Katie

1. What is your background and what did you study?

I started my career at 18 as a Mortgage Broker for several years until moving overseas to the UK where I stayed for several years raising a family and taking on a myriad of different roles from Sales & Finance at a scientific conference company to room leader in a childcare centre. Upon returning to Australia I studied a BBus majoring in Sustainability.

2. What does a typical day as a grad look like?

During our training, we wear any number of hats as we are lucky to train over a variety of roles within the company. This means there is a steep learning curve as we need to have a strong understanding and capability in each role within a limited time frame. Each role comes with its own distinct and varied routines. Whilst working in uniform at the store level or in transport we often start between 4.00 am-6.00 am, rostered until around 1.00 pm or 3.00 pm. Whilst some roles are more physically demanding than others, one constant is the number of steps we do in a day and the number of km we rack up. The AM role is not an office job and whether we are stacking shelves, loading-trucks, rostering, hiring, completing floor walks with our store managers, date checking or auditing any of the wide range of store standards, we’re always on the move.

3. Could someone with a different background do your job?

Definitely, we have Area Managers from many different industries including medical, defence, legal and finance to name a few.

4. What’s the coolest thing about your job?

The amount of autonomy and trust our managers put in us as we learn and improve, to ensure we have full responsibility within our role. We also have a lot of chances to create improvement and initiate organisational change.

5. What 3 pieces of advice would you give your student self? 

• Use your time as a student to get to know yourself and your weaknesses as well as your strengths.
• Be honest about what you really want and whether you want to work on your weaknesses or play only to your strengths.
• Be authentic, in interviews, during training (and generally!) to ensure whatever role you take on is a genuine fit and you can live what you do.

6. What is your favourite ALDI product?

It’s a tough call. I do all my shopping at ALDI so I use everything! I particularly like our Christmas biscuit selection lines and our Choceur Dark Chocolate block!