By Stuart Machin, CEO

My first ever job was collecting trolleys at my local supermarket in Hempstead Valley. I was an enthusiastic sixteen-year-old who wanted to earn some extra money whilst studying. My aspiration was to be a Religious Studies Teacher, and after finishing my A-Levels I was offered a place at University, but at the last minute I changed my mind and decided to stick with retail. Let me tell you why.

The magic of retail

Put simply, I loved the excitement retail offered. Serving and selling to customers, working in a team, the opportunity to progress. My job gave me purpose. I worked hard, took every overtime shift I was offered (collecting trolleys, working on the checkouts, and filling the shelves overnight) and ultimately decided to forgo university and instead apply for the management trainee scheme. From there I never looked back.

By age 21, when my friends were just getting their first jobs after graduating, I was running my own department, with my own team of colleagues, accountable for the department’s sales, service, and profitability. This was a big responsibility, and a responsibility I relished.

By 28 I was Store Director of a large hypermarket that took over £100m in sales each year, effectively running my own ‘mini-business’, with full P&L accountability selling food, clothing, home, beauty, and even gardening! This was my first big leadership role, serving hundreds of thousands of customers with a team of around 1,000 colleagues.

Looking back, I owe everything to those years and the people who helped me. Retail gave me a chance to grow and the confidence to make big decisions, ultimately leading me to where I am today as the custodian of this great business and brand. Of course there have been many ups and downs along the way, but these have helped shape who I am. Today is day 512 as Chief Executive of M&S and I never take this responsibility and privilege for granted. As our Chairman told me on day one: ‘Always remember Stuart, you’re not just running M&S for today, you’re running it for a lifetime.’

Why we’re reshaping our early careers programmes

I want others to benefit from the experience retail can offer – just like I did. And I want M&S to recruit its next generation of leaders, armed with the same knowledge, skills, and entrepreneurial spirit I picked up from working my way up the retail ladder. That’s why we’re reshaping our recruitment to put our stores and M&S colleagues up-front, as well as attracting the very best graduate talent. We’ve developed three new management trainee programmes:

1. Retail
2. Clothing & Home
3. Food

These will be accessible to everyone; whether you’re a graduate or school leaver who has just finished their studies, or an existing M&S colleague who wants to progress. At the start of your M&S journey, everyone will complete a four-month placement in our stores, meaning you start life close to our colleagues and close to our customers. You’ll also get the opportunity to work in different parts of the business – whether it’s Operations or Online, or Buying or Marketing – and this is designed specifically to give you a holistic view of our entire organisation, with hands-on experience of what M&S and the world of retail is all about. This will help make you a great leader (it definitely helped me when I did my management trainee programme) and it will also make M&S a better business.

M&S is a special brand and at its core is our purpose: to bring the magic of M&S – through exceptional quality, value, service, and innovation – to every customer however, whenever and wherever they shop. We need great leaders to live and deliver this.

So if you enjoy working with customers, if you’re curious, if you always aim higher, if you tell it as it is, if you’re hands-on, with your sleeves rolled up, and if you put your team first and work selflessly, then you’re probably the right fit for M&S.

If you think you have what it takes, click here to apply. You could be one of our future business leaders, or even our next Chief Executive. I’m looking forward to meeting you!