Hitting the mid-way mark at Sears

This week has been more challenging than most and I am glad for the weekend. I had my first performance review with my manager. It turns out Sears has an extensive performance appraisal system in place, involving the intern’s input, self-appraisal, manager appraisal and subsequent discussion with manager. I have currently completed two steps in the process and am waiting on a second meeting with my manager this coming Tuesday.

I have been given 4 new projects to complete over the next 5 weeks. One involves process improvement follow-up on my first project. The second is a weekly tracking of our vendor contribution targets for the month, involving following up with the buying team on any discrepancies from forecasted contributions. The third is a capital project request for the replacement of jewelry fixtures at a Kmart store in New York. This is a standard project for finance teams in many companies in many industries and I noticed that it is the first thing on my syllabus for ‘Valuation’ in the coming fall quarter. The last project is potentially the most impactful of all my projects. It involves the circulars / inserts in the papers that Sears and Kmart use as standard marketing strategy to incent customers to buy. There has been a company-wide initiative to reduce costs on these circulars by shifting them from Sundays to Thursdays (cadence change) thereby reducing circulation volume. A reduction in sales has been observed over the same timeframe. My task is to identify if the cadence change is the cause of the reduced sales of if there are other contributing factors. It is a strongly analytical exercise based on available data and should help me apply my problem-solving and analytical skills. It allows me the opportunity to display my strengths in this area to my manager.

I also have the opportunity to share my learnings, findings and showcase my skill-set to upper management through the final intern presentation that is due in 3 weeks. I will be doing a power point presentation for the Finance CFO’s as well as other operating business CFO’s within the company. This high level exposure should be very beneficial for me should I choose to return to work full-time at Sears.

Finally on a front closer to home, I am going to hospital twice a week for regular check-ups and fetal monitoring and so far so good!