Acquisition Manager - Anonymous employee Lidl Employee Review

If you are fresh out of college with no experience this a great environment to gain entry level experience. If you are mid-career do not take the job! It could compromise your existing relationships in the market as well as your reputation. Lidl, will literally give property owners verbal commitments, to acquire land then pull said offer after “board review”. Be prepared to deal with a completely inefficient site approval process. HQ Real Estate team is overly critically on board approval packages. HQ will literally reject your initial board approval package for a logo not being the proper size. You also have to recreate several maps in google maps because the online software is outdated. Instead of updated the online system, analyst waist hours a week, recreating maps in google maps. The approval package requires redundant information and takes too long to complete. An internal document should not take hours to complete! HQ finds the process “sufficient”. They feel no need to change the process. Leadership has set unrealistic goals for the expansion. Leadership does not understand the complexities of determining market demand for grocery stores. The overall real estate strategy is flawed (I will not disclose how). I have never seen such a rudimentary methodology used to determine acquisition targets. I have literally sat in meetings with retail developers who laughed at the total number of stores we were projected to open in a given market (I provided a number less than the “real” number – I did not want to “divulge trade secrets”); one developer stated “the market can’t bare that many grocery stores, anyone in CRE can tell you that, who came up with your strategy” he then began to laugh. As a Lidl employee you literally have to sit there while someone destroys your strategy or defend the strategy you know is flawed. Lidl does not respect the opinions of its acquisition mangers you will constantly be overruled by management. Lidl definitely believes in hiring from within. With that being stated you will probably be reporting to a Director or Senior Associate that lacks real CRE experience. If you have CRE experience, you will quickly notice the lack of knowledge your leadership team has. You will literally have to explain to your Senior AM or Director how to do their job. The inexperience is overwhelming at times, the majority of Directors/ Senior associates started as acquisition managers. Prior to Lidl most had no CRE experience. Senior leadership is the same. Senior leadership of the real estate department do not have experience in CRE other than a couple of years working for Lidl. Not to diminish their experience but it is not possible for them to lead/ determine real estate strategy for the American expansion. The work life balance is non-existent for most departments. Do not let other post fool you, they are obviously people from HR conducted “damage control”. From what I have observed HR is the only group who actually follows the “flex time policy”. It is completely frowned upon. You will work five days a week for a minimum of 8:00 am – 6:30 pm (some groups arrive before 8:00). HQ is greatly responsible for the lack of work life balance in the regional offices, everything is needed “as soon as possible”. Acquisition Manager pay is decent, at $80,000 and above. However, there are no bonuses!! I repeat no bonuses! Not typical for real estate professionals. It should be noted that analyst pay is below market (my analyst showed me what they made versus market rate). Needless to say that person is looking for another job. I have heard complaints from women and minority co-workers of the lack of diversity. Senior leadership roles are all compromised of white men (typically European men). In terms of advancement, if I were a minority or woman, I would not plan on climbing the corporate ladder at Lidl. (No offense to anyone in these groups – it hasn’t been done as of yet).