Life in a retail store
With 32 Telecom owned stores across the country being part of a Telecom store is like being part of a big community. It's fun, rewarding, and full of variety and challenge.
Dealing with customers face to face you'll revel in the challenges this brings in having to think on your feet and find a solution. It's not simply about providing the latest and greatest gadget to the next person through the door. It's about listening to that person and really hearing how they want to communicate to the people that are important to them. This could be a businessman who needs to be completely mobile to run his business from any location he is in, or a grandmother who wants to be able to email and send pictures to her grandchildren overseas. Talking to and educating customers on a full Telecom solution covering broadband, mobile and landline, you'll gain immediate satisfaction by helping people and accomplishing personal targets such as sales achieved.
Our customer facing roles are great places to launch your career at Telecom. Having started in these roles many of our people have stepped into management, training or corporate sales positions or into other areas across the Telecom group of companies.
We'd like you to be comfortable with and have a realistic view of what it is like to work in a retail store before you join us - particularly if you haven't worked in one before, so here are some tips on what to expect:
Hours of work
A retail store is a fun and customer focused environment
We're here to provide service to our customers for whatever hours we're open so we need to ensure we have sufficient people available at all times. This means sometimes when the store is busy we have to be flexible with breaks. We still make sure people get their time off but the customer comes first.
Working in a retail store requires flexibility
Although we are sometimes able to give fixed days of work all of our retails stores are open Mon-Sun and many provide shifting rosters over these days. So if you're working full-time you need to be flexible enough to cover for someone else if they are sick or on leave. Our part-time hours are allocated around your other personal commitments but you would need to be available a minimum of 16 hours per week. If you wish we can provide more hours over school and university holidays which coincide with busy periods.
The Environment
Retail stores are a team environment
No matter whether you're in a small store with regular customers or a really busy store with constantly changing customers we like to have fun and have you looking forward to coming to work each day. We work together to create an exceptional experience for our customers so a good retail person develops a sixth sense of not just where the customers are but where your colleagues are too.
It's reasonably physical
From unpacking orders or just spending the majority of time on your feet, retail work is surprisingly physical. When you're spending 8+ hours on your feet each day we need to be able to rely on each other.
Training
- The Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) industry is one of the most exciting in the world. There's lots to learn - but if you have the right personal attributes, we'll provide extensive training to give you all the tools and systems knowledge you need. All full-timers get to spend two weeks at STAR (our specialist training retail centre) which provides world-class product and sales training.
- Previous experience in retail is not necessary - most important is a desire to satisfy our customers whilst having a healthy achievement focus. After all this is a sales role.
- Training with others means you get to share customer stories and get bond with a group of people who are all in the same boat as you! Once you graduate, you'll have fun working with likeminded and supportive team-mates in a constantly changing - and exciting - environment.
- Ongoing training is also provided. Training ambassadors in each store ensure that everyone can constantly up-skill in other areas. This could open doors for you across Telecom so you can continue to learn, grow and remain stimulated.
You can learn about the benefits all Telecom people are entitled to and more about Life at Telecom in general on the main Telecom Careers site.
