Category Specialist - Category Specialist Walmart Employee Review

Walmart relatively recently embarked on a program to hire “category specialists” from top schools around the country, promising “full ownership of a category” and a job filled with business negotiations and entrepreneurship-type experiences. What they didn’t mention is that in reality, all the decisions are made by people higher up in the company, who often graduated from bottom tier schools like the University of Phoenix. The day to day of a category specialist can be summed up with one phrase: digital shelf stocking. It is literally like stocking shelves in a Walmart store, except online. You set up new items online by filling out extensive forms (tickets), remove items from the site, change out photos, and categorize items. It is as boring as it gets. To top it all off, many teams are very understaffed, with one category specialist doing the work of 10 category specialists. Despite all this heavy lifting, management is very hesitant to give out “exceeds expectations” reviews. I know many people who work hard and long hours and only “meet expectations” on their evaluations. Most importantly, there is virtually no structured training for the job. They give you a mere two weeks of training, where literally none of the dozens of outdated systems are taught to the new hires. Category specialists are thrown head first into the work environment, in which most low level managers don’t even know how to use the systems. New hires are expected to learn quickly from fellow employees, who often themselves don’t know what to do and are drowning in work.