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Job Role: Senior Sales Assistant
Alice, 19, works for Next at the Gallagher Retail Park in Scunthorpe. Next is a fashion retail store with home, women's, men's and children's departments. Next is a large retailer with over 450 stores across the UK plus 100 franchise stores overseas, and also sells through its Directory and online shopping site. The Scunthorpe store employs around 80 people.
Alice's role within the company is Senior Sales Assistant in the Children's Wear Department. She is responsible for allocating work to staff members, preparing staff rotas to ensure the department is covered, managing the department in the absence of the manager, stock control, customer service, introduction of new lines over 5 phases per season and stock display.
Alice reports to the Department Manager and supervises junior staff members.
Alice particularly enjoys working during the busy sale periods and merchandising new stock. One downside to the job is working long hours over the Christmas period and only being able to take one day off at this busy time.
Alice works 5 days per week from 8.45 am to 5.45 pm with one shift 11.15 am to 8.15 pm. She is expected to work late nights during Christmas and Sale periods. She has 4 weeks holiday per annum. Alice receives a staff discount of 25% and a discounted staff uniform which must be purchased from the current Next range.
Having her own transport is an advantage as the store is on an out of town retail park and the job requires some unsociable hours.
Alice did not want to go to college so she applied for an apprenticeship in retail, went for two interviews and decided on Next as it offered better career opportunities. She then worked towards an NVQ2 in Retail.
Alice decided on retail as she had retail experience from working at Ernest Jones the jewellers, a temporary job during the Christmas period. She started at Next in July 2004 on an apprenticeship and was then employed on Ladies Wear in December 2004 on a part-time basis. She took up her current position as full-time Senior Sales Assistant in October 2005.
Alice would like to become Department Manager and is working through a Senior Sales training file. She has completed Communication, Commercial awareness, Managing stock levels, Corrective coaching, Floor plans for new seasons and has also produced her own training file to log learning gained through store openings etc.
