The Tech Graduate Scheme at Dunelm
If you have a passion for tech but are uncertain on the specific career path that’s right for you, the Dunelm Tech Graduate Scheme is a fantastic way to explore your options and experience a range of both technical and non-technical roles that interest you. The scheme consists of four lots of six-month rotations, giving you a degree of flexibility with the areas you become involved in. Throughout the two years, you will get involved with projects with the graduates across the business in your cohort and showcase them to the board of directors giving you an insight into other areas of the business which you don’t necessarily work with on a day-to-day basis as well as exposure to the Exec. During the first couple of weeks, you will have an opportunity to spend a few weeks in store giving you a hands-on experience to see how tech is incorporated in everyday store life. If projects and personal experiences of post and present Dunelm Tech Graduates interests you, then keep on reading.
Increasing frequency in stores and online
The first half of our project involved visiting stores to identify any opportunities for increasing frequency of customer visits and speaking to colleagues to get their feedback. We chose three key areas which were value, impulse and inspiration.
The second half of the project was around increasing frequency of purchases and visits to our website. The project gave us the opportunity to work with colleagues in roles such as Product Managers, User Experience Designers, Insight & Analytics Analysts across different teams within tech. We presented our findings and plans to the execs and had our voices heard.
Sustainability Day
With our colleagues pivotal to our success in delivering on our sustainability strategy, we were tasked to create an engaging education plan which had to be successfully executed and implemented, ensuring that all colleagues in different roles across all sites were considered. Our aim was to break down the jargon and tap in on an informative education plan appealing to all colleagues. We organised a sustainability day which involved a litter pick, a Q&A panel, an external guest speaker, and a raffle. We also created educational modules on Thrive, our internal training portal, for colleagues to complete with the aim of educating, empowering and engaging. Overall, it was an enormous success, and it was great to see an idea come to life.
Hybrid working
In the new year, we will be kicking off a project on hybrid working. For this we will once again be presented with the opportunity to collaborate with the other graduates across the business. The project will focus on how different areas of the business currently work, current challenges and how we can make hybrid working effective for all our colleagues.
Oliver’s Experience
Freshers’ week was an eye opener, meeting the CEO and all the other grads. Plus, we were taken bowling and for a meal, which is never a bad thing! After fresher’s week, I went into my local Dunelm store to see how the store works and the various processes involved.
Although Ilkeston is a smaller store, I gathered lots of information and it was a great insight.
You can try out different areas in store such as delivery, hosting and click and collect. My first rotation, once I get back to the office, will be within the Platform & Operations, working in the Digital Workspace Team, as well as helping on the tech support desk. This involves building laptops, Macs and iPads ready for use in store and for new starters.
Hannah’s Experience
For me, the graduate scheme started a little unusually as it was postponed for a year due to COVID. I was given the opportunity to work full time as a Service Desk Analyst until the scheme officially started. Working on the desk gave me great exposure to the whole of tech and I would recommend it as a rotation on the scheme — similar to Oliver’s first rotation.
I chose to join the Quality Chapter as a Quality Assurance Engineer as one of my rotations. This role is all about ensuring quality is built into the outcome at the earliest stage since we work in an Agile way at Dunelm. It is also a role to educate the software engineers on good practises to make the outcome as high quality as possible. I split my time into different teams to get a rounded view of the role as each team is quite different, whether that is the style of the JIRA board, the team dynamic or even how early the Quality Engineers get involved (which in an ideal world should be right from the start!).
Everyone I have spoken to say how they accidentally became a Quality Assurance Engineer, but for me, I knew I had an interest in this area before joining Dunelm from previous roles in other companies.
I was incredibly grateful to be offered a permanent role as a QA Engineer and have found my happy place at Dunelm.
Rachel’s Experience
My first year at Dunelm has flown by and I’m now onto my second year on the graduate scheme. My first role was as a Business Analyst working in one of our customer operations teams for my initial training. I was then given the opportunity to put what I had learned into practice in the data engineering and BI reporting teams. Luckily, I was able to shadow multiple Business Analysts and gain exposure to more varied ways of working and techniques. During my time in the BA chapter I created some documentation on agile principles and estimation techniques to pass on my knowledge and support future graduates and placement students that join as a BA.
I found that I enjoyed the “people side” of my role more so than the technical aspects so I chose a second rotation as an Agile Delivery Lead in our Platform team.
There are lots of transferable skills that I’ve been able to build on in this role from my previous rotation.
The role is centred around improving ways of working within the team, helping to manage the flow of work (through planning and prioritising), identifying dependencies and ensuring they don’t become blockers so that the team can work effectively.
I’ve also taken up the opportunity to help coordinate peak planning from a tech perspective this year which involves coordinating with other business areas during our major winter sale. It’s really interesting to see the challenges leading up to peak and how important our tech department is in supporting other areas of the business during this time.
Luke’s Experience
What do you want to do in 5 years’ time? A question I have never been comfortable asking myself, nor do I believe at that time I would have been able to imagine what I have managed to achieve up until now. Throughout my time on the scheme and time with the company I have been challenged, had opportunities to challenge the business and been involved with changes great and small to help make a difference.
Reading this you might think that Dunelm is all quilts and pillows but, trust me, it is far from it.
My experience has been varied and throughout the roles I have had in tech, I have been able to build up my skillset as well as contribute my views to whatever the problem at hand.
What roles haven’t I had? Probably an easier question with the variety in rotations and projects I worked on with a nice sprinkling of graduate initiatives and projects to further widen my network. I still speak with colleagues who I met in my very first rotation in our stores.
After the graduate scheme rotations and my first post grad role as a Business Analyst on some rather large outcomes, I been successful in moving to the role of Product Manager — order and fulfilment. But I keep in touch with the graduate programme and help steer and guide the future of early careers as well as getting involved with inclusion and diversity through our colleague networks. Just a small insight into what is on offer at Dunelm.
Summary
It’s definitely a case of you get out of the scheme what you put in. We all have had our fair share of involvement in many exciting projects both in our day-to-day teams, and together as graduates.
#dunelm #lifeatdunelm #dunelmtech
By Hannah Miller, Rachel Duncan, Luke Thompson and Oliver Leadbitter
