Operations Associate
1 day ago
Manchester
Operations Associate The Commercial Operator Cohort: accelerated route into leadership Manchester - Full-time - Reports to: Operations Manager £32-35k starting, with the potential to reach £45-60k by month 24 for top decile performance Keep the promise. Learn how a fast-scaling brand actually runs. This isn't a normal job. Read this before you apply. Most companies hire for the seat in front of them. "We need someone in ops" becomes "who can process orders and chase warehouses?" You fill the role, become invisible admin, and two years later you're still reacting to problems you didn't cause and can't fix. This is different. If you perform, you won't spend five years as the person who chases couriers and updates trackers. We're building the Commercial Operator Cohort: a small group of early-career hires (4-5 people across Growth, Commercial and Ops) selected to a single bar and developed as future leaders, not support staff. What that means for you: We're betting on trajectory, not just today. We don't hire anyone, even early career, unless we believe they could go all the way. Operations Associate to Operations Director. Not everyone will. But everyone we hire should be someone we'd back to get there. Real ownership from day one. You'll own order-to-delivery for a set of customers. Stock visibility. Process improvements. When something breaks, you fix it. When something's slow, you speed it up. This isn't shadowing. You'll learn how the whole system works. Structured cross-training across Growth and Commercial. A planned functional swap later in the programme. We're building operators who understand the full machine, not specialists who only know their corner. Progression is based on outcomes, not time served. £32-35k starting. £45-60k by month 24 if you're delivering. Scorecards at 6, 12, and 18 months. We'll tell you where you stand. You're joining at the right moment. The founders bought Hairburst back in 2023. The leadership team just reset. We're building the layer underneath: the people who'll run this business in five years. This is the first cohort. You'd be in the founding class. One bar, one cohort, three doors. You're being selected to the same standard as the Growth and Commercial hires. Same assessment. Same expectations. Same development pathway. Different starting point, shared destination. About Hairburst We sit where beauty meets wellbeing: effective, habit-forming hair growth solutions that earn a permanent spot in the bathroom. We're owner-operators. In 2014, our founders launched Hairburst with £4k. In 2021, the brand joined JD Sports. In 2023, the founders bought back 100% to build the company we always wanted to run. Today: Boots, Superdrug, Holland & Barrett, DTC and marketplaces across nine territories. Over a million customers. One of the UK's fastest-growing beauty brands. Hairburst is the first brand. It won't be the last. What you'll actually do Own order-to-delivery. For a defined set of customers (DTC, retail, marketplace), you're responsible for getting product out the door, on time, in full. When it doesn't happen, you find out why and fix it. Keep stock visible. Track what's where, flag what's running low, coordinate with demand planning and the warehouse. No surprises. Drive process improvement. Spot the bottleneck before it becomes a crisis. Find the thing that's slowing everyone down and fix it properly, not just for today. Coordinate across the business. Work with Commercial, Finance, Customer Service and our 3PL partners. Operations touches everything. You'll learn how it all connects. What you'll learn • How order-to-cash actually works: processing, allocation, fulfilment, delivery, payment, • How to keep stock flowing: demand signals, supply planning, warehouse coordination, • What "on time, in full" really takes across DTC, retail and marketplace channels, • How to spot inefficiency and fix it, not just flag it, • How Growth, Commercial and Ops connect: the full system, not just your corner Who this is for You've already taken your first step into operations, logistics or supply chain. First role, placement year, internship, or serious self-driven work that gave you real exposure to how physical product moves. You've done the 0 to 1. We'll do the 1 to 10. We hire for attitude and aptitude. We assess using our PACE lens: • Pride - you care about the quality of your work, • Ambition - you want to build something, not just have a job, • Commerciality - you think about what makes money and what doesn't, • Energy - you move fast and bring others with you Proof you execute: you've kept multiple things on track under pressure (orders, projects, deadlines) and nothing fell through the cracks. Proof you learn: you've spotted something inefficient and figured out how to fix it. You don't need a perfect CV. You do need evidence you're on the way up. The selection process We're running this as a single cohort intake. Same timeline for everyone. No rolling decisions. • Applications close Friday 16th January, • Longlisted candidates notified w/c 19th January, • First interviews 27-28 January, • Final interviews (senior leadership) 3-4 February, • Offers w/c 10th February, • Cohort starts March 2026 If you've taken the time to apply properly, we'll get back to you. How to apply Submit one document (PDF) via LinkedIn: your CV plus an appendix answering both questions below. Question 1: Drive and evidence (around 250 words) Tell us about your most meaningful achievement so far. What did you do, what changed because of it, and what did it teach you about how you work? Question 2: Operational judgement (around 250 words) Imagine you're in this role. A key retail customer has flagged that their last three orders arrived incomplete or late. You don't yet know why. Walk us through how you'd diagnose the problem and what you'd do in the first 48 hours. What would you check, who would you talk to, and how would you stop it happening again? Bullets are fine. Plain English. We're looking for how you think under pressure, not perfect answers. Applications without both answers won't be reviewed. This is deliberate. The application is part of the assessment. If 500 words feels like too much effort, this isn't the right programme for you. One last thing We know this advert is longer than most. We know asking for a written response upfront filters people out. That's the point. We're not trying to maximise applications. We're trying to find 4-5 people we'd back to go all the way, and give them something worth applying for. If that's you, we'll see you in the process.