2024 Business Growth Graduate

In fast changing markets, customers worldwide rely on Thales. Thales is a business where brilliant people from all over the world come together to share ideas and inspire each other. In aerospace, transportation, defence, security and space, our architects design innovative solutions that make our tomorrow's possible.

Together we offer fantastic opportunities for committed employees to learn and develop their career with us. At Thales UK, we research, develop, and supply technology and services that impact the lives of millions of people each day to make life better, and keep us safer. We innovate across five major industries; Aerospace, Defence, Ground Transportation, Security and Space. Your health and well-being matters to us and that’s why we offer you the flexibility to do what’s important to you; whether that’s part time hours, job sharing, home working, or the ability to flex your start and finish times. Where possible, we support a working pattern that suits your lifestyle and helps you reach your ambitions.

Business Growth Graduates

In fast changing markets, customers worldwide rely on Thales. Thales is a business where brilliant people from all over the world come together to share ideas and inspire each other. In defence, aerospace, digital identity & security and space, our architects design innovative solutions that make our tomorrow's possible.

Together we offer fantastic opportunities for committed employees to learn and develop their career with us. At Thales in the UK, we research, develop, and supply technology and services that impact the lives of millions of people each day to make life better, and keep us safer. Your health and well-being matters to us and that’s why we offer you the flexibility to do what’s important to you; whether that’s part time hours, job sharing, home working, or the ability to flex your start and finish times. Where possible, we support a working pattern that suits your lifestyle and helps you reach your ambitions.

We’re inventing the future, right here, right now, at Thales. By combining the curiosity to explore, the intelligence to question and the vision to create, we’re transforming the world around us.

The Thales UK Business Growth graduate development programme offers an excellent opportunity for you to explore and experience the diverse areas of our function responsible for growing the UK business across the whole portfolio of Thales, serving both defence and civil markets, in the UK and overseas. Whether you are allocated to Strategy & Marketing, Sales, Account Management & Capture or Communications & Government Relations for your first placement in our 2 year rotational programme, you will grow your skills, experience and competencies across a diverse range of markets and sites, not to mention a broad spectrum of business challenges.

You’ll have the opportunity to work alongside senior stakeholders, key customers and a range of suppliers, and you’ll join a community that has a big ambition to grow…. For that, we need the best talent in the market. Interested?

The roles

We are looking for 4 talented, driven and self-motivated individuals to join our Business Growth team, to work across the following areas;

Strategy and Marketing

The Strategy and Marketing function delivers strategic direction to Thales UK’s pursuit for growth. As a team we are the intelligence centre for the “Go to Market” organisation, operating across all Thales UK markets. The Strategy and Marketing team offers a great variety of work and projects across all businesses with senior exposure. You’ll be creating and delivering analysis that has a real impact within the business through the management and delivery of long term projects and assignments. You’ll also have the opportunity and early responsibility to deliver work to senior stakeholders within the business.

Sales and Business Development

The Sales Function is responsible for winning new business across all Thales UK markets and across the entire breadth of Thales portfolio - in the past 3 years the team has won over £3.5billion of new business. The Sales and Business Development team offers an exciting, challenging and high profile role that includes a mix of customer facing sales and business development activity for both domestic and export sales as well as some back office Sales support activity. The role will potentially involve both UK & overseas trips, so an appetite for travel is a must.

Communications & Government Relations

The Communications function creatively engages and influences customers, stakeholders, communities, markets and employees, enabling the business to achieve its strategic objectives and business priorities. Within our team, you will have the opportunity to get involved with a variety of internal and external projects and campaigns.

You could be working closely with our communications partners supporting delivery of impactful communications using a wide range of tactics, or working hand in glove with our Government Relations team where you’ll have the opportunity to learn how Thales maintains its relationships with politicians and officials, delivering high profile visits and events to support business aims. You could also work collaboratively with our business stakeholders to co-develop and co-deliver communication & engagement activities that influence employee behaviours and create great employee experiences.

Key responsibilities in Business Growth

• Working with the Business Growth Function leaders, developing and supporting the growth of new business to generate potential sales with our customers in both domestic and export markets. This will include working on and supporting competitive bids and developing skills in how to determine the value for the customer in the Thales offer
• Analysing and understanding Thales’ strengths and weaknesses against the competition in any of our markets
• Innovating and generating new ideas to address our customer / stakeholder /employee needs
• Developing high quality bid packs to achieve negotiating mandates from Thales senior management
• Producing high quality customer proposals
• Co-ordinating, analysing, forecasting and reporting information to support a number of activities including bid and peer reviews for both domestic and export opportunities
• Supporting the CEO and senior management teams with strategic political advice
• Working with the editorial team to develop and distribute content through a variety of on and off line channels
• Developing strategies to engage, involve and motivate employees to give their best.
• Participating and contributing in major customer events and shows, such as Farnborough/Paris Air Show/Defence and Security Exhibition International. This could be in a variety of ways, from meeting and greeting UK and International delegations of customers, briefing the media, creating content, managing our profile across social media before, during and after the event, or helping to host senior political figures.
• Developing your network across a broad range of customers and stakeholders

Skills, qualifications and experience

You will be on track to, or have achieved, a bachelor’s degree in any subject, however, Business, Marketing, International Business, Economics, Politics or numerical degrees such as Maths or Physics are of particular interest.

You will enjoy socialising and interacting with people, fostering valuable relationships and developing networks in a high energy environment. You have the drive and motivation to push yourself and your peers to generate and support new business ideas and solutions and see these through to completion. You will be comfortable in making decisions, taking informed risks and have the ability to think of innovative ways to do things differently. You will be very customer-focused, ensuring accuracy and high quality in all that you do.

You will also enjoy travelling, both in the UK and internationally.

Location

Our Business Growth community operates from a number of sites around the UK, including Belfast, Crawley, Cheadle, Glasgow, London, Reading and Templecombe, and your rotations and role could take you to any of these, so flexibility is a must.

Please note that Graduate Development Programme (GDP) activities take place during the working week but may require the investment of some personal time for travel and follow-up activities. You may have the opportunity to travel to Thales and non-Thales sites throughout the UK when participating in GDP activities.

Please note, assessment centres for shortlisted candidates will be held between February and May 2024. Induction week for all Graduate and Apprentices will commence on Monday 2 September until Friday 6 September 2024

Closing date: Our applications will close at 11.59pm on Sunday 7 January 2024, this is the only time we will be accepting applications this year. Please note, we will be in contact by the end of January 2024 with details of next steps.