If you think working in retail means long hours of selling goods in a store, you’re right. If you think it means flying off to exotic places to buy the latest fashions, you’re right too. And if you think it means lobbying on Capitol Hill for new tax and consumer policies, you’re right again.

Retail is like surround sound. It covers a swath of business and industry, products and applications, career paths and job titles.

Yet mention retail as a career and a college student or graduate might squirm. But for the job-seeking college graduate that retail companies covet, the industry offers a broad and exciting set of career possibilities.

“One of the things people should recognize is that retail stores are far more than just sales associate’s positions. There’s a full range of things that a retail company tends to do. There are a lot of different fields that will touch on retail,” said Mallory Duncan, senior vice president and general counsel at the National Retail Federation in Washington, D.C.

The job of retail, which is the final step in the merchandise distribution process, is simply to sell goods and services in small quantities directly to the general public, according to a definition from the U.S. Department of Labor. Supporting the retail sales process is a host of professional activities. Retail’s career umbrella means opportunities in fields ranging from human resources, finance and legal to information technology, marketing and distribution.

In fact, “You can spend a lot of time in retail and never be in the malls. There’s a whole back office operation that is much more like the rest of corporate America,” said Duncan, a Yale Law School graduate and former corporate counsel for JC Penney Co. Inc. who is responsible for coordinating the federation’s strategic legislative and regulatory initiatives.

Helene A. Cameron, director of Career Services at Winston Salem State University in Winston Salem, N C, said graduates thinking about retail should shift their perspective – from that of a customer to that of a profit-minded manager.

“Most college students are familiar with retail from the retail consumer side, from being a customer. They don’t picture retail from the management side, the profit-center side. When you present it to them that way, they get a clearer understanding,” Cameron said.

Retail sales in 2003 totaled $3.8 trillion, according to the National Retail Federation, and are expected to grow by 6% in 2004. The industry encompasses more than 1.4 million U.S. retail establishments and employs more than 23 million employees -- about one in five American workers. Retail comprises several formats and channels of distribution, including department, specialty, discount and independent stores, and catalog and Internet operations.

Retail is a magnet for employment opportunities. Employment is expected to grow about as fast as the average for all occupations through the year 2012, reflecting rising retail sales stemming from a growing population, according to a Department of Labor survey.

Because of the free-flow nature of the industry, large numbers of workers come in and out of the field each year, including part-time and older workers and high school graduates. Retail is about providing direct service to customers. While no formal education requirements exist for those in retail sales, enjoying working with people is a prerequisite for a retail career. Tact, patience, neatness and communication skills also are necessary.

However, increasingly, employers are demanding that retail sales people who advance into management have college degrees, particularly large retail businesses. Most large retail companies operate management trainee programs for college graduates to orient them to the industry. Cameron at Winston Salem State has placed a number of her students into the yearlong Retail Management Trainee Program at Food Lion LLC, which was launched by the Salisbury, NC-based grocery chain in 2002 for graduates at Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association schools.

“While there are always opportunities in retail for people with a high school education and people coming back into the workforce at different points in their life, we are looking more and more for people with college educations and for some positions for people beyond college,” said Kathy Mance, a vice president with National Retail Federation Foundation, who oversees workforce training programs.

The management training program at St. Louis, MO-based May Department Stores Co. seeks graduates who are results oriented, can direct multiple responsibilities and energize others. May Department Stores is the parent company of highly recognized retail operations around the country that include Filene’s, Foley’s, Hecht's, Kaufmann’s, Lord & Taylor, Marshall Field's and Strawbridge's.

“Our business requires a deep passion for the merchandise and an insatiable curiosity about the world around us, which is essential to keep our stores ahead of the trends and in synch with customers’ wants and needs,” said Anne Voller, May Department Stores director of college relations. “The students who transition best into May are those with a proven track record of accomplishments in school, work, and outside interests. Our most successful candidates have an entrepreneurial drive teamed with an aptitude for analytical and critical thinking.”

For graduates with those qualities, management-training programs will place them on a fast track. At May Department Stores, “the merchandising career path begins with a training program that includes a mix of classroom instruction and hands-on experience,” Voller said. Senior executives lead classroom sessions from diverse disciplines throughout the organization. Each executive trainee is assigned to a buying-office where they start as assistant buyers.

“May’s fast-track merchandising career path is designed to develop executive trainees into buyers in approximately three to four years,” Voller said. “Buyers are responsible for sales and profitability of a specific merchandise category that can range from $10 million to $75 million plus in annual sales.”

John Gremer, manager of retail management recruitment at Walgreens Co. based in Deerfield, Ill., which operates the chain of Walgreens pharmacies and stores, said flexibility is vital for college graduates soon to be retail managers. “Retail is very unique among jobs,” Gremer said. “From their very first day on the job they have supervision and management responsibility. They have to be flexible. They have to have an open mind and diagnose the environment and realize there are times that perhaps they have to do things that are out of the ordinary.”

In retail, that could be cleaning up a spill, negotiating a contract, performing financial management, training a new employee, setting up a store display or calming an angry customer. College graduates, Gremer said, usually have what it takes.

“Many people start to go to college, but fewer people actually graduate. In order to graduate you have to set a long-term goal. You’ve had to juggle your personal life, your professional life, and your financial life toward that long-term goal. That’s why the college experience is so powerful. It’s forced them to think in a certain manner, to plan in a certain way,” Gremer said.

Indicative of retail’s growing importance to the economy is its place as part of the President’s High Growth Job Training Initiative, a strategic effort by the Bush Administration to better prepare workers to seize new job opportunities in high growth sectors of the American economy. In 2004, the Labor Department put up $2.25 million in grant money to train about 44,000 workers in the retail industry as part of the initiative.

“The retail industry is expected to add 2.1 million new jobs in the next 10 years,” noted Labor Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao, adding that the grant will provide training and skills upgrades for workers in the retail industry.

Chao also noted the changing retail industry landscape. “In addition to sales associates and cashiers, today’s retail industry careers encompass information technology, marketing, communications, loss prevention, finance and merchandise sourcing. This project will highlight the value of an industry wide career ladder in this dynamic field,” she said.

The retail industry offers a variety of career opportunities for college graduates beyond selling. They include the following:

• Marketing – The creative side of the industry, includes advertising, sales promotion, statistical analysis, art and visual merchandising and public relations.

• Store Operations – Overseeing overall store operations and profits and managing staff functions like loss prevention and human resources.

• Loss Prevention – Responsible for the safeguarding company assets from shoplifting, employee theft, paperwork errors, and vendor fraud, and may include risk management issues.

• Store Management – Run store departments, supervising sales and other workers. Other responsibilities include opening and closing, staffing, administration and financial functions. College graduates typically join management trainee programs through this function.

• Finance – Number crunching functions include income accounting, expense, compiling and maintaining financial records, money management, banking, investment, credit and auditing.

• Human Resources –Recruiting and hiring employees, but also training, overseeing compensation and benefits, and ensuring legal compliance in hiring and employment practices.

• IT and E-Commerce – Technology careers range from designing e-commerce Web sites that complement most brick-and-mortar stores to designing complex inventory systems, state-of-the-art cash register and credit systems.

• Sales – The frontline positions central to the core of the industry because they serve customers and generate sales. Generally entry points into careers, although many professionals spend their careers here because of the opportunity to achieve high commission income.

• Distribution, Logistics, Supply.

• Chain Management - Oversees the movement and storage of products, including management and facilitation of distribution centers, logistics traffic management, trucking and other transportation operations.

• Merchandise Buying/Planning - Buyers work with U.S. or overseas markets to obtain goods or produce house label goods. The facilitate order follow-up, inventory flow through and allocation of merchandise to stores.

• Entrepreneurship - Opportunities for career-minded people to be their own boss. Independent and privately owned retail businesses account for 95 percent of the retail industry.

"You can have all sorts of backgrounds. You don't have to have a retail degree. You don't have to have a marketing degree. You don't have to have a business degree. You can be in so many different disciplines and be in retail. We've go pretty much all of them," says Kathy Mance of the National Retail Federation Foundation. For the highly ambitious, gaining a foothold in retail takes hard work, but the rewards are obvious.

"Retailing tends to require long hours in the early stages, but provides very fast advancement," Duncan of the National Retail Federation said.

 Marvin V. Greene is a frequent contributor to THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Magazine.