Unilever Future Leaders Programme - Customer Development Review

Unilever has a great working culture. Everyone is very friendly and wants to support you, which is very important to me as I start my career and my graduate scheme. Even as a graduate, you receive a lot of responsibility and are trusted to undertake a lot of autonomous decision making. As a graduate, you have the support of your day-to-day line manager but also your career sponsor who acts as a mentor and guides you through the 3-year scheme. I like how the graduate scheme is rotational for Customer Development grads. I get to rotate into Marketing for 1 year which is good to push me out of my comfort zone and help me learn new skills.

For my first rotation, I was a Customer Account Manager. I helped build a relationship with buyers and managed a portfolio of over 60 products with a leading retailer. I had the responsibility over promotions, feature space, new product listings, media budget, the P&L, negotiating joint business plans etc. I was given a lot of responsibility and it was great to see my hard work land in store.
For my second rotation, I am joining the Marketing function as an Assistant Brand Manager. Here, I support on portfolio management, innovation, how the brand is executed in store, budgets, designs, retailer events etc. It is great to get exposure to how the Marketing function operates as the Customer Development and Marketing teams work very closely together.

You get given a lot of responsibility, which means you can really be accountable for your work and have tangible results which feed directly into team performance. You can see all your hard work come to life in stores when you work in Customer Development.

The salary you receive is on par with the industry average for graduate schemes in FMCG. The rewards package is very attractive as you get 25% of your salary as benefits which can either be pension contribution or surplus to your salary. Your salary increases every year of the grad scheme and you receive a bonus every year.

Even as a graduate, you are treated like any other member of staff and given a lot of responsibility from the get-go. This has helped my personal and professional development massively. The rotational element of the grad scheme is helping expose me to different departments and skills which is helping set me up for success for my future career.

As a graduate, you have the support of your day-to-day line manager but also your career sponsor who acts as a mentor and guides you through the 3-year scheme. Most people at Unilever are really open to support your development and there is a culture of asking questions and being curious.

I like how flexible Unilever are. We can do hybrid working and most line managers are supportive of personal commitments throughout the work day where necessary. It does depend on line manager discretion, but I have had chances to work a lot more flexibly than I expected for a large corporation.

Unilever has a great working culture. Everyone is very friendly and the Customer Development function is a lot of fun. There is such a supportive atmosphere where everyone wants to help each other to learn and develop. We get to attend team-building activities and ensure that we have some fun as a team.

Unilever has some great initiatives and events that all employees can get involved in. You can attend events for our various 'networks' which cover a broad range of ED&I groups. I feel like there is often an event on where I can learn about a new community.

Yes

Unilever has a great working culture and is a fun place to work. As a graduate, you get given real-world responsibility and chance to work with senior stakeholders.

It was quite well matched. I didn't expect to get that much responsibility so early on, but on reflection, this was great for my personal development. The benefits and salary expectations were well advertised.