My own career story with retail began 20 years ago, when I proudly obtained my first ever Saturday job aged 15 working as an assistant in my local pharmacy. Fifteen years later, having worked across beauty retail through college and university, then supermarket shelf stacking to fund my backpacking travels, I found myself working in Shanghai for a leading UK supermarket as the HR lead in a cross-functional strategic project team.
My story isn’t unique. It’s just one example of how the retail industry facilitates fascinating career journeys to destinations unknown.
So what is it about retail that makes it such a great starting point for your career?
First and foremost, retail brings you incredibly close to the customer. Learning how to ‘go the extra mile’, developing skills in problem solving and taking the initiative early in your career sets you up for solving more complex, influential business challenges later. The immediacy of social media means a really great, or really poor, customer interaction is capable of being shared to wide and large audiences, swaying customers from promoters to detractors at the drop of a hat. So there’s no sharper place to learn about customers than the retail industry.
Then there’s sheer scale. The UK retail industry employees over 2.9m people, totalling over £339 billion of sales. Pretty impressive figures that translate into opportunities for early responsibility, to learn how to navigate the decision-making processes of complex organisations, and how to craft solutions and products that fit the needs of thousands of colleagues or customers. The scale also means there are constantly opportunities to have a ‘career within a career’. In what other sector can you join at 18 and end up managing multi-million pound budgets and lead a team of 1000s? Or move from recruitment to product technology? From Kent to China? Or from A-Levels to head of logistics?
It’s not just scale of numbers that is impressive. With the dynamics of the grocery market changing, becoming increasingly digitalised and international, exciting, ‘blank slate’ opportunities arise that challenge even the most intellectual of leaders as well as creating even more demanding customers and changing shopping habits in store. Retail offers its leaders constant polarities to manage daily. Where else can your to-do list be dictated by the European Football Championships results and the UK’s weather systems alongside the impact of digital innovations on online deliveries or the custom’s regulations of Chinese ports?
Finally, there’s the networking element. A third of those employed in retail are aged under 25, and given the variety of career available within retail, it easy to look back in 10 years’ time and find your network of peers has moved on to become key retail players. I experienced this when I joined Consult-HR earlier this year and was immediately able to tap into my network spanning all organisational levels across multiple retailers – a network I hugely value.
Inevitably, organisational hierarchy and associated challenges exist within retail, but this also provides exposure and access to senior figures. For example, one of The Grocer’s Top New Talents 2015, Nicole Tallant, was spotted by former Asda CEO Andy Clarke whilst on a graduate training scheme, subsequently becoming his project manager and ultimately buying manager with the company.
Careers in retail transcend qualifications, routes of entry, geography, and function, providing unique exposure to organisations of scale, complexity and an opportunity to build a network of friendships that can last a lifetime. It’s a truly fantastic place to start from.
Joanna Jacobs is an HR consultant
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