Pluspunten
-Lots of responsibility very early on in your career. Fantastic stepping stone to move on to better companies and further opportunities. -Some good working relationships harboured more out of dealing with adversity. -Some very good store sports advisors that are enjoyable to work with. -Ability to recruit and develop own team . -Ability to make decisions that heavily influence the performance of the store and department. -Work with a great variety of sports products.
Minpunten
-No Development plan , the 'graduate scheme' is not in any way a graduate scheme as there is no plan in place for you. This is simply a graduate job. -You never hear about promotional opportunities until the positions are given away, it is not a meritocracy and instead is about who you know rather than what you know. Align this to the fact that only 2-3 Assistant store managers become available every year promotional opportunities becoming very sparse. -It is a very disorganised company with very bad communication, you will find you are constantly solving the problems created by the people in head office and not communicated. - The new price drop system has resulted in more pressure being put on staff and management to deal with more quantities and to be more productive. So there is a heavy reliance on managers to do everything on their departments; this means stocking shelves, tidying hundreds of thousands of products constantly and completing daily tasks. This leaves very little time to complete the jobs we are hired for such as merchandising, recruitment , staff development and overall commercial functionality. -The bonus scheme is very often unattainable. -The staff discount is low at 20% and only on products at full price. -Pay is very poor in relation to the responsibility that you hold. I have managed multi million pound departments to growth and in three years have had no pay increase above the £18000 basic starting salary. -Work life balance is non existent and working Saturdays is compulsory. You must work 45+ hours a week minimum. They say they want active sporty people then give you no time to be active and sporty.