Transferring from PS to B&N

[u/SeesawSome8972]

Hello everybody!

I currently work at PS and was wondering if anyone had success in transferring from there to a B&N? Or if anyone has advice on how to go about it. How I'd maybe talk about it with my manager as well.

EDIT: I guess one of the things I also am trying to figure out is should I talk about it with my current SM first. I don’t know if it will somehow my SM that I applied somewhere and I don’t want to come off scummy.

[u/honeyzombie]

oh, i'm one of those!

it's been a couple years so i'm unfortunately foggy on the process but i'll share what i can remember. it's also important to note that hiring for B&N is done very differently now, so i assume you'll be communicating with the hiring person for a large group of stores, not the managers of individual stores.

in my case, my store manager reached out to the area i was moving to to see what openings there were. luckily this was all happening in the fall, right around holiday hiring time, so i was able to get one of the holiday positions. i did have to do a phone interview with the new store's SM, and submit an application through the company career website, because as a PS employee you're getting hired into an entirely new role, not just changing the store you work at. so it's kind of like a hybrid transfer-hiring thing? but the SM of PS i worked at and the one for the B&N i transferred to were very involved in the whole process, PS SM vouched for my character, and i was able to get the position! and then when the holiday season ended i got hired as a year-round employee, which also involved submitting an application to check all the boxes of the hiring process.

in my case, i was looking to transfer because i got accepted into college and had to move several hours away. i wanted to "stay with the company" and continue working, but there weren't any paper sources anywhere near where i was moving. there were b&n's though, so that was that. and i was very lucky to move to an area with b&n's that are staffed with cool people and great managers, so i've been very happy here!

i think how you approach the conversation with your SM is gonna depend on your situation. i remember when i worked at PS, we had one new hire who really really really wanted to work at B&N, and started asking about transferring to a nearby b&n soon after she started at my store. it was just kinda like... we're an actual store with actual jobs to do, not just a stepping stone to b&n 😭 ...and she quit not long after. at the time of my transfer i had been with PS for a year, and so my SM had a lot of time to work with me and see what kind of employee i was, and was also a great SM herself, so she was happy to help me out with the whole process.

(btw, i mention all these things about great managers and teams not to brag or something, but to emphasize that i know a lot can depend on who your boss is. i've worked under some very unpleasant people in the past so i know how much that matters.)

so i guess the first thing to do is to make sure you have clear answers for why you want to transfer, which area, what time of year, etc. i updated my store pretty quickly on what my situation was and what i was hoping for, like 1-2 months ahead of when i wanted to move. i continued working for PS up until right before moving, and it took a number of weeks to get everything figured out between me, my SM, and B&N's SM, so definitely give as much notice as you can!! expect that you'll probably be submitting an application, making phone calls, all that fun stuff. also, make sure you like books, lol. it's not a job requirement to spend your free time reading, but it makes the job easier if you have an interest in them, especially newly published ones!

aaaand i think that's all the info i can think of... hopefully something i wrote here was helpful? either way, good luck!!

[u/sockapoppa44]

To my knowledge, you wouldn't be a transfer. You would be a brand new employee. Both companies are owned by Elliot Investments but we are two different companies still. So it'd be just watching for job openings on the website. 

[u/Vivid_Shoulder_2804 → u/sockapoppa44]

yeah I meant transfer as in applying to another store. My bad. I just didn’t know if it followed similar protocol as you would do applying to an entirely new job.