Design Your Retail Career Path

Use the article's real structure — roles, pay bands, skills — to design a credible 18-month career plan for yourself or someone you know entering Irish retail.

Your Starting Point

Write your current role (or an entry-level role from the article) and list two skills you already bring and one you lack.

Keep or Cut

From the article's list of benefits — pay above minimum, flexible scheduling, staff discounts, career pathways — mark which two you would prioritise and which you would trade away. Defend one cut in a sentence.

KEEP

TRADE AWAY

Your 18-Month Target Role

Name one specific role from the article's career ladder (supervisor, department manager, store manager, buying, logistics). Write one line: why that role, and what salary band do you expect based on the article?

Stress-Test the Plan

Look back at Step 1. Given the sector's headwinds — high turnover costs, technology reshaping roles, inflation — what is the single weakest point in your plan? Would you change your target role from Step 3?

WEAKEST POINT

REVISED OR CONFIRMED TARGET

What You Actually Built

In one word, capture the core skill this plan depends on — then write one sentence explaining why that skill, and not pay or benefits, is the real driver of a retail career.

Why that word?

Discuss Tell your partner your one-word skill and see if they chose the same — if not, whose argument is stronger?

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