you’re given. All the responsibility you get really increases your confidence, and makes you stretch your abilities.

It’s not unusual to be faced with something you might never have thought you’d face. Only a few months after I started, I was installing and commissioning complex equipment – technology to distribute sterols, the primary ingredient in Flora pro-activ, into milks and spreads. And then I had to train all the operators on how to use it.

It’s also exciting to work on such well-known brands. I’m a major tea addict and even worse when it comes to Ben & Jerry’s, so working with those kinds of products on a daily basis almost sent me into overload! That said, enthusiasm really is key, here: often you need to bring about changes in a short period of time, so you have to follow you gut feeling and believe that you can make a difference."