United Utilities

United Utilities 2024 graduate opportunities

Company Company profile

United Utilities PLC was created from the merger of North West Water and Norweb in November 1995. Its shares are listed on both the London Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange (in the form of ADRs). The company is a member of the FTSE 100 group of leading UK listed companies and employs over 17,000 people.

Its principal activities are managing and operating the regulated electricity distribution, water and wastewater networks in north west England, a region with a population of around seven million.

In August 2000, United Utilities sold its electricty and gas supply business and as a result no longer has any significant exposure to the competitive UK generation and supply market.

As well as operating utility networks in the north west, the group also owns two support services businesses, United Utilities Contract Solutions and Vertex. These businesses employ a limited amount of capital and seek to exploit the group's core provides infrastructure management and business process outsourcing skills in competitive markets.

United Utilities also operates a medium-sized alternative telecommunications provider called Your Communications. This has a dense network in the north of England, complemented by a lean national network.

Case studies

  • Name: Steve Mould
  • Joined: September 2004
  • University: University of Sheffield
  • Degree: Meng Electrical Engineering

Description:

How would you describe yourself in 3 words?

Laid-Back, Logical, Motivated

Which programme are you on?

Leaders in Electrical Engineering

Projects and placements to date?

First six months spent working with various teams in Electricity Ops involved with maintaining and repairing the Electricity Network. The placement also gave me the opportunity to work with the teams involved with constructing new sections of Network. Just started the first of four 3-month placements in Asset Management.

Key lessons learned so far?

You can basically work wherever you want to within the company, so choose carefully. There are a lot of opportunities available to Graduates so take of many as them as you can.

Ultimate ambition within United Utilities?

To continue enjoying coming to work, and it'd be nice to end up in a very well paid role!

Training & profiles

Our graduate programmes

United Utilities is one of the world's leading utilities businesses. We're building that business on the strength of our people - people like you. Our graduate programmes select and groom some of the very best emerging talent, taking new entrants through a structured programme that will deliver our leaders of the future. We welcome intelligent, challenging, competitive team players from across the academic disciplines and offer five routes for you to reach your potential as a leader in industry.

Click on any of the links in the side navigation to find out more about what each programme offers and how you can apply to shape your future within our business.

Application procedure

Please apply to the live job listed on graduate-jobs.com

FAQs

We are currently recruiting graduates in the Water, Engineering and Electricity Engineering graduate programmes only. We will next be recruiting graduates for the Core, Business Consultancy and Information Technology programmes in 2007.

Life outside the programme

Being a graduate with United Utilities isn't all about work, aside from having two thriving metropolis's in Liverpool and Manchester on your doorstep, there are a wide range of activities which current and previous graduates are involved with.

One of the areas that a number of graduates contribute time and energy to is charity organisation's such as GroundWork, The Prince's Trust and WaterAid. In partnership with these organisations our graduates have contributed a great deal of their time and support to various activities including:

  • ‘It's a WaterAid Knockout'
  • Volunteering at Glastonbury
  • 5-a-side football tournament
  • Supporting the introduction of the Prince's Trust volunteering
  • Working in Tanzania to support WaterAid's activities in Africa

In addition to supporting these partnership projects, graduates have also given their time and support to United Utilities sponsored programmes such as Grow your Future Workforce to help young children spark an interest in engineering.