Pros
- Extremely great pay for the role (to the point that I think they actually pay too much) - Flexibility with work hours and other personal commitments - Company has a passion for its products and customers (despite the bad reputation) - Lots of freebies through internal product promotions - Lots of opportunities to move and progress career wise
Cons
- Minimal training with high expectations on performance. Requesting further support is seen negatively - Way to many "fingers in the pie" from a product development process. Too many people and departments getting involved and having a say in steps of process that has nothing to do with them - Extremely convoluted Product Development processes which everyone is aware of but nothing is done despite this. It could be much more streamline and user friendly but no one is really open to changing it - A huge amount of red tape to get anything approved and across the line - The business is full of individuals that are more interested in making a name for themselves instead of working as a team - Lots of talk of supporting mental health but if it remotely impacts work, its reflected badly on you - For a company that cares a lot about sustainability and does great work around it from product perspective, their obsession to produce and give away lots of Coles promotional branded products (notebooks, water bottles, polo tops, etc) for special once off events seems really wasteful - Coles Category Management/Product Development/Marketing is made up of 40% hires from the UK (who come from the big UK supermarket chains), 40% from the graduate program and the remaining 20% from those who actually have local industry experience. The Grads only know the "Coles" way which is be ruthless, the UK staff understand the processes aren't great but just deal with it until they can get permanent residency and the remainder end up leaving because our industry experience tells us the Coles way of working is unreasonable.