Pros
Fantastic team of people who are high performers and highly motivated. You are held accountable at every level which creates a strong performance driven culture. Excellent work life balance for retail. I work far, far better hours than I did at a high end supermarket and have a supportive team of colleagues and line managers. You can largely dictate your own day and working hours. You are 100% judged on results, as opposed to working long hours to prove you're the best. Lots of opportunity to take on additional responsibilities to your role and to contribute to the wider business (although this is one of the advantages of being an AM in London near HO). Really rewarding job. If you like responsibility and want to set your own culture you 100% have the freedom to do this. Very operations driven, and a really good simple focus on the basics approach most of the time.
Cons
In London we are all experienced hires—so those hoping to come in on the graduate scheme would come in at store manager level likely for several years. I get lots of people asking about this when enquiring for vacancies. If you are a grad, specify outside of London! If you don't have much retail experience the amount of responsibility could be daunting, also the pace that you would need to get up to speed is very fast. Really outdated HR management system makes it hard to keep track of 200+ employees and manage them appropriately. Very, very, challenging targets which ultimately jeopardise other areas of the business; the strategy from Germany really doesn't consider the operational conditions and culture of the UK which can create other issues for customers and staff.
