How do I Become a Retail Sales Associate?

@betterment - That's crazy! I bet there are still a lot of stores that will hire you if you fill out an application and seem somewhat normal during the interview. I can't imagine every store starting to require some college education to be a retail sales associate.

Becoming a retail sales associate didn't used to be very difficult. However, I have noticed in the last few years a lot of places aren't hiring the way they used to. They've upped their standards by a lot!

I was looking into applying for a retail job recently, and they wanted several years of experience and at least an associate's degree. I thought it was ridiculous considering that the job isn't that difficult and doesn't pay that well! And you certainly don't need a college education to work in retail. On the job training should be sufficient.

@ceilingcat - There are a lot of potential drawbacks to working in retail sales, but that's true of any industry. I worked in restaurants when I was in college, and you have to put up with the same scheduling issues (although I did make more money than my friends who worked retail.)

I've never worked as a retail sales associate, but I had a few friends that worked in department stores during high school and college. There are a few department stores that treat their employees nicely and actually pay a fair wage, but a lot of stores don't treat their employees very well!

I would never want to work retail and put up with having to work holidays, weekends, evenings, and any other time a manager chooses to schedule you. Plus you're always at risk of being fired if your sales even slip a little bit. No thank you!

@BrickBack - I think that the best time to get a retail job is when these companies do their seasonal hiring in September and October. I know that a lot of companies offer employee discounts for these seasonal employees and some even end up hiring some of these seasonal employees as permanent hires.

It is also a nice way to see if you want to work in the retail field because some people make a career out of it. I know lots of people that started out as sales associates and are now working in the buying office as associate buyers and department store buyers. Jobs in retail sales can really lead to a lot of other career opportunities.

I used to work as a sales associate behind the cosmetics counter and I loved it.

My store manager and the cosmetics company representative were always really supportive and I really loved going to the training seminars that helped me learn how to be a good sales associate for my cosmetics line.

We learned how to sell multiple items to a customer by presenting groups of merchandise together. For example, if a customer was looking for an eye liner, I would offer to apply makeup on her eyes for a few minutes and demonstrate an eye cream, eyeliner, an eye brow shaper, an eye shadow primer along with eye shadow with mascara and concealer.

Not everyone would buy all of these products, but I would get a lot of customers to buy way more than that one eye liner. The one thing that I didn’t like about the job was putting out the merchandise. I hated stocking the cases. I always preferred selling. I also loved the free makeup that we would get every quarter.

I work as a retail store manager too, and I have to say, people don't realize what a hard job it is! Sometimes I get really frustrated because of the way that the sales associates treat the managers in my store.

I mean, I can understand how frustrating it is when you have to close and then open back to back, or if you get a bad schedule during the holidays -- and as a sales associate, you really don't have a lot of control over that -- but try to cut us managers some slack.

As my store, we really try to be fair, but some people end up closing on Christmas Eve, while others get stuck opening on Black Friday at 5 AM. That's just how it's going to be. So if you are a sales associate, try to be nice to your managers -- they're just doing their job, just like you.

You can also move up from being a retail sales associate to a retail store manager. I used to work as a sales associate, but since I made it a point to work hard, I was actually able to promote to a manager within a year. The best way to do this, I think, is to do your work (of course) but also try to volunteer for other things, like moves or merchandising. Even if you just end up following a manager around, that experience can really help when you ask for that promotion.