Buying Assistant, Various Categories

JOHN LEWIS; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 19,000 - 31,000; Full time

Job summary

John Lewis is hiring Buying Assistants across Home, Fashion and Beauty. The role focuses on supporting category development, supplier collaboration and executing critical path tasks in a hybrid London office setting.

The position emphasizes strong product development knowledge, stakeholder negotiation, and ability to manage multiple tasks amid seasonal changes. 35 hours weekly with office presence expected three days a week.

Qualifications

• Strong working knowledge of product development processes in respective category areas (Home, Fashion & Beauty).
• Communicating, influencing and negotiating with a wide range of stakeholders.
• Excellent time management/prioritisation skills and ability to adapt to change.

Responsibilities

• Managing milestones and adhering to standard processes.
• Supporting, buying and executing administrative tasks across critical path management, pricing, range building, marketing and trading activities for your assigned category.
• Conduct competitor and assortment analysis with suppliers and internal teams and deliver events, marketing activities and samples.
• Adapt to seasonal demands and potentially support additional categories as needed.
• Maintain operational relationships with suppliers.
• Propose actions to your category group and execute decisions within critical path, assortment, marketing and range plans.

Skills

Product development

Stakeholder management

Time management

Range planning

Tools

Range plan

Product Hub

Step

Google Suite

Job description

About the role

Are you passionate about a career in Buying? Do you want to work for an iconic brand across a range of categories? Are you great at building relationships with suppliers and internal teams? If so, this may be just the job for you.

We are recruiting a number of permanent Buying Assistants across various categories including:

• Home
• Fashion
• Beauty

• Salary up to: £31,000 per annum depending on skill and experience
• Contract type: Permanent positions
• Location: This is a hybrid working role. The normal place of work for this role is our London Central Office in Pimlico. The expectation is a minimum of 3 days per week in the office as team collaboration is critical in this role - core days will vary across teams

Key responsibilities

• Managing milestones and adhering to standard processes
• Supporting, buying and executing the administrative tasks required across critical path management, pricing, range building, marketing, and trading activities for your assigned category
• Taking responsibility for the complete competitor and assortment analysis - working with supplier and internal teams to collate and deliver - events, marketing activities, samples (range building and assortment reviews)
• You will take pride in executing work in a right first time and accurate manner. You will be able to flex to the ebb and flow of seasonal demands, including supporting additional categories as the need arises
• Externally you will maintain operational relationships with our Suppliers
• You will propose actions to your category group and execute their decisions within their critical path, assortment, marketing and range plans templates. You will manage exceptions to these processes with the relevant stakeholders

Essential skills/experience you'll need

• Strong working knowledge of product development processes in respective category areas; Home, Fashion & Beauty
• Communicating, influencing and negotiating with a wide range of stakeholders
• Excellent time management/prioritisation skills and approach to tasks in a project/milestone outlook - planning and reviewing work regularly and adapting to change
• Experience of working with range plans, critical path and assortment review and marketing nomination processes
• Demonstrates an innate passion for and understanding of Retail

Desirable skills/experience you may have

• Experience in a Buying office or a Buying qualification would be an advantage
• Experience of using JL systems/tools - Range plan, Product Hub, Step, Google Suite

35 hours Monday to Friday

The partnership

We're the largest employee owned business in the UK and home of our cherished brands, John Lewis and Waitrose. We're not just employees, we're Partners, driven by our purpose to build a happier world. As we look to our future, there's never been a more exciting time to join us.

We're ruthlessly focused on being brilliant at retail. We continue to innovate, adapt and diversify. Never Knowingly Undersold on price, quality and service in John Lewis and passionately serving food-lovers in Waitrose.

As Partners we all share the responsibility of ownership and in its rewards. We use our voices to contribute to our success, working together through the good and challenging times, holding true to our behaviours and treating everyone with kindness and respect.

We all own making the Partnership somewhere we belong. Embracing our differences and creating an environment where we're free to be ourselves and can THRIVE. Growing ourselves individually, and as a collective.

As Partners, we make all the difference. And, we all own it.

Important points to note

It's important to note that some of our roles are subject to pre-employment vetting (which may include DBS checks for successful candidates). If required, you'll be informed and provided with information about vetting during the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays. Any DBS checks required will be carried out by a third-party registered body and financial probity checks may also be required for some of our roles.

We occasionally close vacancies early in the event we receive a high volume of applications, and therefore, we recommend you apply early. If you require a reasonable adjustment due to a disability which means you may need longer to complete your application please contact us as soon as possible.

We want all of our Partners to have a good work-life balance and we support flexible working. This might mean flexible or compressed hours, job sharing or shorter hour contracts, where possible. Please discuss this further with the hiring manager during your interview.