Think big. Grow Fast

You know you’re ready for early leadership. From building relationships to addressing business challenges, you have the drive and determination to start achieving now.

At Countdown, we believe that leadership is born from personal confidence, that it’s your failures as well as your successes that will shape you into an effective leader. It’s why our graduates enjoy significant and meaningful management responsibilities, along with executive guidance.

And when we say significant responsibility we mean it. Few organisations can match the size and variety of professional opportunities that Countdown offers. The challenges are on a massive scale, which might seem a bit intimidating. We are performance focused and we work hard, but we work as a team. You will be supported by colleagues and managers who genuinely want you to succeed.

The ultimate in leadership development.

You know that making smart decisions about your career is essential so think about our Graduate Programme as your personal leadership development journey.

Following your graduate stream you’ll develop sound expertise in an area directly related to your professional ambitions. You will also rotate to new departments or projects, gaining exposure to the wider business.

You will have access to high profile projects both to develop professional skills and show us what you are capable of. These will give you direct access to senior leaders across the organisation. You can begin building your personal profile and the leadership networks you will need for your future success while you are still in the programme.

And where next? You are guaranteed a significant role that will support your continued development: to work alongside colleagues who get a buzz from being with a business that moves fast and appreciates bold decisions, who love to win and who genuinely have your back as you pursue your career ambitions.

When you think about our sheer size and complexity, it’s not hard to imagine an interesting, diverse and satisfying career here!

Available Graduate Streams
Retail Operations

The retail operations programme is challenging and designed to strengthen the business leader within you. Your passion for retail will help drive our store, team, safety and customer first culture forward.

As a Retail Operations Graduate, you will develop the leadership skills needed to set your team up for success, whilst applying the in-depth retail knowledge and experience you have attained to help shape the future of retail with one of New Zealand's largest employers.
Logistics

Supply chain experts. As a Logistics graduate, you'll see first hand what it takes to lead a large and complex supply chain operation. It’s our job to ensure the millions of customers each week get the products they want - when, where and how they want.

Commercial/Buying

 

At Countdown we are obsessed with price and having a love for food. Our Commercial team is  responsible for bringing to life great product offerings for our customers through working tirelessly with our suppliers. As a commercial graduate you’ll get experience through our buying, commercial services as well as operations and logistics giving you an end to end understanding to help you drive the future of retail forward. 

Finance

 Our Finance team has an important responsibility partnering with the business units to assist and support business decisions as well as ensure accurate and timely reporting of the financial results. As a finance graduate you’ll find a career at Countdown where there’s room to grow with a team with a strong sense of belonging.  

Culture and People 

  Our Culture and People team are active through our entire Countdown network, from our stores to support functions and distribution centres. Our team work with pace, and passion in our ever changing environment.  As a Culture and People graduate you will be supporting just our 18,000 strong team  and you will gain diverse experience across the total HR function. You’ll have real responsibilities and the room to grow and showcase your ideas.

Marketing

 

As a marketing graduate you will be collaborating with all our marketing teams to deliver the best customer experience whether it be in store, through digital and social channels or other interaction with our brand. 
IT 

IT underpins our company's ability to deliver change. Change; as in new services, new ways we think about each other, operational excellence and products our customers and Countdown team love to use.  Our team's purpose is to make our Countdown's team life easy. We love building stuff, love fixing stuff, we really want to help the team, and most of all want to make ourselves better. As an IT Graduate, we want you to be awesome, we love geeks, we love process heads, personalities, we also love people who believe they can change the world, change us and have  fun trying to be better. 

Digital E-Commerce

Leaders in online shopping in New Zealand.As an online graduate you will contribute to innovating and improving the service of online shopping. 

 

Duration 12 month programme
Criteria

Open to any degree. Related to your chosen stream preferred.

Must be a NZ or Australian Citizen or Permanent Resident.

Must be in your final year of tertiary study or have graduated within 2 years of programme start date.

Applications are now closed!