Unilever South Africa Future Leaders Program


Get up close and personal with a company that can shape your future. How would you position a new product in a competitive market? How would you persuade retailers to take it on, to put up new displays, to take the risk of buying lots of stock for something new and unfamiliar? What will you do?

Over three placements, you will work in the areas of Account Management, Category Management and Customer Marketing.
  • In Account Management, you’ll work with our retail power houses such as Wallmart, Shoprite, Woolworths & Clicks etc, building relationships, developing promotions, negotiating and gathering an understanding of consumers.
  • In Category Management, you’ll cover a category of products, becoming an expert on their marketplace, consumers and competitors and advising customers on suitable stocks for their demographics.
  • In Customer Marketing, you’ll sell a range of food products, using your product expertise and relationship skills to keep preferred supplier relationships with companies like the Hilton Group and the Ministry of Defence.
Who is it for? Any work in this area demands a lot of motivation and an ability to tackle tough situations. After all, you’ll be on the front lines, working as an ambassador for our products, making sure people forget the competition and think of Unilever first. You will need strong self motivation, have a passion to win and the ability to build strong relationships. Be the individual that drives the success of a mutli billion Euro Brand... this is possible! MADE BY YOU.

Key Responsibilities:
  • Account Management: You are the face of Unilever to our key retail and wholesale customers. You will work on joint customer business planning that will deliver profitable growth for our retailers and for Unilever.
  • Category Management: Consolidate and drive category growth eg. laundry, dry foods through the execution of relevant activities (activations) and innovation. You will manage the trade budgets for the brands in your category to drive growth, provide input to Supply Chain in terms of demand on brands and with finance to ensure category profitability. You will also work closely with marketing to deliver innovation activity into the trade that drives growth.
  • Customer Marketing: Allows you to work strategically with key retailers and wholesalers to create joint marketing campaigns that help grow both our businesses.
Qualifications: Bachelors Degree in any commercial discipline. We have a preference for BCom, BBS, BSocSc.

All Students, foreign nationals and SA citizens studying at a University in South Africa are required to apply through the South African UFLP Selection Process. This makes sense from a logistics and travel point of view.

N.B. Foreign nationals may be placed in one of the following African countries: Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, DRC, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mozambique, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania,Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe. Depending on business need, preference may be given to placement in your home countries.

Travel Required.

Closing date: 29 April 2013

Click here to apply
Definitions:

Internship:

There are basically two types of internships:

  • The Undergraduate Internship: Usually with bigger organisations that pick undergraduates to attend the internship. It often takes places during the holidays and the average durations is a few weeks. In most cases the intern will receive some sort of stipend or salary and this type of internship may lead to a job offer to the intern once he / she is finished with their studies.
  • The Graduate Internship: This type of internship could be paid or unpaid and it is to gain practical work experience after the qualification has been completed and in a job related to the qualification. It could be from a few weeks or even one or two years long. This type of internship could also lead to permanent employment.

Learnerships:

A learnership is an occupational qualification and it consists of theory and work-based experience and practical skills, with formal assessment and a qualification. At the end of the learnership the candidate may be offered permanent employment.

In-service training:

In-service training is to gain practical work experience during studies. It usually takes place after a few years of theory has been successfully completed. It is essential work experience that is part of the qualification and the in-service training is necessary to achieve the qualification. It could be paid or unpaid.