| Mostly, my work has been in the form of sales or service, but they've all just been jobs. Nothing I would call a carreer. During my years in college, I was selected to lead a group of students in a project. This project was our final project we needed to complete in order to graduate. Everyone would have a hand in this, and it was my job to make sure it ended up that way. After a bit of trial and error, I found that the other students would not follow me directly. I broke the group down into smaller groups, and had sub-leaders selected who reported to me. I still had a hand in most everything, especially the more important programming issues. Aside from this, I have this work experience:
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At Sonic, I was a carhop. I took orders (which can take far more people skills than you might imagine), I made drinks and ice cream, and I delivered food to customers. That last part can take a great deal of balance (food stacks up quick, and big drinks are hard to carry), interpersonal skills, and quick math.
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Sears Dealer stores are rather complicated. The concept is to take a whole Sears store, and smash it into a a space the size that is a small fraction of a full line Sears store. The store I worked at carried tools, lawn and garden, appliances, and electronics. In a dealer store, nothing is broken down into departments for certain people to work in. I ran the whole store within a few months, because that is the way they work. If you can't do everything, you probably shouldn't work there. I handled our technical support (a tallent unique to me at the store I worked at), service requests, sales, customer service (including returns and customer complaints. There were a lot of complaints about the owner), cleaning, stock, loading/unloading trucks, some deliveries, opening, closing, and signing. By the time I left, I knew more about how to run the store than the owner. This has given me countless skills I can carry to any job, including learning how to work a new system (especially if there are books or manuals to describe it), interpersonnal skills, handling complaints (without losing a sale or customer), and leadership skills.
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I didn't spend as much time at Radio Shack as I did at my other two previous jobs, but I did manage to take a few things from my time there. Mostly, I sold cell phones. Since the company isn't as big as some others, it took some getting used to. It was a small store, and I had to do everything except manage it. Unfortunately, my training was never actually completed due to an inefficient management system. This job gave me experience in selling something I cannot physically show to someone, or have limited resources in showing them. Selling contracts isn't easy when you're trying to sell to everyday people.
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My current employment has me working as a sales associate at a full line Sears store. I work in the hardware and lawn/garden department. Again, there is a lot of interpersonnal skills that are required to do this job. I returned to Sears because, as a company, Sears did well to take care of me before. If a company is willing to do good things for me, then I will be willing to return to that company to do good things for them.
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