As an associate, you're a part of a team. The team will be made up of associates just like you and together, your main goal is ensuring that clients' needs are met.
Generally, associate positions are thought of as a level higher than entry-level, but it definitely varies by company, so you might want to give that employee handbook a glance.
The great thing about being in an associate position is the opportunities. You definitely have positions that you can grow into from the associate level, so it's sort of a "started from the bottom and now we're here" situation.
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being an associate. For example, did you know that they make an average of $41.51 an hour? That's $86,350 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow -2% and produce -105,200 job opportunities across the U.S.
There are certain skills that many associates have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed customer-service skills, interpersonal skills and math skills.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be an associate, we found that a lot of resumes listed 22.7% of associates included procedures, while 13.4% of resumes included customer service, and 9.1% of resumes included communication. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the associate job title. But what industry to start with? Most associates actually find jobs in the retail and professional industries.
If you're interested in becoming an associate, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 33.4% of associates have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 9.9% of associates have master's degrees. Even though most associates have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become an associate. When we researched the most common majors for an associate, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or high school diploma degrees. Other degrees that we often see on associate resumes include associate degree degrees or master's degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become an associate. In fact, many associate jobs require experience in a role such as cashier. Meanwhile, many associates also have previous career experience in roles such as sales associate or internship.