Working in Retail

[Further North]

Old thread but I took this long to read through it so I'm going to reply anyway in case someone else is looking for similar info.

I can definitely attest to Menards being a good employer for retail management jobs.

I spent about a year working there in college and got a good feel for it myself. One guy I worked with was the Hardware Asst. Manager and he was taking a Dept Manager job in another store. He told me when he left, "I don't even have a college degree but I started her after HS and 4 years later I'm now a manager and I'll be making $55K if I do well on my bonuses." Don't underestimate these jobs entirely as being strictly low pay and high stress/long hours.

My little brother started working at Menards for his last 2 years of college. When he graduated he couldn't find any work in his degree field, Construction Management, so he applied for the Manager Training Program. His GF (now recently wife) got hired on as an HR coordinator at a different nearby store so they could both relocate and work for the same company. He spent 3 or 4 months learning company policy, procedures, etc. and job shadowing managers in all of the store departments. After he completed that they assigned him to a 2nd Asst. Manager in a dept. Within 6 months they promoted him to 1st Asst. manager in a different apt. when they decided the person above him in his dept was doing as good of a job as he was. Then he was promoted to Manager in a different dept. all together. He's inline to make about $40K-$45K this year if his bonus is good. Since he doesn't really have any ties to the area he's working in he applies for any manager position he's seen in stores closer to home and every time they've at least given him a phone or in person interview and considered him. Now he's interviewing for a 2nd Assistant General Manager position in a new store that is in the planning stage for being built. Better yet, they may be considering her for the HR position, realizing that they are now married and they should be given opportunity to be working in the same store or at least the same region if they expect both of them to stay with the company.

There are some drawbacks though. You HAVE to meet sales goals. You have to meet payroll budget. He doesn't have control of staffing either. If the store decides to hire a full time employee for his dept he has no choice but to schedule them for their hours. He can't refuse them. If you work for a successful store meeting those goals is easy. You're in line for a good bonus too. If your store constantly struggles then good luck.

I'm in a completely unrelated field doing Product Design, but if I can't find work in the next 6 months then I'm strongly considering trying to get into the Manager Training program there.

At this point I may end up trying to accomplish the same goal at Target though. I went in last week to interview for a seasonal cashier job and I was pleasantly surprised with how well the interview went and the guy interviewing me said I did a great job and he went and got the HR director so they could hire me on the spot! I think I can attribute a lot of that to the questions they asked me lending themselves to leadership and customer service and I really played up my leadership roles in Boy Scouts and my past retail experience. If they keep me on after the holidays I'd probably try and move up there too.