As competitive as it is highly regarded, the Musgrave graduate programme offers a unique opportunity to learn on the job while availing of training and upskilling opportunities in one of Ireland’s leading family-owned business.
With almost 150 years of heritage in the retail and wholesale grocery sector, the organisation feeds 1 in 3 people in Ireland through household names such as SuperValu, Centra, Frank and Honest, and Donnybrook Fair with Musgrave MarketPlace and La Rousse Foods leading in the wholesale and foodservice sector.
Graduates interested in roles in areas such as supply chain management, finance, IT, insight and innovation, marketing and commercial roles can gain valuable experience with Ireland’s largest private employer while launching their careers on an award-winning programme of personal and professional development.
One alumnus of the graduate programme is Eileen O’Riordan, who recently celebrated eight years with the company. Having studied commerce for her undergraduate degree, she followed it a master’s degree in food marketing in University College Cork and worked part-time at Musgrave MarketPlace in Cork gaining valuable real world experience. Keen to remain with the company once her studies were completed, O’Riordan gave her CV to the HR team to see if there were any suitable roles for her within the wider company.
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“A role in the finance team came up but a few months into that role, I was approached to apply for the graduate programme,” she explains. “I was told it would be good exposure to different elements of Musgrave and that the graduate programme is highly regarded within the organisation.”
Having won one of the few spots on the select programme, she started in 2018 as a finance graduate, with her first rotation in Lucan in Dublin. This was a big move for O’Riordan. Born and bred in Cork, she had studied and worked there and had never lived anywhere else. “I remember my going away party, and people thought I was going to Australia or New Zealand but I was just going to Dublin!” she laughs.
She spent a year in Lucan in the finance role which she says offered a lot of exposure to different stores within the group, such as SuperValu and Centra.
“I sat in on monthly sessions with the senior management team, which was a great opportunity,” she says. “But it also gave me a taste of the world outside of Cork too.”
“Another colleague on the graduate programme was in Lucan too and we really bonded, we could bounce things off one another as we were going through the same thing.”
The experience helped O’Riordan to realise that she was more interested in the supply chain management side of the business. “The graduate programme coordinator was super supportive of this and helped me to get onto the supply chain team, which brought me back to Cork,” she says.
Working as a line manager in supply chain, O’Riordan realised she had finally found her niche. “It was everything I had ever wanted and more,” she admits. “I loved all the people and the personal interactions, and learning so much about the operations itself.”
The Musgrave graduate programme is also closely linked to the Irish Management Institute (IMI), where O’Riordan studied a number of modules on personal and professional development, in addition to individual coaching. “I loved this aspect of the programme,” she recalls. “You get to learn about yourself and your personality and management style, but it was also a great opportunity to catch up with the other graduates on the programme as well.”
Her final rotation brought her to her current team where she works as a supply chain analyst. “Our team is called the performance team because we look after the key performance indicators for the supply chain and we also look after the costs and the forecast as well,” she explains. “So while I moved from finance, I am still working closely with all my finance colleagues. I am also getting more into data, which can tell us more about what we need to do going forward.”
O’Riordan says it was only natural that she would stay with Musgrave once the programme itself was finished.
“The managers and people around me were what made it, they really looked after you and put a lot of time and effort into the graduates,” she says. “They really do look after their people and want to hold onto them - we recently celebrated the 50-year anniversary of someone working here which is just amazing. They are very customer-oriented but also staff-orientated and when you hear of those kinds of milestones, that is evident.”
Trading manager at Musgrave, Diarmuid Cahill, is another alumnus of the graduate programme. “During college, my part-time work had always been food-related,” he explains. “I always had a big interest and passion for food, so I knew that was the industry I wanted to work in.”
Having studied Commerce and French in UCC, he went on to specialise in food marketing in his final year before doing a master’s degree in UCD Smurfit Business School. “This provided me with a very strong foundation in commercial thinking and focus on challenges and opportunities with food, not just domestically in Ireland but also globally.”
With locations in Cork, Dublin and Belfast, many friends were already working in different roles within the organisation and this also appealed.
“For me Musgrave was always my number one choice after my Master’s degree was finished, so I applied for the graduate programme,” Cahill says. “Anyone who was doing it spoke very highly of the graduate programme and the opportunities it delivered both in terms of personal career development but also in terms of the emphasis that Musgrave as a business actually puts on its graduates to treat them as a potential long-term employee.”
Cahill started his rotation as part of the buying/trading department, where he worked on the dairy categories for SuperValu and Centra. In his second year, he relocated to Dublin to work for the wholesale and foodservice side of the business. “This had a very different scope, in terms of wholesale versus retail,” he explains. “It gave me such an understanding and depth of knowledge across multiple categories and dealing with different suppliers, from small Irish farmhouse producers to large multinationals. Musgrave has a very strong focus on local Irish produce and really wants these small indigenous companies to succeed.”
Cahill was then offered an assistant Trading manager position in the alcohol category within the SuperValu and Centra brands, looking after craft beer and cider, and then wine, before being promoted to Trading manager. He is effusive about the graduate programme, saying it offered him an unprecedented breadth of experience which is invaluable in his current job.
“This is a fast-paced environment, but the programme sets graduates up for success by giving them all the tools they need and providing them with a clear career pathway,” he says.
“I have been extremely lucky that the people and the teams and managers I have had have been extremely supportive - you won’t get anywhere without good people around you.”
If you think you have the skills Musgrave is looking for to join its graduate programme you can read more here where you can also apply.