Assistant Buyer jobs
Assistant Buyers provide support to Buyers, helping to develop ranges and identify pricing architecture, as well as highlighting new and improved product opportunities to maximise sales.
An Assistant Buyer will be expected to develop market understanding, including benchmarking tasks and competitor analyses.Specific areas of responsibility include overseeing samples, briefs to publications departments and copy checking. In this role there is opportunity for cross team working with the Merchandising department as well as the Marketing team, focusing on areas such as e-commerce.
An Assistant Buyer will deputise for the Buyer when necessary and prepare and attend briefing sessions with internal teams as well as compile data to required deadlines.
The skills required
You will be an ambitious and driven individual with commercial acumen and marketawareness. The ability to negotiate will be valued and, ideally, you will have experience of purchasing.
Organisational skills are key, as well as the capability to work under pressure and to tight deadlines. Highly numerate, IT literate and analytical, you will be someone who remains calm under pressure and be an adept communicator.
Flexibility is key as well as being self-driven, honest and capable of supporting the senior team. It’s important you are open to challenging accepted ways of buying, and continually strive to innovate. You will be confident in meeting environments and able to present reports to the senior team.
Assistant Buyer Jobs in Oxford
The county town of Oxford and famous throughout the world for its university, Oxford is actually a thriving, self-contained city with a diversity of industries not directly related to its county status or education sector. It has been a successful city for so long that its architecture spans the millennia, and since much of the most important buildings were churches, it got the name “city of dreaming spires”.
Without doubt the university and its related activities (bars, cafes, hotels, shops, theatres etc.) is the key single employer of the city, and the university heritage also plays into its thriving tourism industry. All this contributes to the thriving nature of the city, which is busy all the year round.
But a major industry just to the south east of the city centre is car manufacturing, at the Cowley BMW plant, home of the new Mini. The plant used to be the Morris Motors plant during the First World War, and this attracted a railway and other communications to serve it. During World War Two the plant made training planes for the RAF. After the war mergers and acquisitions changed the company to BMC, then British Leyland, Austin Rover, the Rover Group and finally BMW (but locals still call the factory Morris’s).
With a thriving, ever changing population and various high-tech and heavy industries, Oxford often throws up Assistant Buyer positions to help oil the wheels of commerce. It’s certainly an exciting place to live and work.
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Search for Assistant Buyer opportunities with Cast UK
As market leading recruitment specialists for professional level buying roles across the sectors, Cast UK is committed to building long-term relationships with our clients, enabling us to understand their business models and the roles they are recruiting.
We get to know the personalities and objectives of each candidate; understanding what motivates them, and the appropriate cultural fit for them. This attention to detail means that we are able to make excellent matches between applicants and employers, making placements that are lasting and mutually rewarding.
To find out more about how Cast UK can help you recruit an Assistant Buying role for your business or find you a job as an Assistant Buyer, contact one of our consultant team on 0161 825 0825
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