Young graduates and junior employees are at the centre of a plan to bring fresh thinking to the eBay and stay one step ahead of customers, eBay UK’s General Manager, Murray Lambell has announced. The programme, dubbed Generation eBay, will see fresh thinking which we fully expect to challenge some of the accepted norms both on eBay and in ecommerce in general.
Marking the announcement of eBay UK’s first ever cohort of graduates, Murray Lambell said the online marketplace’s new and rising talent will be vital to understanding changing market trends.
eBay UK is set to bring in its first ever graduate programme, this summer. On 19th July, having received almost 700 applications, six graduates will accelerate their careers with a 22-month contract working across central eBay teams, including Trading, Marketing and Sales.
Alongside their formal training, Generation eBay graduates will receive a wealth of on-the-job learning and development opportunities too as they embed themselves in live projects with eBay experts.
To help bring even more innovative ideas into the company, eBay UK has also established a “Shadow Board” staffed by seven colleagues from across a variety of departments. Their role will be to provide insight and advice to the UK leadership team on issues like customer trends, sustainability, and in-work culture.
“I’m excited to be a part of the Shadow Board at eBay, along with my colleagues, helping to bring new perspectives and ideas to the executive team. I’m proud to work for a business that puts colleagues at the heart of its decision making, and with this new initiative I feel I can really make a difference to the way eBay UK operates.”
– Wahaaj Shabbir, Shadow Board member, eBay
Wahaaj Shabbir is currently the eBay Category Manager in Luxury for Sneakers, a fast moving and ever increasingly more important market segment with a high following of trend setting eBay buyers. A recent development in this sector is the roll out of the eBay Authentication Guarantee programme in the UK to verify that fake trainers aren’t sold on the platform.
“At eBay we’re always looking to bring in fresh perspectives and challenge the status quo – that’s how we stay one step ahead of our customers and support our sellers. Not only will our new graduate scheme jumpstart the careers of some brilliant young people, their insight and skills will be an excellent contribution to eBay. We’ve also put together a Shadow Board, a seven-strong committee of colleagues, tasked with providing new ideas and insight to our leadership team. We can’t wait to see what they come up with.”
– Murray Lambell, General Manager, eBay UK
Applications for the next cohort of graduates opens at the end of 2021.
7 Responses
God help us
Another example that eBay is run by uneducated morons 🙁 instead of asking for help experienced sellers – they’ll base site’s feature on unexperienced freshmans 🙁
And no doubt they’ll be agreeing to their ideas, so as to ’empower their blue-sky thinking in order to create a rich and diverse culture that offers opportunities of growth and promotion of well-being and synergy with forward-thinking’
Ah yes… More people with even less real life experience suggesting ideas with no real ideal of how they impact people.
Remember those ‘customer focus groups’ that eBay kept telling us were coming up with those ‘great ideas’….? Yep, god help us all.
Meanwhile the sellers, who see all the issues and real possibilities are again forgotten. We are just sold t cash cows.
Well for what it is worth here is an idea… How about having 1st and 2nd class mail having different delivery dates? We haven’t had a 1st class upgrade order for nearly 7 months on eBay, yet get them every day on other sites. After all why pay extra for the same delivery day?!
Oh and if we want to really shake things up, let’s cut the misleading postage times full stop .. seller lists 2nd class, eBay shows 2 to 3 days. Buyer looks at listing and sees get it in 2 days. Pays for item and it now says estimated in 2 days. Check on purchases and says 2 to days… You couldn’t make it up!
It’s ok though because the guy in charge of this area told me that buyers can’t open a INR case until 3 days has gone by…. Yes but they do often message you to ask where it is on the 2nd day!!!!
I have been a seller for years, sold thousands of items and ran into countless of needless headache issues for both buyers and sellers. There are so so many easy ways to improve the platform tremendously yet I can jump and down, left and right, head upside down there is no way I’m being heard.
All I can do is roll with the punches and adjust to whatever is ebay.
I know I’m not the only one.. not by a loooong shot.
Makes me wonder why ebay apparently thinks these graduates have more valuable input to give then their experienced customer base. Innovation doesn’t help much if the basics aren’t right, atleast to some degree. If you don’t know who your customer is and what experience he or she has on the platform.
I’m hoping that they’ll look at new technology that the kids use today – eBay selling on social media (without having to log into eBay).
The same with messaging – where is the ability to send an eBay seller a WhatsApp message and be able to make a purchase on eBay when the seller replies?
What about Snapchatting a video of your product that can then be purchased on eBay from within Snapchat?
So much new tech that old fuddyduddies like me don’t understand but the new buyers of tomorrow do!
What hope is there of getting implementation right when so many things don’t work and they seem more focused on little changes like moving the feedback or changing the colour of feedback on seller hub. Seems something has moved everyday on ebay at the minute
ebay seem to be bit of everything, try to please everyone private sellers but want businesses to give the great service. So many private accounts running a business on the site. Yet they keep pushing retail standards that businesses already do.
Wish ebay would become a bit more like Shopify and give sellers the tools to manage their own business, let them make their own decision and live and die by decisions. Plus fees a way better at 2.2% and can get products on. The more ebay try to micromanage the more mistakes they make with returns being the best example