Vantaggi
I have met a ton of great people at this company; people that truly care about what they do. If you are willing to work your fingers to the bone, you can go far in this company.
Svantaggi
Where can I start; - A culture that does not focus on or value sales volume. Recently, other "metrics" have been introduced and pushed in order to attempt to capture the profits lost from the lower sales; A recipe for disaster. - Very political. Several promotions come out of left field and you are left wondering why someone got a certain position, only to learn they are a long time friend/ally of someone important. - Ancient systems. For a company that does $40 billion+ a year in sales, the systems are ridiculously slow and antiquated. You waste way to much time waiting for a report to load or dealing with system outages. This effects everything- delivery, selling, coaching, moral etc. - Lack of investment in store appearance. This hurts sales and gives us an "old fashioned" look. - Lack of stability and communication from upper management. Corporate Sears is completely disconnected from the stores. Their ideas are generally good and well meant, however, through a lack of follow up and poor communication, these ideas and goals are generally lost at the store level. You cannot change upper management as much as Sears has and expect strong performances from the stores. The vision and priorities change too often to become ingrained in the minds of associates and management. Also, the store management teams need to be able to bubble up advice without the fear of repercussions. I have witnessed too many terminations because people offered advice to corporate that "did not follow" the current agenda.The stores are on the front lines; listen to their advice and make changes that will, inevitably, benefit both of you.