Walk into almost any supermarket north of the border and you'll find milk and cream from Robert Wiseman Dairies. Founded in 1947 as a small Scottish family business, the company has expanded enormously in recent years to become one of Britain's top five dairy companies ­ partly through organic growth, but also through an aggressive programme of acquisitions. Today, it supplies 70% of the Scottish milk market and 13% of the UK market as a whole. The company continues to spread into England and Wales with a new £32m dairy being built in Droitwich, near Birmingham. There are plans for a presence further south. With an expansion programme this healthy, opportunities abound at Wiseman in all areas for those interested in manufacturing career. As well as the obvious niches such as production, distribution and finance, there's also a need for people with strong IT skills as Wiseman invested £550,000 in a business-wide enterprise applications system last year. The new systems connect all 16 of Wiseman's depots and dairies, providing all the infrastructure the company needs to expand further. Wiseman doesn't use the milk round to pick up the talent it needs. Neither does it operate online applications. "We usually run our graduate recruitment ads in the national press," says personnel officer Gary Frame. Wiseman wants graduates with more than good qualifications. "We like to see applicants who already have some work experience, or some evidence of commitment and responsibility, as well as good interpersonal and teamwork skills," says Frame. "We tend to look at the extracurricular section of the CV. Perhaps they've been established in a part-time job while at university, or they might have been a sports captain or a school prefect. They might have organised gap year travel or worked in a voluntary programme." Most of the annual intake is under 25, although older candidates wouldn't necessarily be excluded. "All applications are considered on their own merit," stresses Frame, who's still close enough to the application and training process to remember how it felt. Once they are accepted, trainees embark on a two year course after which they will emerge as fully fledged junior managers ­ perhaps production manager or purchasing manager at one of the regional facilities. Here, they'll continue to build on their skills and gain the experience they'll need to progress further. {{Z SUPPLEMENTS }}

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