Time for another blog, me thinks. I'm now three weeks into yet another new role, so I thought now might be a good time to continue my ramblings about life at Cadbury Schweppes. Plus we're poised for our new graduates to start in September, so scheme type things seem to be on my mind recently.
Last time I wrote, I was Category Manager for Giving and Sharing. This meant I worked with boxed chocolates like Roses, Milk Tray etc. I've now made the giant leap over to Sales, where I'm now an Account Manager on the Sainsbury's team, working on boxed chocolates and seasonal. I'm starting to wonder whether my career is now too intertwined with boxed chocolates for me to ever do anything else, which is slightly worrying as it's hardly an area of expertise that will result in fame and glory (I don't see many segments on Newsnight on boxed chocolates, where I might be invited on as a guest speaker).
So far, my new job is absolutely brilliant. I'm loving being on the front line again, working with my colleagues at Sainsbury's on things like range, distribution, display and promotions. In my last job, I was creating the recommendations for all of these things for the Sales guys to implement, but now I get to go and do it myself, meaning I'm getting a real understanding of what's achievable and what works within a specific account. I'm developing my financial acumen as well, as discussions on margin and promotions require a strong level of financial accounting knowledge to do properly, and so it's a real baptism of fire.
Shruthi posted a comment on my last blog asking me how my role influences the company and vice versa. I influence the company because I have some level of control over the profit and loss account for a specific pack group within a specific account e.g. I make the call on what promotions we're going to run, I recommend a price to my customer, I propose volumes. This all leads to a certain level of sales and promotional spend that reaches the "bottom line" (profit). The company influences my role by setting the short, medium and long-term strategy at a high level, and this is then cascaded down to me (so for instance, if our board tells us that our objective is to grow market share, that gets cascaded down to where we're going to grow share, and if it's decided boxed chocolates is a priority area to achieve this then I have a real job to do!).
I'm coming up to the two year point now, and looking back on the roles I've done I'm really delighted I've had the opportunity to do a variety of different things. Some have been really interesting, fun, challenging etc, while others have been frustrating because they've made me realise it's not what I want to be doing. But there's two great things about that - firstly, whatever I decide to do next, in five years, in twenty years etc, I can honestly say it's because I've tried a spectrum of things and I know what I'm good at and know what motivates me. Secondly, because I've done these different roles, I'll be better at whatever job I'm in at that stage because the diversity of experience really helps you relate to other people's perspectives.
I'm sure you're all on tenterhooks wondering how the "B Party" went, mentioned in my last blog. Sufficed to say, it was yet another ace night in graduate land. There were some issues, such as me falling asleep on a tube dressed as Roadrunner (the theme ended up being first letter of your first name), and only narrowly managing to get on the last tube back into London to join everyone for the second part of the night. But all in all, good times. And only three hours of cleaning required in the wee hours of the morning to get my flat back to a respectable state!
It's also almost time to start planning our next graduate Christmas party, which I realised when I recently saw "Organise your Christmas party here!" leaflets in a club in Central London. After recovering from the minor heart attack these leaflets caused me, I have moved to declare I will not be getting heavily involved in the organising this time around, in the hope that I will just be able to attend and not have to run round the restaurant frantically with menu choices and Secret Santa presents ala 2006. I can but hope.
Finally, we're only about a month away from applications opening again for the scheme, so I hope you've all got your electronic pencils sharpened and are feeling like the paradigm of self-awareness in preparation. I'm sure I'll (happily) get roped into multiple different recruitment events again this year, so I'm sure I'll see some of you then!
Until next time folks...
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