Pros
-Great place to start a sales career. -Fastenal School of Business has a wide variety of quality training for employees to develop themselves. Use these resources to develop yourself into a great sales person and leader and it will pay off. -The products and services you have to sell are almost endless. -For a $3B company they are still very decentralized, individual stores still have a fair amount of freedom in how to run their business (if you are growing profitably). If you're not doing well, you lose that freedom. The amount of control and freedom each store has definitely lessened during my time here. -If you are tied into good managers (GM and/or DM) your experience here will be good. -Overall the people I worked with were GREAT. - You can move up the corporate ladder here quickly to low/mid level management. I went from Part-time sales support to General Manager in under 3 years. I know other that did it faster and even moved up to District Manager quickly. -They promote from within. Rarely hire from outside the company for General Manager and above. -Good benefits. Fastenal's stock shares do very well long term and in good years the company pays out a lot of stock to employees. No complaints about health benefits. -Company's stated culture and values are great. Many people try to work and live by them.
Cons
-You probably wont make a lot of money with Fastenal year after year. Base pay is low, commissions can pay well if you have high margins and high growth. But to maintain high margins and growth percentages consistently year after year isn't likely. Chances of getting a raise on your base salary is close to zero. -If you are tied into poor managers (GM and/or DM) your experience here will not be good. -For most sales people, but not all, this is no longer a place to spend you entire career. -They don't pay well enough to bring in experienced sales people from the outside. -Some managers do not uphold company's stated culture and values.