Head of Category Gaming

Head of Category Gaming

Currys London Campus at Waterloo (LHO002)
Permanent
Full Time
Grade 6

At Currys we're united by one passion: to help everyone enjoy amazing technology.As the UK's best-known retailer of tech, we're proud of the service our customers receive - and it's all down to our team of 25,000 caring and committed colleagues. Working as one team, we learn and grow together, celebrating the big and small moments that make every day amazing.

Positioned within the commercial team the Head of Category is a senior leadership role which is accountable for all aspects of category performance, acting as the business thought leader for your squad, galvanising your team and supporting functions to develop and deliver the strongest strategy and plans to maximise both customer satisfaction and EBIT. You will deeply understand customers and competitors within your category and contribute heavily to successful delivery of the company vision and strategy, driving through leadership a growth and innovation mentality to ensure we stay well ahead of competitors. You will need to have highly developed negotiation skills and a proven track record of harnessing relationships at a senior level to ensure that our supplier partnerships deliver competitive advantage. Leading by example, you will ensure that the team live and breathe our values to drive improvement. Your ability to drive innovation and deliver solutions is key to this role.

A role of this magnitude requires you to directly manage a buying team and indirectly manage other areas of the business to deliver the category strategy, so our ideal candidate will have extensive management/leadership experience in order to drive a fully capable and committed team who understand their role in delivering the company vision 'we help everyone enjoy amazing technology'.

Key Responsibilities:

• Leads and owns development of the category strategy, in accordance with company defined guiderails for customer promises and financial deliverables. Ensures a balanced delivery of KPIs across colleague and customer satisfaction, and financial metrics
• Fully owns the performance of the squad, anticipating risk and opportunity, decisively resolving issues and setting a framework to enable self-sufficiency and high levels of accountability within each of the roles
• Leads and develops the squad to engender a culture of collaborative working, rounded thinking, and support. Maximises engagement in the company and its strategy and enables the team to deliver excellently. Quality checks the use of accurate data in decision making
• Drives a mentality of growth within the squad, seeking opportunities to exceed KPIs and gain further competitive advantage
• With the support of the central management function, develops and leads a robust supplier strategy, engaging key partners in our plan and company vision ensuring we minimise costs and maximise investment to support our customer and financial objectives
• Obsesses about customer experience through all elements of their shopping journey within the category. Insists on the use of insight and data in making robust decisions regarding the customer journey & proposition and works tightly with all customer facing channels to deliver excellently
• Support the central planning function by ensuring the category squad delivers in line with the critical path for all major processes, with a high focus on quality and 'right first time' delivery
• Develops a highly engaged team ensuring an ongoing focus of making a clearer, simpler, faster place to work
• Builds effective recruitment, development and succession plans to support the talent pipeline, respecting and embracing diversity within the team

Required Skills & Experience:

• Extensive buying experience working within a FMCG/Fashion or Hard Goods fast paced retailer
• Interest in gaming or experience of the gaming market
• Gaming-specific market knowledge and development skills would be desirable: this includes understanding the gaming industry's trends, consumer behavior, and market dynamics. It also involves having the technical skills to develop and manage gaming products and services
• Advanced negotiation skills and ability to manage all supplier partnerships at differing levels of seniority
• Excellent numerical and analytical skills to review data and provide recommendations/actions plans to improve the customer experience, sales and EBIT
• Drives change, recruits advocates from across the business to support new initiatives/improvements
• Excellent inter-personal and communication skills, capable of presenting to senior stakeholders and delegating for category director
• Management/leadership experience of senior buyers and buyers. Creating a spirit of inclusion and empowerment in the team
• Marketing/Merchandising/Retail/Business Degree

We know our people are the secret to our success. That's why we're always looking for ways to reward great work. You'll find a host of benefits designed to work for you, including:

• 25 days of annual leave (plus bank holiday entitlement) and a competitive pension scheme
• Private Medical Insurance
• Life Assurance
• Fantastic colleague discounts on Tech with Currys and iD Mobile
• Access to Champion Health (Wellbeing App)
• Hybrid working (with an expectation to meet in person 2-4 times per month)

#LI-Hybrid
#WelcomeToAmazing

Why join us:

Join our team and we'll be with you every step of the way, helping you develop the career you want with new opportunities, on-going training and skills for life.

Not only can you shape your own future, but you can help take charge of ours too. As the biggest recycler and repairer of tech in the UK, we're in a position to make a real impact on people and the planet.

Every voice has a space at our table and we're committed to making inclusion and diversity part of everything we do, including how we strengthen our workforce. We want to make sure you have a fair opportunity to show us your talents during our application process, so if you need any additional assistance with your application please email careers@currys.co.uk and we'll do our best to help.]]>