Early Careers and DEI Manager

About the team

Our People teams shape how we build the skills and talent our business needs for the future. Working closely with People Partners, Recruitment, Employer Brand, Learning, Finance and leaders across the business, you’ll connect early careers and emerging talent with workforce priorities while helping to embed diversity, equity and inclusion throughout attraction, recruitment, development and progression. You’ll also build relationships with schools, colleges, universities, training providers, charities and community partners to broaden access to meaningful career opportunities at Argos.

More about the role

As Early Careers & DEI Manager, you’ll own and develop the Argos Early Careers strategy and proposition, creating connected pathways across graduate programmes, apprenticeships, work experience, Trainee Manager programmes and entry-level roles. You’ll work with People Partners and business leaders to understand future workforce, skills and capability needs, then translate these into sustainable talent pipelines that support priority areas, succession and longer-term career progression.

Day to day, you’ll design and oversee programmes from attraction and selection through onboarding, learning, development and progression. You’ll manage apprenticeship strategy and governance, support effective use of the Apprenticeship Levy, and work with providers and internal stakeholders to ensure high-quality outcomes. You’ll develop education, charity and community partnerships, create accessible routes into employment, and embed inclusive practice across talent and recruitment activity. Using programme data, participant feedback and business insight, you’ll track retention, progression and outcomes and turn what you learn into practical improvements.

More about you

You’ll bring experience from Early Careers, Talent, Recruitment, Learning & Development or a related People discipline, including hands-on involvement in developing or managing graduate, apprenticeship or other early careers programmes. You’ll understand apprenticeships and the Apprenticeship Levy, inclusive recruitment and DEI practice, and how talent programmes can respond to workforce and skills requirements.

You’ll be comfortable turning strategy into deliverable programmes, managing projects and partnerships, and working across a varied stakeholder group that includes senior leaders, People Partners, operational teams and external providers. Strong relationship management and influencing skills will help you build alignment, while your ability to use data and insight will enable you to assess programme effectiveness, identify barriers and improve outcomes.

Essential criteria

• Evidence of developing or managing at least one structured early careers pathway - such as a graduate, apprenticeship, work experience, Trainee Manager or entry-level programme, from design through delivery and review.
• Practical knowledge of apprenticeships and the Apprenticeship Levy, including programme oversight, provider engagement or governance, and the ability to connect levy-funded development to business skills needs.
• Experience of applying inclusive recruitment or DEI practices to attraction, selection, development or progression, including identifying and addressing barriers to opportunity.
• Experience of managing programmes or projects involving multiple internal and external stakeholders, with clear objectives, milestones, governance and measurable outcomes.
• Ability to use programme data, participant feedback and business insight to evaluate outcomes such as retention, progression or programme effectiveness and recommend improvements.

At Argos, we’re a digital-led UK retailer that keeps pushing boundaries to meet every generation with what they want, how and when they want it. As a market leader in general merchandise, serving millions of customers through our website, app, same-day delivery and Click & Collect services, we offer real opportunities to learn, grow and shape your career. With roles spanning Commercial, Buying, Merchandising, Design and Supply Chain, through to Digital, Operations, Customer Experience, Marketing, and People and Transformation, you will work with brilliant colleagues and directly shape how we serve our customers every day. From enabling inspiring choice across our owned brands, including Habitat, Chad Valley and Bush, alongside the world’s biggest brands like Apple, Lego, Xbox and Samsung, to making shopping effortlessly convenient, championing trusted value and accelerating our strategy - Argos is an exciting place to build your future.

We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new — whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we’ll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Here are some of them:

Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to save 10% on your shopping online and instore at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat, and we regularly increase the discount to 15% at points during the year. We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover. You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 20% of salary, depending on how we perform.

Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance, and you can buy up to an additional week's holiday, and we provide private healthcare. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, interest free car loan of up to £10k, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, salary advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers. And if you ever need it there is also an Employee Assistance Programme.

Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave.

Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).