hmv Reviews

3.5

64% would recommend to a friend

(589 total reviews)

Ian Topping

59% approve of CEO

30% positive business outlook

hmv has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 589 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The hmv employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Retail and wholesale industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

589 reviews
3.0
25 Nov 2014

Facing the music...

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Getting to listen to new music Friendly team of colleagues Had a rota system so got to mix tasks up a bit Lenient with piercings and weird hair colours Watching the managers sweat when the CEO turned up for a visit. Good hours for a temporary contract Discount despite being a temp.

Cons

Worked at a Pop-up store, was told we would get 60p above minimum wage during interview, then we were texted later that it was in fact minimum wage. Thought working in HMV would be dynamic and interesting, but turned out to be a soulless profit making exercise. Maybe I've been watching the movie 'Empire Records' too much. Took the fun out of customer service and retail by treating customers like gods. Some of the tasks we were told to were a bit silly. (1) Stand at the entrance and hand out offer leaflets, of which customers would pick up then discard in various places around the store, e.g inside DVD cases. (2) Walk around the store in a clockwise fashion and approaching customers and asking if they need any help, while your colleague would do the same, so you would end up annoying customers twice. Also to hand out more leaflets. (3) The mentioned walk was briefly updated with the most ridiculous thing ever. We had to selotape DVD's together like you would be holding a spread deck of cards, and you would hold this in 1 hand while offering assistance. Bizarre marketing ploy. We were also told despite being on a 6 week contract, that there would be possibilities for career opportunities at the closest permanent store, but we were told strictly no positions will be available by other management. Very confusing. Oh and the pink Tshirt. Not so good for guys

3.0
28 Sept 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

HMV to myself and to many is a dream job. It seems absolutely perfect if like myself you're a huge nerd and love film, tv, anime technology and the likes right? While partly true be warned. HMV has it's ups and downs. First the ups. + Amazing staff / fellow colleagues, you'll get along well easily if you're chill with all staff they're great and very helpful people. +Staff discount on most HMV products, always nice to have if you like myself like what HMV has to sell + Store opening hours are comfortable with most closing at 17:30 + Relatively simple job most of the time just waiting on til and selling stuff

Cons

Now the downs, depending on your view these may not be a big deal to you but they certainty were to me. - Horrific constant tracking / observation of your "stats", your store / manager will track every move. HMV has an awful policy of setting completely stupid goals for its staff such as collecting customer emails for recipts, selling tote bags and other rubbish as well as subscriptions to the news letter. And if you don't meet their pointless goals you're in for a treat even if you constantly try (which most of the time is awkward, time consuming and annoying for yourself and customers) you'll unlikely be able to meet these targets as most people obviously don't want to give their email out which in return will end up with you getting moaned at by your manager constantly. Which despite you selling thousands sometimes worth of stock your lack of emails seems to be the deal breaker. That to me was a huge downside and I find their constant obsession with collection emails and hitting pointless goals incredibly frustrating. This is also something they do NOT tell you in the interview, honestly if I knew this I probably would of not taken the job. - Lack of reward / unsatisfying work. You're probably gonna spend most of the time selling rubbish to people or just standing around, and dealing with annoying rude customers. And when you do good you're probably not gonna get much reward or recognition for it. Maybe a small congrats at most. - Minimum wage pay. Yeh pretty standard now, you earn the store absolutely hundreds (sometimes thousands) per shift while you'll be lucky to earn £60+ / shift dependent on your age and length of shift - Lazy / unhelpful manger. Spends most of the time upstairs doing stock whatever, probably taking much longer than they need or distracting staff. (Usually the female ones of course) - Will not respect your availability. Was VERY clear about my availability for it to be broken numerous times and voiced my complaint and while this was addressed it was clear the manager was not happy about it despite my clear statement in interviewing. - Lack of training. Personally I had only maybe 1 or 2 days of minimal training, while I did not really need or want much more as I caught on quick it was interesting to find that once I joined I was basically forgotten about being new

2.0
25 Sept 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Staff discount Chatting about Film, TV and Music I can't think of any others but there's a ridiculous 20 word minimum for this.

Cons

No work-life balance Dreadful pay Staff are expected to sell the HMV 'pure' card - the card is a con and and they don't offer any tangible incentives beyond a a carrot on a stick Management expect their minimum-wage staff to do ridiculous late shifts, night shifts and constant unpaid overtime, whilst they themselves have every weekend off and only do the 9-5 shifts HMV offer staff the chance to write 'Reviews' for the website, with no actual prospect of progression into that side of the business. The reality is that they're just using retail staff as a free marketing ploy. No real progression beyond taking on more responsibility for a pitiful pay rise. Holidays can't be taken in November or December (although apparently this rule doesn't apply to managers) Rotas wouldn't be finished until the day of your shift and were constantly changed at the last minute, often to accommodate the managers social life. Management are inept at planning - there were often days where staff were illegally left on their own on the shop floor. Staff illegally expected to work without an 8 hour break between shifts. Staff expected to perform loss prevention duties despite not being trained or paid for doing so.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 589 Reviews

Glassdoor has 659 hmv reviews submitted anonymously by hmv employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if hmv is right for you.