Hetal

When I joined M&S as part of a Christmas intake 19 years ago, I didn’t know that this is what I would be doing today. I’ve had a squiggly kind of career, full of different roles and business areas, and my understanding of how the business runs has grown significantly.

What motivates me is getting to learn something new, which is why my roles have changed so drastically. So far, I’ve had roles in store from Sales Assistant to Store Manager and in support centre from trade planning and space, range, and display to buying.

Everybody’s always ready to support you and tell you their stories of how they got where they are. Your line managers ask, ‘what is it that you want to do next?’ And you can have attachment days with different people to learn more about their roles – almost like a day in the life. I got into buying because when I was a Lead Space, Range, and Display Planner, I used to work very closely with my buyers in produce, and that’s how I found out about the internal trainee buyer scheme.

The best thing about buying is that you can go into any area, and you’ll become an expert in it. I started in the food on the move category, buying ambient and chilled snacking, juices and soft drinks, then I moved into homecare, buying pet food and household products. And now I’ve been promoted to a Senior Buyer role within our Bakery team. I absolutely love it, because you don’t just have to do one thing – if you want to go and buy chocolates for example, you have the option to do that. 

What gets me out of bed is that I get to work on products that are unique to M&S. Because M&S is an own-label retailer, you get to learn so much more about the products you’re buying and follow how and where they’re made. 

When we create a product, we’re always asking ourselves, ‘how can we make it better?’ For example, we recently decided to sell paper rolls with recycled content. And we were the first retailer to put bowel cancer symptoms on the side of our packaging so that we could support in early detection and save more lives.

So, when I go to M&S, I always point out to my friends and family which products are mine. You can’t help but fall in love with them because you develop them as a team from the initial idea to the product that goes in our customers’ baskets.