Not Qualified? They Say Retail Isn't a Career, But I Hired Hundreds and Made Millions for Companies
Advice for recruiters & tips for retail leaders
As a store leader, my corporate office sent me a sizeable back-to-school planning packet every June. It would arrive in a mail pack on Friday. Every year, I'd forget it was coming, and then every year, when I ripped open that large FedEx Express box (ziiiiiip!) and that fat manilla envelope fell out, I'd cringe.
Then I'd groan and shove it at the back of the desk.
"Noooooo. Didn't we just do this?" I'd ask my training & development manager.
"Yeah girl, we did." She'd say.
Dammit!
Hiring for back-to-school is a massive undertaking. It's arduous and requires detailed planning. The season can get away from you quickly, so the planning has to be meticulous.
Plan or Struggle
When I was finally caffeinated enough to dig into the details, I'd pull my T&D manager off the floor, and we'd go through all the details. We'd schedule all the group interviews, update our hiring binder, get new hire packets ready to go, and ensure we both had adequate days off to ensure we didn't lose our minds.
After that, we'd list our hiring goals on the whiteboard by week and number them 1-25 so we could write in all the names of our new hires and not lose any information along the way.
We repeated this process for holiday hiring.
Every year, we hired fifty employees—twenty-five for summer and twenty-five for winter. We trained everybody, scheduled them properly, ensured they meshed with the existing team, and (if they were seasonal) off-boarded them with respect and dignity.
So, please explain to me why you think retail leaders are not capable of doing whatever it is you do at that job that you're hiring for.
“Okay, for those of you unaware, retail leaders do IT ALL.”
Every week, I receive countless direct messages from retail leaders trying to break into new jobs and adjacent industries. These messages have a common theme: no one will hire me because I come from retail and "I don't have the experience."
Hogwash.
Okay, for those of you unaware, retail leaders do IT ALL.
We
Post job openings
Interview
Hire
Train
Maintain employee files & secure documents
Handle coaching conversations
Fire people sometimes
Not to mention:
Merchandising
Ordering supplies
Writing schedules
Customer service
IT/Troubleshooting
Fixing registers, printers, phones, and iPads
We also:
Provide first aid
Handle a myriad of crises
Maintain good working relationships with vendors, delivery drivers, and mall managers.
Being a retail leader requires a high level of emotional intelligence, as well as the ability to master switching priorities while reading the room and identifying people who need help.
All while your outfit stays cute, your makeup stays put, and your demeanor remains steady. If you lose your cool in front of your team or your customers, you've lost them.
You do it all with a smile while you sweat. Because you probably can't control your AC—the corporate office handles that—good luck getting it changed to a cooler setting.
Can you do all that?
But please tell me again about how you just don't think we can handle your software or be in charge of four other people or whatever.
It's so dumb.
If you're in HR, hiring, or recruiting, learn about what leaders do in other fields. You may be astonished at what a typical day looks like for retail leaders. Because it probably involves every one of those bullet points listed above.
Retail leaders, if you're looking for your next career, take some time to take note of everything you do during your day. Think about how it translates into other fields. Yes, it would be fantastic if people knew all that we oversee on a daily basis or if they knew how we run multi-million dollar buildings with minimal oversight.
When was the last time you saw your DM? I saw mine about six times a year.
But people don't know. They won't know. How can they?
So, we need to start advocating for ourselves and learn how to interview well. Here's how you do it. It won't even take you that much time.
Grab a notebook or note-taking app.
Whatever you will use. It doesn't matter.
Take notes on what you do. Five minutes in the morning, five minutes in the evening. Or start with once a day. It’s fine. Just get started.
Questions to consider:
What's on my plate today?
How do I make sure it all gets done?
What went wrong today?
How did I handle it?
What did I delegate? Why?
I'm so glad _____ happened today!
I'm not telling you to write a novel here. Your notes can be brief. They can be encrypted. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that you can look back on them and understand how you manage tasks and lead people.
Most of us don't make time to do this, and when we start interviewing for another role, we're totally lost—and we often don't even know it. In 2019, I interviewed for Allbirds. I fell on my face in that interview; I did everything wrong. You can read all about it here.
But I prepared by studying the company—everything they were doing. I didn't reflect on my leadership skills at all. When I got to the interview, they didn't ask me one thing about their company; they wanted to know how I led people.
Even though I knew I was an excellent leader, I couldn't articulate it. That disaster of an interview led me back to writing, so I guess it all worked out in the end.
Learn to articulate all you do. Quick daily notes will help you do that. Begin advocating for yourself and strategizing about how your talents can support another industry.
Reflection takes time. You will not be able to do this overnight; however, your efforts will be compounded. Pretty soon, you'll be able to sit down in an interview and talk about how you lead. You'll have examples ready because you took your notes and referred back.
Retail leaders are masters at handling change, managing chaos, and operating on a skinny budget. But most people don't know that. It's up to you to tell them how you do it.
When they ask you, "Why do you want to leave retail?"
You answer, "Because I'm ready for a challenge. I'm ready to take my extensive skill set somewhere new and help this company grow."
Not "Because retail is so exhausting and I'm over it."
Okay?
Cool.
So, can we handle that job you're hiring for?
Welp, in addition to hiring fifty people a year, we can run a retail floor with fifteen associates. We can manage all their breaks, handle register overrides, talk on a walkie, and sell swimwear while an eight-year-old spills his Jamba Juice all over the floor and that other guy with a puppy lets the dog lick it up (true story).
We sure can.
And we do it all while gliding.
Do you want to schedule that interview now?
Kit Campoy is an author and retail expert with 20+ years of experience leading retail teams. She thrived on building relationships with customers and motivating sales teams. Now, as a ghostwriter, she leverages this people-centric approach to craft compelling content that resonates and ignites brand loyalty.
For the longest time I held the belief that retail and restaurant/food service jobs were supposed to be stepping stones to "real" jobs. You have shattered that perception and humbled me greatly. Thank you for educating me. I'm so glad I found your newsletter.
SO fun!! A riotous picture of a day in retail with all of the skills to handle it outlined. Retail leaders are running a company in all but name! And a great idea of how to learn to articulate and understand the skills people already know. Thanks!