The Home Depot reviews

Can be very demanding and long hours. 100+ emails per day that you are expected to respond to by end of day on top of reporting and managing a multi million/billion dollar business. Be careful to do your research and ask specific questions about your product category while thinking about the nature of the business. If you work in a high sales of an emergency category (HVAC, dry vacs, etc) you may be required to carry a cellphone on weekends and work longer hours, but will be promoted faster if you do a good job. You are the primary point of contact for inventory related issues in a global market. Other co-workers on my team and I consistently worked 50-60 hours weeks, but others in our department on different teams worked 40 hour weeks as their category was less complex and had lower annual sales/less pressure. Almost all of the tools used to do your job are built and developed in-house therefore you will not gain much, if any, transferable systems experience outside of Microsoft Office, and potentially base level Tableau and SharePoint based on your team. Your job can be made much easier or harder based on the quality and engagement level of your manager. They are your buffer between high level executives that you work with and yourself. Having alignment and support from your manager can very heavily impact the role until you are comfortable running your product category. High level executive behind the curtain moves that are premeditated accompanied with political BS that you have to play to be well liked by your management. To be expected in almost any large organization though. Not a lot of recognition for doing things right, and a lot of pressure for mistakes. As an inventory analyst we are constantly reminded of things that are wrong, and seldom commended for executing a business plan. It is expected. Minimal to no travel.

Want a promotion? Fit in. That's it. I loved the people I worked with, but promotions were often given to people who fit in rather than those that stood out. Want a promotion? Be from suburbia with Abercrombie & Fitch swag. I've seen people be promoted within less than three months for basically just doing their job. I went through three managers and five accounts all within a year. There was constant movement, which didn't make a lot of sense nor did management seem to care. Often the changes were made less than two weeks ahead, leaving analyst to be ultimately project managers. Be aware of who the players are, often times one manager had say and the others just followed. There were constant rumors of people being blocked when trying to transfer departments. Best advice: Use them. Don't let them use you. In other words, "Take your career in your own hands."