Working at Lowe's

In 1921 Lucius Lowe opened a hardware store in North Carolina. The store passed down through the family and in 1949 Lowe's, now known as Lowe's Companies, Inc., opened a second store in North Carolina.

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Soon after, Lucius's son in law Carl Buchan became the sole owner while Jim Lowe took over other businesses owned by the family. Under Buchan's management the company expanded rapidly throughout the United States. Today Lowe's is the second largest home improvement chain both domestically and globally, behind upstart Home Depot.

Unlike Home Depot, Lowe's employees work on a supplemental commission based structure. Home Depot plays its employees a flat rate. As a company, Lowe's kept its focus on home owner driven marketing while Home Depot started out catering to contractors, but eventually modified its marketing to bring it more in line with Lowe's. With the advent of ''big box'' concept stores made popular by Home Depot, Lowe's eventually shifted to a similar format for most new stores but retains many smaller locations as well. Lowe's now has stores in all 50 states, Canada, Mexico and Australia, with approximately 240,000 employees.

Lowe's strong record of pro environmental policies is an important part of its corporate culture. The company has won 8 Energy Star awards for educating its customers about the benefits of energy efficiency and was the first winner of the Energy Star sustained excellence in retail award. Since 2000, the company has pledged to sell only wood that does not come from rainforests.

As an employer, Lowe's has faced some class action suits in the last ten years due to what it calls a ''variable rate overtime'' policy. Under this policy, overtime rates decrease the more hours that an employee works. In 2004, both Lowe's and Home Depot were defendants in a class action suit involving interest free promotions for their in store credit cards.

Lowe's has career paths in retail, distribution and corporate. Hound currently lists 254 open positions with Lowe's across all three career paths. Monster.com, which charges employers high fees to list job openings, has no listings at all for Lowe's. If you're serious about your job search, use a job site that never charges employers to advertise job openings like Hound. Sign up today for a free trial and you could be applying for any of the thousands of jobs you won't find at monster.com.


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