Target Reviews in Kansas City, MO Area

Pros

They give you the tools to be a successful leader.

Cons

Can be very critical of performance at time, even if its for something you aren't involved in at all.

Advice to Senior Management

Be aware of how your employees perceive you. Hold yourself to the same standards that you hold your staff to.

Pros

Target does a good job of giving you the tools and reports necessary to do your job. At the team member and Team Leader level, there are some good, long term people that really know what they are doing.

Cons

The Sr.TL position is a completely insane job. You are expected to do the job of a Team Leader and maintain large portions of the store as if you are a department manager, but 2-3 times a week, you are scheduled as the "LOD" or "Leader on Duty" and required to run the entire store as the only manager in the building. That means that you are required to do a 40 hr/week TL job in 16-24 hours and spend the rest of your time as a underpaid ETL. Being the LOD is fun, as the building truly is yours to run. You have keys and alarm codes to the store, the same as any ETL. The big difference is, to become a SrTL, you have to be a high performing TL that promotes up the ladder. To be an ETL, you only have to graduate from any university with a degree in underwater basket weaving. They hire almost exclusively from campuses for their salaried management positions. This kills morale, because the TL's and SrTL's that actually run the store and lead the team, have to train their own bosses and have no chance to promote or move up past Sr.TL. You end up being the ones actually doing everything and being the leaders the team members come to, but have to listen to 4-12 different ETL's as they give you "feedback" in "statuses". For some reason these brand new ETL's with no prior work experience think that they know more than their much more experienced, although slightly less educated, team leaders. Hiring from campuses like this creates a sorority like culture in the stores. If you are not in the STL's inner circle, you will be "performanced out." This is an especially hard group to get into and maintain, because they rotate the ETL's and STL's around the district every 18 months. I had a great STL that was a true leader for my first year. Then we got a young, bubbly, STL and ETL-HR and the culture changed completely in the store to be horrible. Unless you were a 21-28 year old woman that loved to talk about Jersey Shore and what haircut to get next, you were considered a problem performer or bottom 10%. The change of leadership took me from an "excellent" (4 out of 5) review to a "unsatisfactory" in a month.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop hiring new college grads for ETL positions. The ETL position is not entry level. Promote internally to give your people a reason to want to work hard. There should not be a degree requirement. I realize corp HR is thinking, "well gee, we don't have any trouble staffing our ETL positions when we require a degree, so why wouldn't we?" But, you have to look at the quality of leader you are getting from a 20 year old person with no retail experience, which is all the applicants you get when you require a degree. This is the single most universally disgusting thing to every team member and team leader in the company.

Pros

Employee discount
(Mostly) nice people to work with
Pretty flexible schedule-wise
Some managers were cool
I got a shift differential for working early mornings (4am)

Cons

Some of the managers / team leaders
The shift differential could have been a little better

Advice to Senior Management

I don't have too much to say except pay attention to all feedback given by employees.

Pros

Lots of responsibility with little experience in retail. Good money at a price. Focus on development. You will have the ability to create and change processes and get to know your employees really well. I'm 24 with 20 employees and no retail experience. Great start to show me what I truly want in life. I want more to build a life even if I get paid less.

Cons

They are going to point out your flaws mostly and don't focus enough on what you are doing good. I don't fit in because I don't party with the rest of them. Some peers will be your favorite part of your day, but then others will tear you apart right in front of others just for the sake of putting themselves ahead. It is a delicate balance of not making mistakes, because others will focus on that mistake for too long.

Advice to Senior Management

have your executives use the time clock and for DTL's call your executives and check up on them. Don't let me hear what you think of me from my boss and then treat me fake to my face. honesty is key and then encouraging me to focus on what you want me to is key as well.

Pros

Easy job but it is retail so you have to put up with uneducated coworkers and customers. You dont have to think when doing this job. I worked on the sales floor and it was quite boring. You spend all day helping customers which is nice but you have absolutely no training in whatever department you work in besides on how to run a cash register. There is no formal training for your specific department so if you work in electronics and personally know nothing about electronics customers can get upset at you lack of knowledge. The best reason to work there is they hire just about anyone.

Cons

They really want you to sell their credit cards. You will be reprimanded if you are not selling enough cards to customers. As a customer I always hate when they push those credit cards at every store so I wouldn't do it as much as I was supposed to. Scheduling sucks. If you want to have specific work schedule you are pretty much out of luck. If you close the store you have to stay until the entire store is clean and ready to open tomorrow. I spent several nights past 1 am cleaning the store because other "team members" were incompetent or lazy.

Advice to Senior Management

Value your employees, and train them better.

Pros

Target is flexible with hours and tend to not hire idiots. Customer service is stressed as it should be. This is a place that really tries to work with employees so they have a life outside of work. There are quite open lines of communications within the store which is a welcome relief from what I was used to in the past. All in all, it is a pretty content group of people. I am new at the job, within the past two months, but so far it has been a decent place to work. All seem to work together well.

Cons

Well, it is a retail store so the hours can be early or late. Around the holidays do not plan on traveling as that is the busy time of year. That is ok because I have always, except for two years, had such positions. If you are on the Flow team or on the sales floor you will be on your feet almost all day in case that matters. The customers are really not bad. Most are in fact quite decent. Rude employees who do not take care of customers will not like to work here as customer service is very importaint.

Advice to Senior Management

Target has really carved out a nice niche in the retail marketplace. It does not seem red necked like Wal Mart and it does have goods people seem to want at good price points. I have never worked at a place where communications are so good.

Pros

Strong Company; Good coworkers and promotional opportunities

Cons

Long hours; Must relocate to be promoted

Advice to Senior Management

Don't forget work/life balance.