Vantaggi
This is a great opportunity for someone without a college degree to earn decent money and enter into a good field. Fastenal can be a great stepping stone to industrial sales. It can also give experience in business management if you are interested in that.
Svantaggi
Fastenal is a promote from within company and everyone has to start part time. This limits the amount of people that are willing to start working for fastenal. It doesn't matter if you have a degree or how experienced you are. Once a person gets promoted to outside sales, the base is low and it is very hard to make a good commission. The commission is highly based on growth over the previous year. At first it is typically easy to grow but after calling on the same accounts for a few years, the numbers tend to plateau. Management will ridicule you for not growing even though you are a good sales person and making all of the calls that you are supposed to. Also, once you grow your accounts, you are expected to do all of the service. You have to stock bolt bins, vending machines and make all of your own deliveries. This prevents you from making sales calls and feeling like a professional sales person.