GM Position is Good Experience, Work Life Balance is Terrible
Pros
As the store manager, you run the store as if it is your own (to a degree). It's good exposure to nearly every facet of business - top line, bottom line, margins, profitability, etc. Company offers 6% match on 401k plan which is very good. Benefits are ok. Company is financialy sound and District Managers (at least mine) want their store managers to succeed. There is so much turnover in management that, by default, it's easy to advance. The pay for store managers seems pretty good ($52k base+easily achievable bonus incentives) until you realize that it will only break down to $14/hr because of the amount of hours you work.
Cons
I want to preface by saying that I received several awards as a Finish Line store manager and left on my own accord for the reasons listed below: -Work/Life balance is a joke; you need to virtually live in your store. -Now that I'm removed from the company, I realize the National Managers Meeting is just upper management serving the GMs Finish Line Kool Aid. -They almost try and make you feel like you owe them for having such a 'great' opportunity but at the end of the day there are much, much better careers out there. Store Manger should not be a career. -Your staff is generally comprised of 16-22 year olds making minimum wage so you're not going to attract the highest quality of people. 99.99% of applications come from 16-18 year olds looking for a discount on Jordans. -Tough to recruit Assistant Managers and MITs because their compensation is awful. -They push the employee stock purchase plan on their managers with no education on investing and if its a good plan or not. -The biggest takeaway for me is that Finish Line promotes jobs and not careers. It blows my mind that some of my counterparts have been store managers for 10+ years. Why put so much into something that is only going to give you a small percentage of what you deserve?
