Best Buy Reviews in Atlanta, GA Area

Pros

Best Buy is a great place to work for gaining experience with technology. I thoroughly enjoy learning about the latest and greatest in electronics. The managers treat the employees well. The managers make selling fun.

Cons

annual raises. Employees are often hired to train new hires that are getting paid more than them. I feel the paygrade scale is unjustified and unfair at times.

Advice to Senior Management

It isn't fair hiring new people that are making more than associates that have worked for the company for years. I have recently trained an associate that I feel doesn't deserve to make more than I do.

Pros

Benefits are really nice.
Pay is higher than other sales jobs.
Job is none commission base.
Not a hard job by any means.

Cons

Management disorganized.
Products often understock.
Empty Promises.
Managers need an econ class. Often didn't understand basic concepts.
Tough moving up. Work is not often recognized.

Pros

The salary and benefits are the only good things about the job. Bonuses were good but are now becoming less attainable.

Cons

Job is really 50-60 hours per week and you still can't complete the job correctly. Company does not appreciate or facilitate you taking care of the customer. Jobs duties are so compartmentalized that no one person can solve a client issue. Management is more interested in processing the client as quickly as possible and passing them off to the next department without any followup to assure that the client has been served. Management just wants to document the hand off and pass the blame. No concern that the shared client gets failed because the process did not work even when they knew that the process would probably fail in advance.

No effective staff development. Constantly changing business focus. Unreasonable expectations.

Advice to Senior Management

Invest in staff development training. Be willing to accept that other methods may be more effective. This position carries a bonus for individual performance, so support and develop the individual and allow them to succeed.

Pros

A very good health plans, generous employee discount, decent pay for position at least for wireless consultants pay is base plus bonus. You do get access to all types of new technology.

Cons

I have found management spotty at all levels. All training is conducted via computer so after 15 mins of computer based learning you will be considered trained in you position and expected to perform. It is a sales job and there is little sales training for new employees. Goals and job responsibilities are not always made clear but you will be made aware of something missed event if it is not in your job description. Career advancement is very unfocused.

Advice to Senior Management

A management title does not make you competent at your job. Learn how to properly motivate a sales force with something other than negative reinforcement. Success should be celebrated and goals should be believable and achievable. Do not yell at employees on the sales floor in front of customers it destroys moral across your entire sales force.

Pros

At Best Buy you are able to advance quickly with determination and hard work. The company provides great positions to make great pay with no school degree. They also provide tuition help for those that want to study for business degree, which helps with more advancement and higher pay raise. The company's system for sales was good with some issues, but whats great is that they always want feed back on your ideas and strategies that would work best to make your job easier and work according to.

Cons

The only problem is what we all go through any where we work, the co-workers. I met great managers and co-workers which lead to great leadership. As well as those that simply did not care for their job. I believe as long as you avoid getting caught up in the drama and stay focused on what you need to be doing, everything will work out just fine. Communication was also a problem amongst management which could avoid many mistakes and productivity increase.

Advice to Senior Management

I believe communication is key to running a business smoothly. Communication at the Best Buy i worked at was sometimes a problem that lead to many mistakes that could have been avoided. Where responsibility for those problems should have been discussed, never was, therefore it was bound to happen again. Productivity from management could also be way better in this business. I learned that working as a positive productive assistant/manager sets a great example for those learning to become productive and hard workers. I also believe that many co-workers take this business a lot serious then some job they just show up for a paycheck.

Pros

-Decent pay for entry-level electronic sales without prior experience.
-Management seemed competent and fairly active in-store.
-Many of my fellow coworkers were friendly and approachable
-Not as much selling pressure as you might expect
-Praise is given when needed to motivate employees who are working hard; get the feeling that upward mobility may be better than in other retail environments
-Since the computer section is one of the most profitable areas for the store (if not THE most profitable), the section is given a lot of attention and support from upper-level types: good opportunities for associates in this area to be noticed and possibly rewarded
-Good reputation in the retail world--lots of people want to work for Best Buy
-Fairly good job for college students or as a first retail job

Cons

-Very few hours for part-timers--get another job if you expect to pay your rent.
-Sales floor was never very organized--took forever to find out where the keys where for the cages when you were trying to close a sale.
-Can get stressful when it's busy and understaffed
-Closing-shift employees usually end up staying an hour or more after closing time
-There will be coworkers who don't seem to do as much but have more hours or whatever. Just focus on what you're doing and learn from the coworkers who are pulling their weight.
-Useless Saturday meetings every month early in the morning for every employee, even stocking.
-Online scheduling site can't be accessed outside of store, so you might have to come in-store just to find out when you're working next
-Personally, would have liked more "tasks;" one coworker found it odd that I wanted to organize the mouse shelf so customers could actually find what they wanted. This is truly a sales position, so if you don't like talking to people and helping them find what they need you will hate this job.

Advice to Senior Management

Management did pretty well from what I could tell, but I was also in an optimal area in the store (computers). I do remember cashiers complaining more about the work environment--they get paid less, don't move around much, have to push the BB credit card thing, etc. Maybe give other employees besides computers and TV associates more incentives...

Even if you plan on getting rid of them, teach the seasonals how to operate the cash register--this will really expedite things during busy rushes, which is why they were hired in the first place: to expedite things.

And try to give part-timers actual hours so they might be able to pay their rent. The pay rate is there--the hours are not.

Pros

Best Buy offer great benefits such as tuition assistant

Cons

terrible retail hours, required to work odd hours

Advice to Senior Management

Lack of communication within the company, from corporate to store, and from leadership to employees.

Pros

Fun, Managers give good direction, good discounts

Cons

long hours, pay is not as good as I wanted

Advice to Senior Management

nothing, good job

Pros

Working here is a great way to make some extra cash nights and weekends while in school. You do receive company discounts, you have a lot of coworkers that are usually also pretty young and you get to interact with a lot of different people.

Cons

Management is definitely an issue. They don't know what they're doing, they treat employees like children and they have no desire to help customers at all. They just want to be in charge and boss people around.

Advice to Senior Management

Do some management training courses and customer service training courses and learn how to treat people. I'm ashamed of how I was treated.

Pros

You will always be surrounded by the latest and the greatest in technology.

Cons

Best Buy is leaning more and more towards not caring about it's employee's. We are all expected to work as supervisors while getting paid less and less. There is a lot of favoritism amongst leadership. This company does not support mothers and families. It is basically a man's company.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your associates. Sometimes you have got to go back to the fundamentals. My store I currently work for is so lost. I use to be proud to work for this company but now I just don't know. I have been treated so poorly. I don't trust my leadership team. I think GM should really stay intuned about what truly goes on in their store. It is more and more like a click thing working there. Fortunately for me I have never played that game very well, but not playing that game got me overlooked for two promotions.