MTP program seemed like a great opportunity straight out of college. However, once I dove into the program, I found it to be very misleading. I was recruited for my district and was later informed that by taking the position I helped meet a quota for the number of MTP's hired in my district. I trained in a very busy store and it seemed like training me was somewhat of a distraction for management. I am a very small framed female and I feel like the amount of physical ability necessary to perform this job was very understated during my initial store visit and interview process. It almost seems like they are willing to hire anyone in order to make their stores more diverse, instead of hiring based on actually ability to perform all aspects of the job. For training, I spent 80% of my time watching videos and only about 20% of my time learning the actually duties of an Assistant Manager. The program then relocates and promotes the MTP to a position as Assistant Manager, which is great in theory, but I felt as though the short training leaves the trainee ill prepared to do the job to the best of his/her ability. My first week at my Assistant Manager position, I was informed that my manager was ill and that I would need to open the store on my own (keep in mind that I had never even stepped foot in this store due to the fact that it was 5 hours away from my original location and I was given 5 days notice before my start date). After finally getting slightly more adjusted to the store I realized that majority of my day was spent doing housekeeping chores and very little time was spent doing managerial duties. Personally, I found that the retail environment combined with the physical requirements were just not a good fit for me. Overall, I think the idea behind the MTP program is great, however, there are definitely some serious kinks that need to be worked out to make this program better.
