Jobs in retail - advice please

[jobnockey]

Just wondering where the best place to look for retail jobs is? Am doing this for someone else and have never worked in retail myself so don't know where to start! She has retail experience from a few years ago but is Deaf so its hard for her to go into stores and ask. have tried looking online but there doesn't seem to much on there in the way of shop floor assistants/sales assistants/stockroom people etc so wondering if it is more usual to approach individual shops directly?

I worked in retail for many years and we always recruited through the individual stores, it was only management roles which were advertised online (I worked for 3 different companies and it was the same with all of those).

Personally I moved into retail banking as it was slightly better hours (no late nights or Sunday's) and found the banks all advertise online for customer service staff so maybe something like this is worth considering?

Also keep an eye open for new stores which haven't opened yet as these will be recruited online :)

Thanks! Is she likely to get a response by sending in CV and covering letter or do people need to go in person with their CVs? Again, becasue she is Deaf this can often be a barrier for her...

Erm... Depends entirely on the manager! When I was running a store I was happy to include posted applications but I know others who have preferred to meet applicants when they handed their CV or application form in (one store I worked at insisted on their own application form being completed so a CV would just be ignored).

Will she put on the application that she is deaf? For me when recruiting I would have had no issue with it, however I always just used to call candidates to invite them for interview and we had no email facilities so I'm unsure how I would have contacted her (we ignored applications with no phone number unless there was a reason stated).

Also would going into the store herself not be beneficial rather than posting an application? I understand entirely about discrimination laws, but on a practical note if she is dealing with customers wouldn't it be useful if the manager sees that she is confident communicating with strangers? She could always go into stores and specifically request speaking to the manager.

Some retail jobs are advertised on the Directgov website.

rockchick you are probably right, I think it would definitely be benficial for manager's to see how well she can communicate. Her Cv doesn't state she is Deaf but it does say she should only be contacted via SMS or email which I can see might not work in a lot of stores. I'll let her know what I've found out on here and see what she wants to do...

Being completely honest, at the store where I was manager, it's unlikely I would have contacted her (this was a high street jewellers with hundreds of stores) as we had no external email facility and to text her would have been off my personal mobile (didn't have work's phones) so my only option would have been writing to her to offer an interview. When you have 50 applications in front of you then without being given a reason, I would have just gone onto the next application and not bothered to interview.

If she had come into the store and explained the situation I would have been happy to arrange an interview (and happy to text to offer the job, as all the staff had my mobile number anyway).

Not saying its the same in all shops, but this was only a few years ago so I wouldn't assume all stores would try to go out of their way to get in touch with someone who (without the manager being told anything different) just doesn't want a phone call. I hope she finds something soon :)