Trading offers college graduates a variety of career options. If you want to aim high, you should start with a trainee program. Andreas Schenkel and Florian Conrads followed this path - today they hold management positions. One in the hardware store, the other in a fashion store.
Career Focus I: Trading
It was no coincidence that Andreas Schenkel, after completing his business studies, joined toom Baumarkt GmbH in Cologne. He was practically born into trading: “My father ran a timber business,” remembers the 32-year-old. He helped out there from time to time as a teenager.
"I had three trainee offers and ultimately decided on toom because it is a top address and I have an affinity for building and DIY." Andreas Schenkel got to know various areas of the company and spent six months in sales at a toom company. hardware store and another six months in central areas such as purchasing and marketing. He managed smaller projects and became familiar with sales and market processes. »After a year it was about specializing in one area for the final third, in my case category management. Category managers are responsible for the development of the range at toom Baumarkt; they decide on the composition, sales price structure and marketing of the range.«
Looking back, Andreas Schenkel found the great trust that toom Baumarkt places in its trainees to be particularly positive: “We were allowed to take on responsibility early on and have a say in decisions. The cross-departmental training helped to get an overview of the processes throughout the entire company. All of the ex-trainees in his class are now toom managers. He himself works as a goods coordinator in the cross-channel area.
Bachelors welcome
“We have two sales trainee programs aimed at graduates: for market management and for garden center management,” reports Jörg Polkläser, team leader for recruiting sales at the toom headquarters in Cologne. In addition to toom Baumarkt, the REWE supermarket chain, the PENNY discounter and DER Touristik also belong to the Cologne-based REWE Group. They all offer their own trainee programs – from sales to administration to logistics.
A bachelor's degree is sufficient for the application to be successful. "We prefer motivated applicants who have completed a business, preferably dual, degree course with a focus on trade." Anyone who has studied a different subject should ideally have gained experience in retail or wholesale trade. Important: “Our trainees should show us why they want to hold a management position,” says Jörg Polkläser. It is therefore good to have already led a small project or group work. Being able to work in a team and motivate people is also important.
Talent rises quickly and steeply
Market manager trainees last two years; future garden center managers are trained for 18 months.
The structure of both programs is similarly structured and starts with a one-year market phase. “The trainees spend four months working on specific key topics in different markets, such as logistics, sales, human resources management or merchandise management,” explains the recruiting expert. The market phase is followed by an approximately two-month period at the toom hardware store headquarters. Here the trainees get to know important interfaces for sales and discover connections, for example between marketing, category management (structuring a branch) and the market.
organization.
Anyone who works in retail is poorly paid - a cliché that many people unfairly hold. Ok, with an average gross starting salary of 34,000 euros per year, as a new trader you are not exactly a big earner (for comparison: entry-level employees in the chemical industry earn around 45,000 euros). However, many factors play an important role. What did you study? Do you have a bachelor's degree or already a master's degree? How big is the company? And: If you do well and convince your boss, you can rise in retail quickly and steeply, take on a lot of employee responsibility in your late 20s and increase your salary significantly.
It doesn't always have to be business administration
Andreas Schenkel has convinced his boss and is part of a trend in retail that is slowly toppling the “career through apprenticeship” model from its pedestal. According to the German Trade Association (HDE), nine percent of employees now have a university degree. Ascending trend. 15 years ago this rate was five percent. Among managers, 16 percent currently only have an academic degree.
The association “Trading = clearing shelves and stacking pallets” has therefore no longer been true for a long time. Today's trade is far too complex, fast and international - the REWE Group, for example, is represented in 20 European countries. This also increases the demands on employees and managers. And they don't necessarily have to have studied economics. Lawyers and psychologists work in human resources departments, humanities scholars in marketing, textile engineers in fashion, computer scientists in online retail and architects design new branches.
Trainees are expected to do a lot
Although Florian Conrads studied business administration, it was perhaps his second subject in the humanities that made him particularly interesting for his current employer. Because Japanology was a perfect fit for UNIQLO, the largest Japanese clothing retailer in terms of sales.
At just 29 years old, he now manages a branch of the hip fashion company in Berlin-Mitte. Like Andreas Schenkel, Florian Conrads also had a background in trade: his family ran a supermarket.
“After completing my studies, I applied for several trainee programs,” says Florian Conrads, who had previously worked in a drugstore and ultimately completed the store management trainee program at UNIQLO. »UNIQLO fit! I had known the brand for a long time from Japan and the affinity for this country certainly influenced my decision. UNIQLO offers branded clothing at affordable prices and has around 30,000 employees worldwide.
As with Andreas Schenkel's traineeship and for Florian Conrads, the early transfer of important tasks was surprising: "After just six months, I was deputy branch manager, prepared contracts and was jointly responsible for personnel decisions."
Hands-on mentality desired
For Florian Conrads, the perfect UNIQLO trainee has a hands-on mentality, acts in a solution-oriented manner, can react flexibly to unexpected situations and has an understanding of numbers and economics. Last but not least, a positive and empathetic attitude towards colleagues and customers is also required.
Florian Conrads likes the versatility of the trainee program and his current job. "Every day is different. Sometimes it's about analyzing sales figures, then I'm in contact with customers on the shop floor or planning layouts for the shop floor.«
International career opportunities
In the future, former UNIQLO trainees can, after a period as store managers, advance to area managers or hold management positions in other areas of the company, such as marketing or HR.
The trainees start as sales advisors, i.e. salespeople in a UNIQLO shop, and learn the day-to-day business from the ground up. The store is considered the heart of the group. “It is part of the company philosophy that future store managers get to know all processes in detail,” explains Julia Lattemann, HR Business Partner in Personnel Management at UNIQLO. "In the first three months, they take on all the associated tasks, from receiving goods to the checkout and customer service to folding clothes correctly." As the course progresses, the trainees take on coordinating management functions, for example by making work plans or dealing with controlling issues. Dedicate tasks.
University graduates from Germany can also train to become store managers in London or Paris. Good English and a command of the national language in the training country are mandatory. And otherwise? “We expect trainees to be mobile, especially to be willing to later manage stores where we need them,” says Julia Lattemann. Florian Conrads would like to stay in Germany for the next few years. This is still a fairly new market for UNIQLO. But a later move abroad is also quite tempting for him.
Although the booming e-commerce is causing more and more problems, especially for smaller shops, the large stationary retail companies are still doing well. Annual sales in German retail in 2015 amounted to over 472 billion euros - around 14 billion euros more than in the previous year. The study “Trends in Retail 2020”, published by the auditing firm KPMG and the EHI Retail Institute, also predicts that cereal and the six-pack of beer, plants and wall paint, jeans and lipstick will continue to be preferred locally in the future. The basis for good career prospects for young academics who want to know how things are going.
Trading offers college graduates a variety of career options. Trainee programs, for example.
