Hot Topic Reviews

Pros

The company allowed me to develop and implement exciting projects. The company also still has the potential to become a leading specialty retailer given the products it can carry. This allows for many opportunities to work with exciting partners including music labels and movie studios. Additionally the makeup of the organization provides the opportunity to dive in and help mold the company if you are at a high enough level.

Cons

Confusing upper management organization
Constant directional changes
Lack of accountability among most of staff
Emphasis on learning different sides of the business before being promoted in the field/dept of your focus.

Advice to Senior Management

The recent changes at Hot Topic show new management has a firmer grasp on the direction they should be heading. As a reminder only, refer to those employees that shoulder most of the work when considering strategic changes. They know the business best and are closest to the action.

Pros

Great discount, great people,customers and music! Liberal dress code does not force you into buying all Hot Topic clothes.

Cons

With the rate of pay being on the lower side of the retail world, it is difficult to obtain and keep talented people.

Pros

You can dress however you want.
Decent discount

Cons

Hourly pay rate is insultingly low.
Supervisors are sugarcoated meanies.
Lack of hours.

Advice to Senior Management

Your supervisors need to relax a bit, you're paying us minimum wage, don't try to run the place like its more than it is - you wonder why the employee turnover rate is so alarming? Supervisors are very quick to let us know when we do something wrong, very rarely do you every hear words of encouragement or any acknowledgment, unless you are being reprimanded.

We are also forced to pretty much attack customers with "can I help you find anything?" How about we say hello and give them a little credit assuming they know how to stroll a store to find what they want? If they need assistance I'm sure they'll ask, instead we are forced to badger them until some of them get visibly annoyed.

It's just been a really bad experience for me, I'm currently looking for another job, once I'm done with my Hot Topic employment, I will never set foot in one again. This is the worst workplace I've ever worked in, the worst Supervisors I've ever worked under. Avoid this place, it's a dead end and the scenery isn't worth the trip.

Pros

Very progressive, fast paced, fun company.

Cons

It's a 'lifestyle' atmosphere in the corporate office.

Advice to Senior Management

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Pros

1. Amazing atmosphere for employees: Felt treated well, respected, and cared about
2. Open door policy allows honest 2 way communication to anyone at anytime without fear of retaliation
3. Product that is relevant and exciting to both customers and employees, creating a solid connection
4. Low stress environment that fosters teamwork, enthusiasm, and positiveness
5. Wonderful upper management that is accessible and easy to relate to
6. Loyal customer base
7. Clear, solid communication throughout company
8. Great benefits for fulltime employees

Cons

Pros #1 through #7 no longer apply. Hot Topic once prided itself on its "culture," which is now entirely dissolved. The general atmosphere is bleak and sad. Constant shifts in upper management without communication leave store level employees confused and demoralized."Little trims" to expenses in payroll and product quality turn into "big cuts" quickly.
The company you today call Hot Topic is not the same company it was 4 years ago.

Advice to Senior Management

We completely alienated our core customer because someone upstairs didn't like "dark street." Well the twi-hards were a phase, but we put all of our eggs into that sparkly vampire basket. Now, with the once loyal core customer completely disgusted by us, and an incremental customer that has aged past their tweens, Hot Topic has no identity. Who is your customer, Hot Topic? Better yet, who are YOU? Who are your employees? The 14 year olds? You know, Baby Gap doesn't hire infants, PetSmart doesn't hire chinchillas. This company has been grasping at straws for years. --Don't get me started on Shockhound. Bravo. You are your own worst enemy, HT.

Pros

Discount
Pay
Benefits
Customers with similar interests
No uniform is definitely a plus
Accepting of all walks of life
District management is usually easy to work with and friendly
There's something for everyone in the stores, and with the addition to in-store online shopping, it's almost impossible to not make a sale to someone if you're competent at focused selling.

Cons

Recent changes in the company have made it very difficult to follow the "culture" that Hot Topic was once so proud of.
Poor decisions in product purchases in the last 2 years lead the company to believe that it needed to update its style to cater to "younger" kids, and then senior management up and turned around and changed its mind, completely ousting the new market they had opened
Very difficult and stressful trying to connect with customers that don't share your interests. I was always into punk rock music, and Hot Topic has severely down-played that genre in the last few years and replaced it with screamo, metalcore, and hip-hop, which I have no real frame of reference for.
Senior management constantly encourages "music knowledge" and provides very little time for employees to listen to the flavor-of-the-week music that they're trying to push, making relating with customers very difficult at times.
The merchandise related to movies and certain pop-culture trends become incredibly tedious to keep up with, and tend to sell for very brief periods of time, which leads to over-inundation of product that no one wants and still needs a space on the sales floor.
Shipment (freight, stock, etc.) can become very difficult to keep up with and house on the sales floor, especially when the company continues to cut hours from its payroll during the busiest times of the year.
Members of store management, with the exception of the Store Manager themselves, have very little power to discipline employees, and often disciplinary actions are subject to favoritism.
Promotions are often subject to favoritism, but generally, the most fit person is able to advance relatively well.
Once you reach Full-Time Assistant Manager, be prepared for a LONG wait before you're able to advance to Store Manager. There have been people waiting for upwards of 4 years in this area that still haven't gotten their own store.
Districts are constantly being re-arranged, which means that you're constantly getting new supervisors with new and different expectations, making it very difficult to keep standards up to par.
Betsy, the leader and co-founder of HT, was forced out of the company by the board of directors, which was a massive blow to the overall morale of the company.

Advice to Senior Management

Be proud of what Hot Topic is! Stop trying to change the company in order to make people come in! The general public already knows what HT is all about, so stop changing everything! It's very taxing on your employees at the store level, and it's incredibly difficult to explain to sales associates that are performing well why their hours are being cut for no reason.

Pros

The employees are a great bunch of fun people who handle themselves and their goals with a professional manor. Management always seems to have your best interest at heart, right behind making the day's planned goals of course.

Cons

It is great for students and teenagers looking for the experience but not for someone who wants to make a career.

Advice to Senior Management

Remember to promote within your store.

Pros

*Relaxed atmosphere
*Freedom to where whatever you want, show tattoos, piercings they don't care here
*Reasonably flexible when you need time off
*Sales associates are eligible for a raise after a year of working for the company
*Hot Topic is a company that treats everyone fairly I think. They do not pick and choose what policies they follow and they execute all of them throughout the entire company. I love that! No favorites, at least from my district manager.
*I like that you get payroll hours by what matrix you are in (by how much money you are planned to make each week). If you are expected to get a lot of traffic, you are given more hours and can jump a matrix. Other companies do not do this so I really appreciated that.

Cons

*Not enough pay. I had been told when I first applied that they were only paying $8.25 an hour to whomever they hired. I wanted the experience though so I took it. Little did I know at the time that the key holder (person directly below me) was making $8.10 an hour with a lot less responsibilites
*When I was hired they had just promoted my manager to his position. He had never been in retail before and had started as a keyholder, moved up to assistant manager, and then to manager all within a year so I figured he was really good at his job. NOT!! He had no merchandising knowledge and neither did the other assistant manager, or the key holder. So me being the only female manager in my store, my district manager put the focus of doing the weekly HTOPS update (floor moves at the front of the store) and planograms. So for the entire year I worked there I did 90% of all planogram moves by myself. I would come in at 6AM and do all the moves by myself.
*The district manager was really nice, but did little to teach my manager how to merchandise. She must have expected me to stay there forever. Our district was small at nine stores, so we all got visits two times a month or more which was good for feedback to me on what I could do better.
*My manager was a really nice guy, but an awful manager. His friends would come in ALL the time, and he would stand around and talk to them, sometimes for three to four hours of his shift! You cannot expect me to work my butt of at $8.25 when you're making $13.90 an hour standing around.
*The company frequently wastes money on carrying exclusive merchandise from moves that never sells very well. Just to name a very, Perry and the Lightening Theif, Kick Ass, etc. We carried merchandise for these movies, had signs, and none of the merchandise (at least in my store) moved very well at all!
*Stop having these stupid "listening parties". No one cares and it's a waste of time and effort.
Right after I left the company (a week or so later) they let my district manager go (along with others) and announced they were closing more than fifty stores.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure you train your managers right. I never went through any training to be an assistant manager until my district manager came to our store and did it with me. My manager did not care whether I was trained or not.
Maybe you would do better as a company if you didn't waste so much money on a bunch of crap. We receieved a Britney Spears shirt when I was working there, had it for two weeks, and then received and an email saying to destroy and damage them all. It was "not the direction the company wanted to go in for it's pop section". Less than six months later, we receive ANOTHER Britney Spears shirt! It seems you change your minds all the time, wasting you thousands of dollars. Put a little more thought and effort into your decisions and you could probably get out of the slump you've been in.

Pros

Competitive benefits package for full time employees. Upwards mobility within individual stores. Product selection has improved significantly in the last year.

Cons

Used to be on Forbes "Best Companies To Work For" but has lost it's spirit. Economic troubles have been retaliated against with poor working conditions for store-level employees. Irreparable damage has been done to employee morale. New product direction is good, but opportunity for success is compromised by shrunken budgets and reduced head-counts.

Advice to Senior Management

Cutting payroll, slashing jobs, and skimping on costs may look good on paper; but stores staffed with disgruntled and unhappy employees will do more damage to brand image than nickel and dime savings can ever counteract.

Pros

Quality of life is great. A very laid back atmosphere that allows you to express yourself as a person.

Cons

Job layoffs without any prior notice. Employees were told that they would be having a phone call to discuss payroll, when in fact they were actually laid off. Other employees were told they were going to be given a yearly review, when they were really laid off. For a company that used to pride itself on being open and honest, these are clearly both instances in which employees were directly lied to.

Advice to Senior Management

Be honest with your employees. Cut backs are necessary, but they way that they were handled is beyond unprofessional.