Marks and Spencer is one of the most familiar names on the British high street with more than seven hundred stores in the UK alone (over a thousand globally) and tens of thousands of employees. Over the past decade the company has had some struggles and suffered a sharp decline in revenues and share price particularly during the credit crunch, however the retailer has recovered strongly with available Marks and Spencer jobs on the increase offering competitive pay, benefits and solid career prospects.

There are a broad range of different Marks and Spencer job opportunities to choose from including store roles as a customer assistant or retail manager, administration and finance jobs at the companies business centre in Salford, or corporate positions at Marks and Spencer headquarters in London in areas including buying, marketing or IT. If you are at University or have already graduated, the Marks and Spencer graduate scheme is regarded as one of the best in the industry and a job via this scheme is a great way to get your career of to a flying start.

As you might expect from a retailer, a large proportion of people who have Marks and Spencer jobs work in store as customer assistants. This role is the best one to apply for if you don’t have the previous experience or qualifications required for a higher end job, however as a desirable employer in the retail sector there is plenty of competition for Marks and Spencer store jobs and as such you might find entry requirements a little higher than for the same kind of job at similar employers.

The most important aspect of a customer assistant job at Marks and Spencer is the ability to deliver top notch customer service. The company is viewed as a high end, quality brand and as such customer expectations about the quality of service delivered by staff are particularly high. In this type of job you will be assigned to a particular department and work as part of a smaller team within the store. Marks and Spencer are quite a diverse retailer and as such you could find yourself working in areas such as clothing, food or home and furnishings.

The warehouse plays a vital role in keeping a store up and running and Marks and Spencer jobs as warehouse assistants are an important role which provide a lot of employment positions. Again you’ll be working as part of a team and will be responsible for monitoring and organising stock. In general you’ll have much less contact with customers compared to a job on the shop floor however you will have to deal with them from time to time (mostly as part of the ‘collect by car’ service where customers order items online which are held in the warehouse to be collected) so good customer care skills remain important.

Although these in store positions are Marks and Spencer are good jobs in their own right you might be itching to progress you career and luckily the company offers great training programmes to help you work upwards to management positions. In particular the company provides a trainee management scheme which is the ideal way to fast track you career in retail management. Marks and Spencer jobs also offer a solid range of rewards and benefits which stack up well against its retail competitors. The hourly rate is very competitive, the employee discount is an impressive twenty percent and there are a variety of other benefits including a pension plan and an annual bonus.

Marks and Spencer provides its own jobs and careers website which makes finding your ideal job with the company easier than ever. You can search currently available job vacancies and filter them down by job role, region, store, department, shift pattern and even your preferred number of working hours. As well as providing in depth details about each particular position you can, after creating a profile, apply directly for jobs via the website so you can quickly and easily make an application as soon as you spot your perfect Marks and Spencer job.