She just announced on Twitter

http://twitter.com/#!/helen_milligan

Pleased for her 100 job offers <though not all serious ones> doesn`t surprise me one bit.

I'm pleased for her and much deserved too.

Cheers for Helen. Just desserts.

Massive congratulations to Helen!

Smart move by Greggs

and a real job!

Well done to Helen.

Might well work out better than winning - given the poor record of previous winners staying on with Lord Sid

I'll keep an eye out for her when I next visit Greggs in Leatherhead or Woking...

Alan Carr will be made up!

Very well done and congratulations to Helen. Very please for her, she deserves it.

She already had a top job with Greggs anyway, (Executive Assistant to the CEO.)

I presume this is a good promotion for her though.
Congrats.

This will be a much better job. Exec Assistants is another term for PA. Heads of depts will have ALOT more responsibility.

Well done to Helen

An excellent job it seems. Congratulations to her

She will be the real winner from this series

A job in Greggs!

Living the dream...........

She's not just serving up rolls and cakes behind the counter, she'll be on a very good salary I suspect.

In my experience of dealing with Executive assistants to CEOs, they carry a lot more weight than heads of departments.
They are party to, and involved in massive decisions for the business, and also completely run the life of the CEO. They are often far more influential in operational decisions than the CEO they look after.

Well done Helen. I wonder will she be incorporating MyPy's into Greggs range

Sausage Rolls all round then....

Pay Rise....

Wasn't a fan at all but congratulations to Helen.

I note that her twitter actually says 'head of south east retail'. Still sounds like a good job but nowhere near the overall 'head of retail' in the title of this thread!

I agree.

Sounds like a Regional Manager job. If true, that's quite a bit different and lower than Head of Retail which I'd imagine is a Management Commitee job.

In the companies I've worked in Regional Management are heavily operational. Head of Department jobs are more strategic and directional and usually report to the MD/Chief Exec.

However, she would probably be very good at that sort of regional job. It sounds exactly like the type of job she might get from being an EA.

I've taken the "SE" at the end of the thread title to mean "South East" all day

I'm sure it didn't say the SE bit originally - or maybe I was just being stupid (which is likely!)

I said on here before that I reckon she was really technically a PA even though she was called an EA.

A dictionary definition EA could have a say at the top table about the direction of the company and moving to a regional retail manager from that would be a step down. I'm assuming this is a promotion, and therefore from what was essentially a PA to a regional manager. I think regional manager also fits her skillset. All organisational and operational but not much strategy or business direction.

Well done again to Helen (from a non-Helen fan) - going on the show was clearly worth it.

But she was a regional manager at Greggs in the Midlands before, and was promoted from that to executive assistant.

According to The Sun:

Helen, 30, will be head of retail in the South East for bakery Greggs. She will run 200 shops and be in charge of 2,300 staff.

Presumably that's a step up from the regional manager post she had before. In my view it's such a big step up from PA that it casts doubt on the theory that EA=PA.

Whatever it is and regardless of what she did or didn't do, that's quite a lot of responsibility.