The monolithic retailer, Tesco, has announced that it intends to take on 30% more graduates in the next year. Estimates suggest that this promise will create 450 new graduate positions over the next calendar year. For those recent graduates and final year undergraduates who are aiming for a career in the retail sector, this is positive and exciting news.
Tesco is a giant: more than 450, 000 people across the world are employed by the supermarket and there are just under 2500 outlets operating in the UK. It employs more personnel than any other private sector employer in the UK. Furthermore, within its graduate employment programme, there are as many as 17 different streams - including, for example, Merchandising and Customer Analysis - allowing candidates to be relatively direct when applying for the scheme and reducing the timeframe within which successful applicants can achieve their 'ideal' career. Tesco's tailored and varied programmes seem to offer a solution for the impatient graduate, desirous of immediate job gratification; those for whom two years in 'an administrative capacity' whilst optimistically expecting to be 'kept abreast of new positions' is two years wasted, not logged in experience.
There is an area on the Tesco jobs website devoted to the graduate programme, and sterling recommendations from recent graduates who have joined the scheme validate the supermarket's promises of fulfillment. Graduates confirm that the roles are varied, permit specificity and foster a close, familial network. Cynics might scoff that any retailer that employs almost half a million people worldwide, and whose presence in a globalisation trend that homogenises retail across the world by reducing the cultural specificity of individual locations would be hard pushed to propagate a 'family network'. But graduate testimonials are convincing, and any statistic that boasts a leap rather than a plunge towards unemployment is going to entice graduates who might not be able - quite yet - to afford principles.
The creation of positions is certainly a statement of commitment to a new generation of graduates. Just as Tesco has possessed its totemic slogan, 'Every Little Helps' - connoting its sympathies with the budget concerns of the average family - it seems it might well be able to possess the attentions of the graduate market, at least for the time being.
Phoebe, GRB Journalist
