Emily’s Adventures

I applied for the Management Development Program because I value autonomy.  Hajoca trusts its leaders to make their own decisions because the company understands that knowledge from the field is the best guide.  The culture is decentralized but one thing is consistent: managers believe in what they are doing because they are choosing it.  Before I will be offered a management position, I will train with two different managers.  During the interview process, I worked with staff to find a good location for me.  I moved about an hour north from home to a new city.  My Profit Center Manager (PCM)/Mentor immediately gave me a warm welcome onto the team.  It is a medium size Profit Center (PC) and I am one of eight employees.

Four months ago I began my Phase One in the warehouse in Fredericksburg, Va.  I worked alongside warehouse employees for two months. The tasks I learned right away are simple but can get a little confusing, and require knowledge of the material.  I started with receiving incoming material.  Products come to us from manufacturers on freight trucks or through FedEx and UPS.  This process includes verifying the material is correct and in good condition.  When things arrived, I would go to a computer and pull up our program that tracks inventory to add the new material. It updates the database real- time, so that our salesman can add it to orders for our customers.  When large deliveries (like bath tubs and water heaters) arrived, I used the forklift.  There is plenty of training on safety before ever buckling up and driving the forklift.  

After I became comfortable with the receiving process, I began learning a new process called “pulling orders”.  It begins when a salesman prints an order for a customer.  It prints on our counter where the warehouse employees pick it up and package the list of material.  Again, it is a simple process; the location of the product is printed next to the description so you can go right to where it is.  This is the best way to get familiar with the products.  I was also given workbooks to get a general overview of the types of things most Profit Centers carry, and recognize items and their uses.  I got my first glimpse of the job sites when I went out on deliveries with our driver for a few days.  The warehouse module is where you put on your hard hat!

The next module of phase one is the counter.  I have completed two months out of the five to six total months of the counter module.  This is the part of the business that feels most like retail.  However, instead of the customer shopping and bringing goods up to the counter, the salesman takes down a list and retrieves it from the warehouse.  A good portion of the customers are people who own a plumbing company and are picking material up for their employees to use.  These are the easiest customers to help because they know exactly what they need.  It gets challenging when the owner sends his service plumbers to pick up material because they expect to figure out what they need with the help of a knowledgeable salesman (me).  Luckily, my counter mentors are there to help with the tricky questions.  The only way to keep track of the things I learn each day is with a notebook, due to the high volume of detailed information.  What do you know? College did prepare us for employment!  Most of my notes are instructions for finding a product in the computer.  There is lots of plumbing jargon so I have many names for the same thing written down.  

One good thing about the program is that I will get a different mentor for each module.  I was able to see the counter salesman do their job for a month before I ever put in an order.  Now that I am on the counter, I can watch our operations specialist and pay close attention, because soon enough I’ll move to that module.  I also work closely with our inside and outside salesman and can ask them any questions I have about my future training.  It is comforting to know that the curriculum is well-tested, and I always have a good idea of what my goals should be.  In the end, though, taking advantage of all the resources is up to me.