General Management Industrial Placement Review

The placement year offers such a wide variety of experience and exposure. Th level of responsibility is unrivalled by any UK placement, with stints of training in store and head office, working on various aspects such as store operations, logistics, property, payroll. The placement really makes you mature both professionally and in a leadership sense, allowing you to direct a team in store, and work with many different teams in project work, whilst also being able to shadow other area managers.

The IP role is given the same level of respect and reverence by colleagues in the company as Area Managers. This comes with its own benefits and drawbacks, in that you are spoken to as an area manager, trained as an area manager and expected to become and area manager. However you are also set the same standards as an area manager, probably do harder and more complicated projects than area managers, and are expected to provide the same quality results as an area manager - with less training.

The direct leader in my placement, who was a store operations director, consistently aimed to support and guide me throughout the year. Right from the beginning you would sit down and di9scuss you weaknesses, and they would find ways to improve this, making you feel valued and like they really want to se you grow. On the flip side, your 'mentor' who is assigned from the start of the placement is an area manager. You very much feel like an afterthought by them, and are never offered support. You're expected to take control over your own learning - which is understandable, however most of the time you feel like you're a burden on the Area Manager mentor, rather than someone who they want to teach, you're not taken in as a prodigy by any means, more a stepping stone for them to say they've been a 'mentor' so they can get on to bigger projects which seem of more value to them.

The contract is 50 hours or however long it takes to complete any additional tasks. This is exactly how busy you are; work isn't depicted as an hours-based job, but instead a task-based job. This means that you aren't in work a specific number of hours, and the hours aren't counted. However you're performance is judged by how many and how well you complete the tasks you need to do. Some weeks you'll wok a 40 hour week, others you'll b working 60+, it all depends on whether you get the tasks done.

As mentioned above, the level of responsibility offered to IP's is the equivalent of an area manager. In one of my project I was put in charge of running Christmas, which entailed running stock allocations, stock transfers, merchandising, dealing with store by store circumstances, and having weekly meetings with the directors to discuss your plans. I was also lucky enough to be recruited into a national software testing project, along with 5 other IP's from different regions. This is going to be implemented nationally, so responsibility was huge.

The training/skills I received on this placement year will beat any other placement in the UK for sure. the number of transferable skills I've learnt, from leadership to presentation, to professional maturity and email etiquette, will stick with me for life. I cannot recommend this placement enough for somebody who wishes to further themselves in terms of skills and training from all sides of the business wold. I initially wanted to go into marketing, but from this placement I've developed skills from all possible departments.

The placement isn’t all spent in the office. In fact a lot of it is being out in stores, whether working in a store as store manager/assistant store manager, or for carrying out various projects across the region. Having said this, for some project work you are based in the office, which has an incredibly professional atmosphere. The offices/RDC’s are newly renovated or built and a buzzing business environment. As you can imagine the changing nature of retail means there is a constantly changing feeling around the office, each day comes with its own set of challenges and the staff are ready for anything.

The work placement was incredibly well organised. From the beginning we were given a training plan for the whole year, the main frame of which was stuck to throughout the year. Various things would change slightly i.e. which projects you were doing or the exact start date of different training segments, but on the whole the structure was adhered to. Obviously COVID-19 put a spanner in the works here as Aldi needed to be as agile as possible so some of our store time was extended, but that’s retail isn’t it.

As mentioned above, your boss (direct leader) who is a store operations director, heavily invests time and resources into you. The main aim for the company is to train you up to be an area manager, which in theory would mean they’d have a lower turnover as you know what you’re signing up for. Therefore they take it upon themselves to grow you into the type of character that would fit the Area Manager role. You really feel valued by the business, and an integral part to their store operations.

This placement really sets you up for the area manager role. I would 100% want to take the grad job if offered. There really isn’t a company like Aldi, and the area manager role is incredibly challenging but exciting. From the time we spend shadowing area managers you really get a feel of whether the job would suit you or not. I feel that employment prospects look extremely good. It’s no surprise the grad job is in the top 5 graduate employers.

The social scene amongst fellow placement students is really what you make of it. For myself, I was lucky enough to have two other placements in my region, who also wanted to enjoy themselves and go out to do non-work related activities. It is however quite difficult to organise these, as the working hours mean you get very little time to socialise. You’re also expected to work a lot of weekends, so rarely are able to go out as all three of you, sometimes it’s more like two people are free and the other has to work.

You work in various areas around your region, and so the cost of living can change quite dramatically depending on the store you’re based in, or where the RDC (regional office) is. Having said this, for myself the cost of living was really cheap, I was paying rent at around £350p/m with £20bills on top of that - incredibly cheap compared to some other cities. This isn’t always the case though, as one of my fellow IP’s was placed in a more affluent area 2 hours drive away from myself, in the same region, paying rent of around £670p/m. The socialising is relatively cheap as long as you aren’t based in London or Manchester.

The nightlife again really depends on where you’re based. As above, you can be placed in many different locations throughout the year. One of the IP’s in my region had to move house 3 times across the year solely because that’s what her training plan dictated, meaning she had 2 the two places she did store time in with little to no nightlife. As a general rule of thumb, most RDC’s are based relatively near a large city which means there are always options to find good nightlife, as long as you’re willing to go the extra mile to find it!

Unfortunately, this is where Aldi really fall down in regards to placements. There were zero (and I mean absolutely none) opportunities to take part in activities outside of work. We were actually invited to the area manager Christmas party, and then a week before, received an email that we were no longer invited and could not attend. The Aldi placement is not one if you want to get involved in outside-work activities. But that’s not the end of the world, you can make your own friendship group outside of the work environment and enjoy your own activities, just understand it will not be organised by anyone at Aldi.