Coles Group

Retail & Customer Service

Coles opened its first store in Collingwood, Melbourne, in 1914, and since then, has grown into a leading Australian retailer and household name.

Today, our business is made up of a number of brands, including Coles Supermarkets, Liquor land, Vintage Cellars, First Choice Liquor, Liquor Market, Coles Financial Services and Coles Online. Each delivers an exceptional service to customers and communities across Australia.

Becoming the most trusted retailer in Australia means we are reliable and responsible, delivering on our purpose to ‘sustainably feed all Australians to help them lead healthier, happier lives.‘

We’re defined by a shared vision, purpose and strategy. One that’s behind every business decision, big and small. At the core of every conversation And brought to life in the culture we’ve created for our customers and our team members who serve them.

Coles is focused on making life easier for its 20 million customers each week by delivering unparalleled quality, value and service through channels such as Coles Online, Financial Services and one of Australia’s most popular loyalty programs, Flybuys.

HERE'S A SNAPSHOT...

2400+ Locations
120k Employees
1914 Founded

Rewards & Benefits

PAID PARENTAL LEAVE

At Coles, we are proud to support working families build great careers by offering 12 weeks of paid Parental Leave for primary caregivers and 2 weeks of paid leave for secondary caregivers. Paid Parental Leave is available to our permanent full-time and part-time team members with a minimum of 12 months of continuous service.

LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT

With almost 2,500 stores, sites and Store Support Offices across Australia, there’s no limit to where a career with Coles Group can take you. We give you the tools you’ll need for your own learning journey, allowing you to explore a variety of career development programs and job-specific training.

INCLUSION INITIATIVES

We have many inclusion initiatives led by the business and our Team Member Networks, including talent programs for team member network leaders and more.

DISCOUNT AND BENEFITS

You’ll receive discounts across Coles, Coles Liquor and Coles Online. We also offer product and service discounts courtesy of our partners.

EMPLOYEE RESOURCE GROUPS

We have networks that support all our Better Together focus areas, including Gender Equity, Pride, Accessibility and Indigenous Engagement.

Recognition & Celebration

We know it’s important to recognise the efforts and achievements of our team members. That’s why we have a number of ways to say ‘thank you’, and everyone can get in on the act, even our customers.

APPRECIATE A MATE

Appreciate a mate thank you cards that encourage on-the-spot feedback and can be given to anyone working at Coles.

WINNING TOGETHER

Winning together is a shared celebration of team members who champion our Coles values. Recognition is provided by the manager to team members weekly and includes a personalised thank you card together with a gift card.

SERVICE RECOGNITION

Experience matters. That’s why we celebrate the anniversary milestones of our team. When a team member hits 5 years of service, and every 5 years thereafter, they are awarded a special name badge and a special celebration of their time of service.

GOOD THINGS AWARDS

Team members are recognised monthly and could roll up to be quarterly and annual winners with fantastic prizes available. Team and Leaders across our brands could also be celebrated at one of our epic ‘Of The Year’ events, where we award prizes such as holidays, mementoes, international study tours and more!

Information for Parents & Carers

What are the minimum age requirements?

What we’re looking for?

You will need to be at least 15 years of age to apply for employment with Coles. For some brands, such as Liquor, you will need to be at least 18 years of age.

At what age can my child start working?

Each state and territory in Australia has its own requirements regarding the minimum age of employment and the conditions that apply. As a national employer, Coles will generally only accept applications from prospective team members who are aged 15 years and older for our supermarkets and online business.

Click here to learn about minimum age requirements by state and territory.

In some cases, we’ll need your written permission to allow your child to start with us or other documentation in support. If so, the store you’ve applied with will make it easy and guide you through the steps.

  • For Coles Services – we will only accept applications from prospective team members who are aged 16 years and older.
  • For Liquor and distribution jobs – applicants will need to be at least 18 years of age.

What to expect in the Coles Recruitment Process

  1. Submit your Expression of Interest
    Submit a single Expression of Interest, or apply to a specific job to be added to our Talent Pool.
  2. Matched to Job
    When a job is posted that matches your profile, you’ll be invited to apply.
  3. Personality Assessment
    This quick assessment will take no longer than two minutes.
  4. Interview
    Depending on the role, you’ll either have a face-to-face group interview, a video interview, or both.
  5. Working Rights Check
    We will verify your working rights documents, as well as driving and police checks for CSA roles.
  6. Outcome
    You’ll either be offered a role or put back into our talent pool for the next opportunity.

What to expect when your child is working with us

Coles Group is a great place for a first job. We offer flexible working arrangements with no late shifts. Working with us won’t interfere with school hours and we’ll do our best to accommodate any afterschool activities.

School students are rostered for shifts in the afternoons, evenings, weekends and school holidays. They’ll receive their roster in advance, which makes it easier to plan for other commitments.

We’ll provide your child with extensive training, support and ongoing guidance to make sure they fully understand their job responsibilities, including safety requirements and processes. Your child should feel safe and comfortable whenever they come to work with us.

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Gender Equality

We’re striving for gender equity and have a goal of 40% representation of women in leadership positions by 2023.

To help achieve our targets, we have embedded gender equity principles across our processes. This includes updating our recruitment processes and ensuring we have gender balance representation through the shortlisting and interview stages, looking at how we develop talent and succession planning and challenging role structures to create a working environment that helps team members thrive.

We continue to work hard to mainstream flexible working across our organisation.

We have a senior-led Gender Equity Steering Committee with strong plans to continue to strive toward our commitments.

In 2021 we re-launched our Gender Equity team member network, sharing stories, resources, and regular updates on our progress against plans with our team members. We are also prioritising capability building and training our leaders in Inclusive Leadership and Unconscious Bias.

Things you need to know…

Committed to gender balance throughout the recruitment process

We’re focused on tracking gender balance at every point of the recruitment process to drive continual reflection and review, building gender equitable recruitment practices, removing gender bias through our recruitment process, and updating our recruitment and appointment processes. We’re also looking at how we develop our talent and challenge the way roles are structured. You can contact our Inclusive Recruitment team at inclusionrecruitment@coles.com.au if you’d like any assistance with the selection process or your potential work environment.

Accessibility at Coles

Accessibility is important to us not just across our stores but all our workplaces and digital platforms.

We’re committed to making our products, services, workplace, and culture welcoming and supportive of people with disability.

To support our customers, we are committed to the continued rollout of disability confidence training to our customer-facing team members.

In 2021, we became a signatory to the Valuable 500, a global movement advancing disability inclusion.

We’re also proud to be part of the Australian Network on Disability ‘Stepping Into’ Internship Program, offering students valuable business experience to set them up with meaningful careers.

We have a gold membership with the Australian Network on Disability and regularly benchmark our progress against the Access and Inclusion Index, and in 2019 we ranked 8th, with a commitment to improving in the future.

Click here to view our current action plan

Accessibility Action Plan

Our Accessibility Action Plan highlights our commitment to providing a great place to work for our team members with a disability and a leading customer experience for customers with a disability. We have recently launched our new action plan with our team member network to champion accessibility at Coles

Things you need to know…

Making adjustments to support you

We encourage and support the employment of people with disability, and we’re committed to building a team that’s representative of the local communities we’re part of. During the recruitment process, we know we might need to make some adjustments, including alternative formats to the recruitment process, so we can get to know you in the best possible way. Let us know what can be done during the process, and we’re happy to accommodate. Once you join Coles as a team member, if there are changes that need to be made to your workplace or workstation so you can perform at your best, we’ll work with you to develop an appropriate solution.

You can contact our Inclusive Recruitment team at inclusionrecruitment@coles.com.au if you’d like any assistance with the selection process or your potential work environment.

Pride and LGBTQI+ inclusion at Coles

No matter your sexual orientation or how you identify, you can be your authentic self when you work with Coles.

Our executive-sponsored team member network, and our commitment to continually striving for best practice in the Australian Workplace Equality Index (AWEI), means you can come to Coles Group knowing you’ll grow your career, thrive and reach your full potential.

Championing inclusion

Championing LGBTQI+ inclusion in the workplace and beyond, our Pride at Coles network connects queer team members and their allies across the country.

Our Pride network celebrates IDAHOBIT and Wear it Purple, raising awareness and funds for community organisations.

We offer LGBTQI+ awareness and ally training to all team members and have dedicated leadership programs for our Pride network leads.

Our People policies and team member benefits are gender neutral and inclusive of all team members.

Our commitments

We’re proud to be recognised as a Gold Tiered Employer in the 2021 Australian Workplace Equality Awards and active partner with the community.

Coles is a proud member of ACON’s Welcome Here Project. As a member, we agree to support three project commitments:

  • Welcome and include LGBTQI+ people
  • Create positive change in your local community
  • Celebrate LGBTQI+ diversity

We’re here to help

We welcome applications from the LGBTQI+ community, and we recognise that trans and gender diverse applicants may have specific questions throughout the recruitment process. There’s no obligation to disclose your gender identity, however, if you choose to share this information, we’re here to provide advice and support.

You can contact our Inclusive Recruitment team at inclusionrecruitment@coles.com.au, where you’ll be supported by our Inclusive Recruitment LGBTQI+ lead.

Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Engagement

At Coles, We’re proud to be Australia’s largest private sector employer of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, with over 4,800 Indigenous team members nationally (3.8% of our workforce), and we’re not stopping there.

Our vision

Coles has a proud history of taking action and forming strong relationships with the Indigenous community, and that commitment extends to working better together to ensure that we continue to grow our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander team member representation.

By 2023, we’re committed to increasing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander team member representation to five percent of our total workforce and three percent of trade and leadership roles. We’re also focused on maintaining retention rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander team members above the Coles Group average.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Plan

The Coles Group Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Plan set out our commitment to engage with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, organisations, communities, and customers and to better reflect the communities in which we live and work. The Plan contains high-level commitments that will provide more opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, organisations, communities, and customers to engage with our business. You can read about the plan on our website.

Learn more about Indigenous employment

If you’re interested in a rewarding career with Coles Group across any of our brands or functions, we actively encourage you to register your Expression of Interest.

For more information or assistance with your application, please email the Indigenous Affairs Team at IndigenousAffairs@coles.com.au.

There are currently no jobs available

Unfortunately there are currently no positions available at Coles Group, please check back soon.

Awards

Top Graduate Employers
The Australian Association of Graduate Employers, 2023
Top Graduate Employers
THE AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATION OF GRADUATE EMPLOYERS, 2022
Finalist
Prosple/Grad Australia Top 100, 2022
Top Employer
Prosple/Grad Australia Retail, Sales & Consumer Goods, 2022
Gold Employer
Australian LGBTQ Inclusion Awards, 2022
Winner
GradConnection Top100 Most Popular Graduate Employers, 2022
Recipient
Access & Inclusion Badge, 2021
Member
Valuable 500, 2021

Resources