30 Jan 2015

The Royal Mint has offered a group of recent university leavers from across the UK the rare opportunity to join its prestigious graduate training programme for the first time in five years.

Six graduates will now spend the next three years studying and supporting key business areas of the world renowned 1000 year old Mint which is officially responsible for manufacturing all UK coins and provides services for 60 other countries.  

They will work in Operations, Finance, Supply Chain or Marketing, with those in Finance roles gaining ACCA accreditation and the graduate in supply chain gaining a CIPS qualification.

The Royal Mint, which is the UK’s oldest manufacturing organisation, re-introduced its prestigious graduate scheme in recognition of a need to attract young talent and bring new skills into the business to help progress new initiatives and drive its objectives.

While The Royal Mint’s finest traditions are always respected, it continually innovates in order to stay at the forefront of world minting, embracing the latest production techniques and technology in order to offer excellence to its clients across the globe.

More than 400 recent university leavers from across the country applied to join the coveted scheme before just 90 were shortlisted for preliminary interviews where they took part in a group panel interview.

The final candidates then had to deliver a presentation relating to the specific business sector of the role that they had applied for in a more formal interview setting.

Lauren Reynolds, age 23 and from Swansea, gained a First Class degree in Business Management Studies from Cardiff Metropolitan University in 2014.

She said, “The Royal Mint plays such an important part of our UK heritage for every momentous occasion that’s been, like the Olympics, recognising our service men and women, celebrating the royal family, as well as being the world’s leading export mint. The Royal Mint’s vision is ‘to be recognised as the world’s best mint’ and this spoke volumes, as I also have aspirations to be the best I can in my career. Working for an organisation that actively encourages and motivates its workforce to do this really appealed to me.

“The finance graduate programme attracted me because of the exposure to a diverse range of accounting skills including manufacturing accounting, sales and marketing accounting and international trade accounting. The fact The Royal Mint was able to offer such diversity on one site really appealed to me as I’m not certain yet on the area of finance that I wish to specialise in. In addition, having the opportunity to study for ACCA certification under the guidance of a mentor made it an obvious choice for me. My immediate goal is to learn as much as I can before I choose my speciality, but I would love to reach a senior management position within the organisation in future.”

Bunnet Gumpo, age 26 and from Brighton, also graduated last year and is one of two graduates now working in the Operations division of The Royal Mint.

He said, “I completed my Mechanical Engineering Post Graduate course at Loughborough University in the summer of 2014 and started to look for available vacancies which were applicable to my background. There were a number of jobs available but the competition in the engineering industry is very high. I was keen to work for a big organisation which would offer stability and opportunities for growth, and The Royal Mint graduate training scheme sounded ideal. Currently I’m working alongside another graduate in the production areas, and enjoying meeting everyone and learning about the business.  In the future I would like to continue working in the engineering field, but develop my career and progress to a senior role, and The Royal Mint seems like a great place to do this.”

Anne Jessopp, The Royal Mint’s Director of Business Services, added, “Our business continues to go from strength to strength and we will be delivering a number of exciting large scale projects over the next couple of years, including the opening of The Royal Mint Visitor Centre and the launch of a new circulating UK £1 coin. The success of any organisation relies heavily on the dedication and abilities of its employees, and we were keen to welcome new recruits with a fresh perspective to join our highly skilled and passionate workforce.

“In previous years we have delivered a similar graduate training scheme and attracted a lot of interest, but the reintroduction of the initiative this year has seen an unprecedented number of extremely competent applicants. It has been fantastic to receive such a positive response from high caliber graduates and we have been very impressed by their knowledge and understanding of our business and services that we provide. As a result, not only have we filled the six intended positions, we have also appointed two additional applicants for other temporary roles in the business because they displayed the right skills and abilities for these vacancies.”