Louise is sold on retail

UNIVERSITY graduates struggling to find work are urged to look at the retail industry, where highly paid positions await those with a range of qualifications.

David Jones retail operations general manager Aaron Faraguna said graduates did not typically consider the retail sector but it had plenty to offer.

“There are more opportunities in retail right now than there would be in many other industries,” he said. “If you look at the nature of the employment market in the last few years, retail is still growing and retail space is still growing, particularly with the northern hemisphere retailers moving into Australia.

“We offer opportunities to be a generalist in your area [of study] or a specialist — something I don’t think you get in other industries.

“You also find graduates, or people with formal qualifications, tend to progress [to higher positions] quickly. In my view, the career progression we offer graduates is unlimited.”

Graduate Careers Australia reports the retail sector employs graduates from a range of academic disciplines and graduate trainees are usually exposed to all aspects of the business.

Faraguna said David Jones hired graduates in marketing, finance, human relations, buying, visual merchandising and IT roles.

He said graduates were buddied with a senior worker and “bespoke” training packages were formulated based on a graduate’s interest and area of study.

Aldi has upped the stakes for retail graduate programs, offering a starting salary of $85,000 a year, which, it boasts, is $25,000 more than the average starting salary of an engineer.

The supermarket chain said those who completed its 18month graduate program then moved to area manager roles, responsible for up to five stores. Within four years, they could be earning salary packages of $152,000.

Louise Paolucci, 24, did not consider a retail career until she had almost finished her commerce degree.

“My friends were using retail as a part-time role,” she said. “None of them thought further about how they could utilise retail.”

She said she earnt her first promotion at David Jones within three months and was now a sales manager.

“I love the diversity [of retail] and the complexity of it,” Paolucci said. “It’s so fastpaced and it’s changing every day — that tests me as a manager and that’s the part that I love.’’