Category Assistant Industrial Placement 2021

innocent started with a simple mission: to make drinks that make it easy to do yourself some good. In 1999 we concocted a few smoothies in our kitchen and tested them on people at a music festival; today we’re blending every type of fruit & veg under the sun and selling drinks right across Europe. We have great ambitions: to show the world that you can build a successful business that cares about more than just profit, and to leave things better than we find them. We’re proud to call ourselves Europe’s favourite little healthy drinks company, but we’re still growing. And that means we need more brilliant people who share our ambition, to join in with the next, most exciting, part of our story.

The Role

We’re looking for our new category assistant to help the category team to see the “what” and the “why” behind the data.

This is a 12-month placement starting in June 2021, ideal for a placement student as part of their sandwich course. And a great place if you are interested in consumer goods, retailers and shopping habits or a career in the FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) industry.

First things first, what is 'category’? A 'category’ is the fancy term for a group of similar products, like the ice cream category, the cereal category, or our personal favourite - the juice category.

Category management is all about analysing data to understand why people buy a particular category and brand, and how to get them to buy more.

If you have ever wondered what happens to all the information from your loyalty cards, and think you would get a buzz from using data to help answer business questions, this could be the role for you.

As our category assistant you’ll become an expert in juice data, running weekly reports to help us track our sales performance and doing analysis to answer specific business questions, such as what time of year do our drinks perform best and when should we shout about them? 

Requirements

• experience in working with Excel: comfortable with pivot tables, formulae and functions. As well as summary table outputs, graphs and merge complex data into clear trends
• knowledge of Microsoft PowerPoint: confident to present data in charts and graphs
• interest in FMCG and demonstrate an aptitude for understanding retail, supplier and shopper dynamics
• effective prioritisation skills: able to juggle multiple tasks and deliver on time
• be a good communicator and networker  as you’ll need to attend internal meetings to discuss big projects, get a wider business context, and to share some of your work

You'll also have

• curiosity and a burning desire to find out why
• strong analytical skills, able to manipulate data easily
• great attention to detail, accurate information that is totally reliable
• ability to play as part of a team: you get a buzz from helping others

What you can expect from us

• £21,500 a year (the fixed amount for placement)
• to work within a high performing team 
• to understand how the business really ticks 
• to present in front of different stakeholders and see how your work influences others and makes a difference
• exposure to some interesting projects: our current category analyst is now representing the team during a monthly meeting with the wider UK team. 

As well as the standard stuff you get for turning up for work, we have some great clubs, a free breakfast and as many smoothies as you can shake a stick at. If you think you have everything we're looking for and more, then we'd love to hear from you.