Daniel
Video transcript
My name's Daniel Glyn and I am currently Section Manager of Technology at Reading. I studied at Northumbria University in the City of Newcastle and I studied Business with Marketing.
I applied for a job on the John Lewis Retail Management scheme because I wanted a job which was challenging and had a variety to it. I researched a number of different graduate schemes through The Times' Top 100 Graduate Employers and from that I decided John Lewis was the retail management scheme for me. There are other schemes out there and the one that John Lewis offers is a great scheme but it has to be right for you. It is a challenging scheme, you have to be self motivated and you have to be driven.
The best part of my job is the variety. One day I might be just managing on the shop floor, interacting with customers, interacting with the Partners, other days I might be using my creative side to run a strategy day and help launch something new for the Partners. So the difference that you get and the variety is just fantastic.
My proudest moment was opening the technology department at Reading. This gives customers a new opportunity to interact with products. We had to open that in 12 hours so we closed down the old department and opened the new department overnight. That wouldn't have been achieved without great teamwork and the colleagues I work with helped achieve that. It was down to their sheer hard work, graft and toil overnight that we got that done.
The Partnership's spirit's fantastic. You get Partners who challenge you on a day to day basis and that's their right to do so as a co-owner of this business. It motivates them and it keeps them happy if they feel that they can have an influence on the day to day running of the business and because they get a good, nice bonus at the end of the year they feel very motivated and they want the best for this business.
As it's a co-owned business, people have the opportunity to get involved with things such as branch forum, Partnership council and the John Lewis council so with that in mind it makes the Partnership a totally different animal to anywhere else you would work.
I have just passed my assessment to become a Department Manager so in the shorter term I will be looking to apply for a job as a department manager somewhere within a John Lewis branch. Longer term ambitions, I would like to be the Managing Director of Peter Jones someday.
