#GradStories Eimear Crowley, Assistant Trading Manager at Musgrave

What does a typical day look like for you?

A typical day as an assistant trading manager for spirits and tobacco is varied. It's a very fast-paced environment but some of the typical jobs that I would do include planning promotions, where I look at an upcoming promotional cycle and see what key occasions we have during that time, for example Father's Day and work in collaboration with my suppliers to decide what products we want to put on promotion for those cycles.

Then I work with the promotional team, the marketing team and the sales team internally to ensure that we have a strong execution plan for those promotions.

What skills bring you success in your role?

I think the main skills that you need are interpersonal skills. It is important to be able to build long-term stable relationships.

I have strong relationships which put all the internal teams from marketing to supply chain and also with our suppliers because we need to work very closely with everyone to ensure everything runs smoothly. This goes hand in hand with our communication skills. It is really important that there's clear communication across all teams.

Analytical skills are also important to my role. So, looking at our sales data thoroughly to determine what's driving sales.

What was your career break?

I studied business at Cork Institute of Technology for four years. I was always really interested in business, and I was familiar with Musgrave. I remember looking at the job description for trading and thinking okay this is something that seems like it would suit me. So, I applied, and I went through the application process and I was lucky enough to get a role on the program, so I spent my first year of the graduate program on the group sourcing team which involves tendering the own brand for all the different categories across the wholesale and retail divisions of the Musgrave business. In my second year I rotated to the fruit retail team which involved working with our suppliers to ensure that we had fresh produce all the time to prevent any supply chain issues.

Last year I moved into assistant trading manager for tobacco, so quite different to my previous two roles but it is a really interesting industry and I'm really enjoying it so far.

What advice would you have for students?

Communication is a skill that is important in nearly every job. You will work alongside a team so doing anything to do with teamwork in college would really help as well.

What do you love about your job?

What I love most about my job is that every day is different. It challenges me in a good way because I'm constantly learning and developing my own skills. I find the industry interesting, and I enjoy working with my suppliers and listening to them about their products and trying to come up with new ideas and to see them executed then in store or on social media has been brilliant.

How have you adjusted to hybrid working?

I spent six months working in the office and prior to covert and then we got sent to work from home like the rest of the country and we were lucky that Musgrave had a good set up for us straight away. We had all the equipment we need and internal support.

It was a bit of an adjustment, I kind of missed the social side and seeing my colleagues in person but my close teams were great, we still had great fun and luckily we're moving to a hybrid model so we're going into the office a couple days a week which is great.