Best Buy Canada Reviews

Pros

The technology is interesting and working with customers is good.

Cons

Living in poverty.
Erratic and generally poor management.
Most jobs are part time 10 to 20 hours per week.

Advice to Senior Management

Respect your employees more. Lots of lip service but little committment.

Pros

Made some good friends working here. Great place to work if you need to get your foot in the door in a retail and/or electronic environment. Discount is fair for small items.

Cons

Pay structure designed poorly. They tend to hire a lot of inexperienced and/or lazy people as able "bodies" rather than competent workers. New employee training is one of the worst I've seen in all the companies I've worked for in the past. They basically give you a shift or two shadowing, then throw them into the fire. High turn over rate of entry level employees. Very few managers seem to care more about their employees rather than themselves.

The company seems to be trying to diversify so much in the services they provide and the products they carry, but not putting any emphasis on the quality behind either. Best Buy doesn't excel in any single category versus its competitors, making it a "welfare" or "last resort" for many of its consumers.

Advice to Senior Management

New hires and prospects are treated excellently to attract them to work for the company, however current employees are treated poorly, regardless of their performance. Train and screen workers a little better, it will save everyone a headache in the long run.

Pros

-benefits for part time staff
- plenty of room for advancement

Cons

-developing close relationships with staff is frowned on

Advice to Senior Management

Break up the managers in stores where they were all Sups/Seniors etc

Pros

This is a good job for someone who is still young and is or recent graduate from college/university. You get a a chance to be an assisstant supervisor or a department and you can develop skills in management especially when it comes to team building. The general managers that I had worked with were great managers, it was a shame that the middle management were not competent enough to follow their examples.

Cons

The middle management is under educated/trained when it comes to management in general. They lack the leadership skills and operate on a "by any means necessary" attitude. Training is very minimal and there is a lack of mentorship from middle management, it become obvious that each assistant manager function is the only thing they care about because it ties into their bonuses. Middle management do play favourites when it comes to floor employees.

Advice to Senior Management

My advice to management would be to spend more time in recruitment stage for middle management and for the exisiting middle management, retraining should be considered, look more to fresh grads from university rather then high school grads that turned a part time job into full time job and that stuck around long enough to "deserve" a promotion.

Pros

not a bad place to work, if you enjoy electronics and all you probably will enjoy it, discounts are good

Cons

dealing with managers, knowing that u could make double/tripple if you work at futureshop

Advice to Senior Management

stop ripping ppl off with psp

Pros

if you are looking for a company to advance with and you are a keener, Best Buy is the place for you,
sky is the limite.

Cons

if you do not like any type of pressure just want to get in to work and get out, don't like responsibility, not looking for growth, it's not the place for you

Advice to Senior Management

some of your stores are start to do this very well, but promote the right people up fast, or else they will go somewhere with better offers, like I did.

Pros

You may have a store blessed with Culture for their Geek Squad precinct and truly know what it's like to have a satisfying work environment. You get to know your peers, and have a "best friend at work". I know I have several.
There is opportunity for advancement, but you have to be willing to make the effort and go the extra mile. If you work hard and set goals with your leadership, they can help you. More often than not, people don't care and thus don't get things done.

Cons

Not every store is equal. You may unfortunately be stuck with a store that is rooted in older processes. As they say, it's the GM's box and they decide what happens. While I haven't experienced this personally, I can say that if you work with your immediate leadership to adjust the problem, then you will be okay. Its true, they have to look after numbers as it's how they're measured against. If you can present a proper business case as to why "x" process will result in more $$$, than they have no problem helping you out.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure that the experience is more uniform across Canada. Adopt some good ideas from the US.
Never, ever, under any circumstance, lose faith. If you begin to falter and just talk about numbers, your employees won't be motivated to do well for you. You need to keep the dream and unique experience alive... the rest will follow.

Pros

The best reason to work for best buy is for its discounts. they give out very good discounts on all sorts of appliances and electronics. such as xbox, ps3, games, nintnedo wii, DS, all games too. movies as well. The employees are cool, they are usually very ufn people to hang. The building is nice, good working environement as well as good atmostphere. I like the bestbuy logo as well and their employee oufits. Over all nice company to work for. sales floor are always clean and the managers are okay. easy interview, decent wage payable. overall good company to wokr for

Cons

best buy believes its sales people (the ones actually getting customers to buy the expensive stuff that fuels profits for the whole company) deserved any credit or compensation when they do a good job. the company would rather take the sale guty's commission and give it to his manager who standsx or sits behind him so that he can hassled him about the service plan he didn't attach. after all he gets a bonus if i sell enough service plans. this creates a situation where the only motivation i have to push high margin goods is to keep my boss from reminding me that his bonus dedpends on me selling high margin attachments for him.

the problem with this is that the managers don't sell they babysit and tell you what you sholuld have recommend so he can get his bonus. other than him pushing me to earn his bonus for him i make the same pay regardless whether i move 200 or 20000$ worth of goods out the door. in fact i make 10 bucks an hour whether i sell or i fake sell.

this working arrangement also leads the managers to insist on pushing employees to do things that our training, company policy, an\d care for our customers would advise against. if you didn't want your boss to give you a hard time or schedule poorly thjen it was strogly encouraged you say whatever. m is needed to sell that service plan afterr all i wouldn't want my boss not to get his bonus right?

Advice to Senior Management

You seriously need to reexamine the structure of the sales floor. i am not motivated to sell your high profit products to earn my boss a large bonus while he watches and tells me to not take no for an answer. perhaps if you gave employees who actually do the selling an incentive to give excellent service your associates would be more motivated to learn product knowledge and go the distance to make sure your customers are leaving happy and with products and accessories they actually will know will meet their needs. instead, i hear about how great my maager gers payed while i'm talking people into buying thousands of dollars worth of goods and he watches. its not a motivating work relationshikp. customers notice as well.

the most common comment i would hear (at least several times a week:
customer: i want to make sure you get credit for your hard work and recommendation on this laptop you helped me choose. you really know your stuff!

Pros

The best reason for working at Best Buy are the people - those who fight on to do the right thing regardless of the built in obstacles, the innovative products, and the employee discount to buy those products.

Cons

Old backward Future Shop culture dirties and drags down new futuristic Best Buy vision. The efforts of highest senior management are lost in the intrigues of middle managers and a intrusive, manipulative HR group.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep the dual brands but ruthlessly weed out old malignant Future Shop culture and "cave dwellers" committed only to the past and themselves and their silos. Hold people accountable, reward good performance.

Pros

its an easy going environment

Cons

politics and staff dont care about their job

Advice to Senior Management

treat people with fairness. people get black listed from the company even if they gave two weeks. some people that didnt give their two weeks and just abandoned the job were rehired - not fair.