Nordstrom Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Nordstrom full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – If you sell well, you'll be paid well.

Cons – Selfish selfish selfish. People used to be the priority here but now that sales have improved, and online sales have increased due to in store web fulfillment, sales come first. The"inverted pyramid" used to be a model for how things should run-- customers at the top, then employees, followed by executives etc. Does anybody even remember this concept? The employee is pretty much forgotten about-- they used to care but no longer. It's pretty sad. Oh, and management over 40 will pretty much be demoted because of wanting to earn the younger customers business by having young management. I could go on and on.

Advice to Senior Management – Care about your people more. Develop and train better leadership. Don't kick the experienced (I.e. older management) to the curb...those experienced in the culture have to train the future.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Nordstrom full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – pay was great
made my own schedule
good co workers
hour lunch
opportunity to advance..IF you are a favorite.
thats about it.

Cons – management changes way too often to feel supported in your business
sales are more important than the customer
absolutely no work life balance - you can take time off in february...IF it doesn't effect your business and if you take time another month, you can expect to be lectured about how inconvenient it is, even for family emergencies.
Management will say one thing, then do another...ie: "You sell a clarisonic, you can win a flee at 3 card (which means you can leave at 3pm if you opened instead of 5)" and then when you try to use it "we took those away because nobody had a physical card" (WHICH THEY NEVER HANDED OUT EVEN WHEN YOU ASKED FOR IT MULTIPLE TIMES)

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Nordstrom full-time for more than a year

Pros – my co-workers
20 % discount
the hours

Cons – RETURNS! Especially in handbags. My manager told me that the returns are always high in their department. Some days I am working to be positive. I would get 3,000 in returns in one day and have to make it up. People return purses that are used and smell like cigarettes. We will take it back no matter what

Advice to Senior Management – Have your return policy affect our conmission for only a couple months not a year. People will return their used purse after 11 months and 28 days and it affects our commission.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Nordstrom full-time for less than a year

Pros – -Nordstrom has joined the Human Rights Campaign
-Bistro is great

Cons – -I found the job culture to be deeply uninspiring and in fact intensely wearing. There was no sense of awareness of anything happening in the company at large among the general employees.
-I have never felt so needlessly and ceaselessly watched. That being said, management was deeply uninvolved on a manager to sales person level; not only as far as personal training and development but also as far as helping to reach goals-career and salary wise. Management not only seemed unconcerned by this but were often very nonchalant about dishonesty on the sales floor or inability to reach person salary goals due to slow traffic.
-Not only have I never been clear on exactly how the hourly rate worked, but when inquiries were made it was very clear that there were not many of my peers who did either. Throughout the hiring process as well as the training process it was extremely misleading as to how pay would be awarded and this only seemed to get murkier over time. During lulls, the overstaffing on the sales floor made it impossible for personal commission goals to be met and the length of shifts combined with lack of traffic made metrics so low that there was no hope for a sufficient paycheck.
-I found that not only were my peers verbally unpolished and often not put together aesthetically, but that they were dishonest about business practices on the sales floor and often unconcerned with following daily procedures. I consistently found it hard to believe that anyone would spend money with or take fashion advice from people whose visual representation of themselves was so sloppy. For a company that prides itself on its knowledge of fashion and trends, most of my peers had no working knowledge of either. Anything more abstract than your basic DVF and sales associates and even management were at a loss. Personal aesthetics aside, there should be at least a working knowledge of trends, blogs, and general knowledge outside the ones found in your own personal wheelhouse.
-Visual displays and visual merchandising were consistently uninspiring and in fact nonsensical.

Advice to Senior Management – -Provide and enforce better more engaging training practices.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Nordstrom full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Great reolaction packages, opprotunity to grow, commision sales

Cons – Managment does not listen to the people they directly manage all levels, people are often promoted based off who they know not off merit, company has an overall "mean girls" vibe with eveyone looking to get ahead by making others look bad. Pay is not comperable to others for the work load.

Advice to Senior Management – Listen, Listen, Listen... I would also reinterview eveyperson who has ever worked with Pari Sanayei who is still supported as a leader, despite her poor leadership.

Current Employee – been working at Nordstrom full-time for more than a year

Pros – pay is better than most other retail stores, get discount on merchandise

Cons – The company is becoming increasingly cheap. They keep cutting hours despite making a profit. Meanwhile they put even more pressure on you to provide customer service and still somehow keep the sales floor neat. Promotions are based on pure favoritism, seen inexperienced people hired and less than six months later become a manager, meanwhile I've been there for years. Also, my current store manager has the attitude that she needs to clean house and bring "her people" in. Also hours suck, they vary from week to week (anywhere from 30-40), have to close all the time because managers don't want to.

Advice to Senior Management – At some point cutting hours will backfire because the more hours you cut, the less customer service that is available. Also, less people means a messy sales floor. If I can't locate things on the floor, neither can the customer. Finally, stop promoting incompetent people to management just because they are yes men, people who are willing to give you constructive criticism make better managers.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Nordstrom full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Made good friends, that is about it.

Cons – For a customer that claims to have the best customer service they not care about their employees at all. Employees are very dispensable. Employees get in trouble numerous times a day for not having sales when there are no customers in the store.

Advice to Senior Management – Management needs to try to make their employees happy and their performance will be much better.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Nordstrom full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – I got a paycheck every two weeks

Cons – I was treated like a slave, verbally abused, and taken advantage of.

Advice to Senior Management – Pay close attention to the employees and how they are being treated. If you see a large number of employees being let go or stepping down in one dept take notice of the leader of that dept because thats where the problem is. Poor management!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Nordstrom full-time for less than a year

Pros – Exposure to nice clothes and people watching.

Cons – No training, whatsoever. Catty, gossipy co-workers. Competitive co-workers. Returns affect your paycheck. Hours all over the map. Huge pressure to sell Nordstrom cards. Long hours on your feet with no breaks.

Advice to Senior Management – Hire people with some maturity, not size 2 20 somethings impressed with themselves.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Nordstrom full-time for more than a year

Pros – 20% discount
Access to items before they hit the floor

Cons – Stuck up employees
Working on commission means there are some very bad weeks
Nobody cares about you, you are completely replaceable to the company

Advice to Senior Management – Care about your employees!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company