Retail mobile phone service stores - qualifications

[symbolipoint]

I am curious about this. What are the educational specifications of the people who work in the cellular/mobile telephone retail stores? Degrees in Engineering, Physics, Computer Science? Or are they people with degrees in Business, Psychology, Advertising, Art, Communications, or other not too physical-sci educations?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

What are the educational specifications of the people who work in the cellular/mobile telephone retail stores?

Looking at various job listings for mobile retail stores, I don't think anything past high school education is required. Why do you think it takes something more?

 

[symbolipoint]

Looking at various job listings for mobile retail stores, I don't think anything past high school education is required. Why do you think it takes something more?

Some of the personnel at the stores can and do take care of some technical trouble when customers come in with their device and ask for the help. The person at the store would do anything from clicking a few keys on the device to make a software upgrade, click some keys on the device to reset some arrangment between the equipment and the device, click some keys maybe on the device or another device and some computer to transfer Contacts and other information between devices...

The people in the store obviously know how to setup a new customer on a cellphone to get the account and the service and the device working, right in the store, but maybe this much is a matter of just training and experience.

 

[Vanadium 50]

As far as I can tell, the primary requirement is piercings.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

The people in the store obviously know how to setup a new customer on a cellphone to get the account and the service and the device working, right in the store, but maybe this much is a matter of just training and experience.

These things can be taught over a couple days

 

[Locrian]

More than a decade ago I worked at a retail store that sold lots of things, including cellular phones.

While technology has changed, I feel confident the requirements are no different now than they were then.

Back then, there were basically no requirements.

 

[StatGuy2000]

My feeling is that most of the requirements of working at the cell phone retail stores have fairly limited qualifications (in fact, some of the outlets near my home are staffed by high school students working part-time). For the most part, staff there don't really do anything more advanced than activating the new cell phone and (occasionally) doing a few simple troubleshooting and working on upgrades to the apps or OS (which doesn't take much more than basic training, I would guess).

My suspicion that for any customers that will require more complicated work (e.g. actual repairs to the phone), the staff at the retail outlet will likely send the phone itself to a dedicated specialist at a regional office. That dedicated specialist may have more advanced technical qualifications.