The Inside Scoop - Working at Nordstrom
Hello! My name is Brooke Spradley and I am a junior majoring in Apparel Merchandising, and I am also Senior Editor of the Internship Features for SWATCH.
To kick off of the summer I thought that I would take you through my experience last summer working at Nordstrom in the men's department. Going forward, I will be interviewing other students about current/past experiences with their internships. We will take a deep dive as to where they are interning, what their responsibilities are, how they secured their internship, and ultimately what they are learning throughout the process. It's one thing to have a career goal, and it’s another thing to gain hands-on experience for the first time.
Last summer, I worked for Nordstrom in the men's department in Austin, Texas. I originally went into the summer with no plans at all, but with one goal in mind: to make money. I whipped out my laptop and went on indeed, typing in retail jobs near me. I came to find a job listing for men’s department retail workers, so that day I submitted my application that included my resume and a video recording of myself answering an array of questions (how I would handle certain scenarios, what previous work experience I had, etc.) The following Saturday I received a job offer, to which I accepted, and began working Tuesday.
Needless to say, starting off I was scared. I didn’t have any previous retail experience and didn’t know what to expect (especially working for commission). I chose the mens department after hearing how much more money you could make compared to any other department. I didn’t linger on how I knew nothing about mens clothing, let alone how to style and size them. Little did I know, this would also be the most competitive department. It definitely took some adjusting to learning the ins and outs of retail life, and there was some extra pressure knowing that Nordstrom is most popular for their customer service.
My day to day tasks varied if I had an opening and closing shift. If I had the opening shift, I would get to work at 8am, opening the cash registers, unloading and putting away the shipments from the night before, unlocking the dressing rooms, dusting, vacuuming, and tidying up. During the day, work consisted of helping style customers, find their sizing, setting up fitting rooms, answering phone calls, placing online orders, rushing clothing to the tailoring department, etc. For the closing shift I would once again tidy up, close the register, and put away clothing from the dressing room (it gets scary messy).
Because we worked for commission, it definitely was a challenge having no previous experience and working with employees who’ve been in the game for 5+ years, but honestly the challenge is what I enjoyed most out of my time there. I gained confidence diving into new experiences head on. Looking back at the things that I’ve accomplished since then, I can definitely attribute it to working at Nordstrom. I learned the importance of servicing customers in a timely manner, being able to receive constructive criticism, and that the most vital aspect of styling is to make sure the clothing fits correctly. For future interns, fashion based or not, one piece of advice that I have is to go into your internship with an open mind. You're going to occasionally make mistakes, be humbled, and think you're underqualified (which was my experience), but having an open mind in a work environment will serve you ten fold in the future. All in all, best of luck to all interns/workers, and stay tuned for future interviews!
