Target Reviews in Portland, OR Area

Pros

Great to be part of a mid- to upper scale retail store, better than Wal-Mart! Not saying a lot, but still!

Cons

The values are driven into your head for interviews and performance reviews, but seldom lived during store operations. This needs to change.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure to recognize your top performers; the work is hard, but it's a lot easier when we know it is appreciated.

Pros

Target is a fast paced job. Everyone is really friendly and it's nice to be able to request time off and be approved. The schedules are flexible.

Cons

Sometimes communication is not accurate. I felt like I was doing the same thing everyday. Customers were rude but what place doesn't have them.

Advice to Senior Management

Take some time and recognize people doing a good job. If they aren't doing a good job in one area put them back to one they started in.

Pros

Target has an excellent inlaid community. The employees and management make the environment very nice to work in. Once you prove yourself, and show initiative, there are a wealth of fun and rewarding positions.

Cons

For people looking for a career, or long-employment, I would not recommend Target. Although they desire for people to expand responsibilities and take on advanced positions, many team members will get "stuck" doing work, without the pay raise. Plus, after a few years(and raises) their attitude towards employees seems to change. Corrective action, and bad reviews start to come out of nowhere. I have known about 10 people who worked for Target more than 5 years, myself included, who faced undeserved criticism in their final years. It seems that the leadership is required to give imperfect reviews to even excellent employees in order to keep their payroll budget low. It's really sad, because the long-term employees I knew were absolutely great workers, and they MADE Target what it was.

Advice to Senior Management

I would be more honest with employees. Especially when dealing with training, department changes, and employee reviews.

Pros

work life balance, you usually get every other weekend off during non holiday times.

Cons

It sometime feels like a turn and burn with new management.

Advice to Senior Management

Learn to treat your experienced management with respect, they can bring value, knowledge and strong leadership to the company.

Pros

Can be a fun work environment on certain days, benefits are pretty good. You meet people and friends you'll never forget.

Cons

Lack of communication/feedback from upper management, too many people trying to do different things with the same team. Workload is crazy with little to no recognition or help to complete

Advice to Senior Management

Remember your team is more than a tool to get things done. Collaborate before ordering people around, most of the time they have things that have to be completed without adding more tasks that could easily be completed by management in the time it takes them to delegate

Pros

Great Benefits, Great Environment, Upper division management is EXCELLENT! Great people. Every one works together on a team.

Cons

Review and Raises are unfairly given, They treat senority as 'god' You need more huddles...so we can "do our thing" Horrible Pay

Advice to Senior Management

Make pay commensurate with abilities, dedication and willingness to learn, not just been there for five years, have a pulse, and get a $4 raise....

Pros

great benefits including health and retirement, respected, rewards for doing great job, working with great people

Cons

not enough feedback from upper management

Advice to Senior Management

while management has an open door policy they sometimes dont listen or give feedback

Pros

*An opportunity to make a real difference in the lives and working conditions of the store's team
*Frequent opportunities to enhance Target's image and reputation within the local community, while reaching out to schools, social service organizations, parks and the like

Cons

*When a new CEO, regional VP, DTL and STL all arrive within months of one another, watch out for house-cleaning much like when a new administration occupies the White House. Allegiances and loyalties disappear, along with your long streak of O review scores
*Smacking of age discrimination (given Target has more lawyers on retainer than any of us could afford to hire), execs throughout my district--over the age of 40--began to disappear this past year, involuntarily. I quit, after eight years as a dedicated executive, before I would give them the satisfaction of terming me based upon the most ludicrous assortment of trumped-up frivolousness you've ever read

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to the store teams (the TEAM MEMBERS), and ask which execs THEY respect and respond to, not necessarily the (generally inexperienced) hi-po's identified through the ridiculous and highly subjective Talent Planning process

Pros

Depending on the store, the people can be great to work with. My store almost felt like family.

They are finally starting to catch up in technology. There are better price scanners and the LPDA's are great.

Cons

Management loves to pull you from your position to do things completely unrelated to your job or area. As a specialist, I was supposed to stay in just my area doing what I specialized in. I wound up doing odd jobs all over the store.

Working Christmas stinks! You wind up working really long hours in order to clean up the store at night.

Advice to Senior Management

Get out from behind a desk and into the store sometime.

Pros

To gain managerial experience since you encounter an enormous amount of challenges. You truly become able to handle almost anything from angry customers ("guest"), unreliable team members, happy "guest" and many more things.

You would never find a better place to challenge your leadership skills.

Cons

There is no work life balance as you are challenged to achieve store goals that keep you in your store a minimum of 9 hours per day with an average of 10+ hours on the weekend if you are the closer manager

Advice to Senior Management

The recruitment is fantastic but is impossible to fulfill all the goals you put for the store management team if the workforce hours are not provided given you a revolving door of young management at your store every summer. Unless more programs for retention are created you will never be able to keep and mature an stable management team at your stores.