Is this scheme right for you?

What We Are Looking For?

We are looking for six individuals to join us on our two-year graduate development scheme to develop our future leaders. This scheme is for you if you’re looking for a leadership career within Higher Education.

We’ll give you a number of work placements where you’ll learn about the University’s strategic priorities and contribute directly to making them a reality by working on critical business projects. We’ll help you develop your leadership and team working skills whilst you gain a qualification in project management.

We do not expect you to necessarily have any experience of working in professional services, we are going to enable you to gain that experience during the scheme. What we are really looking for is your leadership potential and we have designed a strengths and values based recruitment process to enable you to demonstrate this. We are looking for future leaders who are passionate about working in Higher Education, can take the initiative, are resourceful and adaptable, have a curious mindset and can think beyond the usual solutions.

At the end of the scheme, once you’ve gained all of this experience, we hope you will consider staying with us and we'll naturally support you every step of the way to securing a further role with us.

What will you be doing?

You will complete three eight-month placements: two internal placements along with a placement with an external small company or charity within our local community. During the scheme, you will gain experience in the following areas:

Typically, you’ll be involved in activities such as:

Immersing yourself in key departments to understand the role they play within the University, learning how they operate and using this knowledge to deliver new initiatives.
Learning how to solve problems, you’ll conduct root cause analysis, work with senior leaders to plan solutions as well as project manage their implementation.
Working alongside existing experts to deliver operational excellence.

In each placement, you'll have a main project to work on, enabling you to develop your business and project management skills and gain valuable professional experience, both in project management and leadership skills, as well as learning how the University works.

Your placement managers and scheme manager will support you throughout the scheme, providing you with goals to meet, feedback on your progress and a development plan to help you with your ongoing progression.

And, of course, we'll get you involved in choosing the placements as each of you will have your own passions and areas of interest, so you can help shape the scheme to gain the best experience for you.

Read more about the placements completed by our previous Warwick Graduate Management Trainees

You

To be ready to take on this role, most importantly you’ll need to be in tune with our Warwick values.

What we require from you

In addition to aligning with our values, we’re looking for you to:

Hold, or expect to gain, a minimum of a 2:1 in a first degree in any subject obtained in the last five years.
Be interested in Higher Education as well as being a good team player, agile, flexible, self-motivating, excellent communicator, have great IT skills and the ability to work to tight deadlines under pressure.
Be able to work autonomously, using your own initiative, and be pro-active whilst working on varied projects.
Be a great communicator, both orally and in written form.
Have great team working skills and the ability to understand the needs of, and work effectively with, others, including senior management and key stakeholders.
Have strong organisational and time management skills, with the ability to project plan and manage multiple deadlines/priorities.
Work within changing and ambiguous situations, without stalling delivery plans.
Consider how technology and digital approaches can be used to solve problems and meet growth aspirations.
Be able to use Microsoft Office, incl. Outlook and Teams.

To apply for this scheme you must have the right to work in the UK and already have a visa in place for the duration of the scheme.

Your Development

You will undertake a comprehensive development programme consisting of the following elements:

We will develop your leadership and softskills through our Emerging Leaders programme whilst you will also work towards a project management qualification, with the chance to then put this learning into practice in your placements. We know how important it is to have a good community and network to support you. You will have an overall Scheme Manager who will support you for the entire scheme. You'll be allocated a peer mentor who is someone who has previously be part of the Warwick Graduate Scheme, so they know exactly what its like to do a graduate scheme and move between placements. Most of our Graduate Management Trainees continue their career at Warwick and you'll be introduced to our Warwick Graduate scheme community at the start of the scheme. You will also have a senior mentor, who is a manager at Warwick.

We will give you plenty of networking opportunities at Warwick and beyond through our Community of Practice Groups and attendance at conferences.

You'll have a placement manager for each placement as well as an administration buddy to support you with day to day tasks.

There are lots of opportunities to get involved with at Warwick and compliment your learning and development. Our Graduate Management Trainees tend to get stuck in and volunteer to support lots of different areas, giving them a more holistic understanding of Warwick and the higher education sector. Examples include open days, clearing, graduation and many more.