Store clerks are the face of your business for customers and provide essential support for visitors to your store.
From keeping lines moving quickly to stocking shelves to answering questions about products you sell, your store’s clerks help your customers find the products they need and help them leave your store with a smile on their face.
In this post we'll show you how to define clerk responsibilities at your store and how to write job descriptions for different kinds of store clerks.
1. Store Clerk Responsibilities
2. Grocery Clerk Job Description
3. Supermarket Clerk Job Description
4. Grocery Stock Clerk Job Description
5. Grocery Assistant Job Description
6. Grocery Checker Job Description
1. Store Clerk Responsibilities
The responsibilities of your store clerks will be determined by the kinds of products you sell in your store, the nature of the interactions your clerks have with customers and the volume of customers your store serves.
For instance, the duties of a grocery store cashier will be more focused on keeping the line moving than general grocery store clerk duties, which may involve specialized grocery store duties, like serving customers in the deli.
When you’re hiring clerks for your store, consider the experience that your customer is supposed to have and the duties of a store clerk that will lead to this experience.
Answering these questions will help you define all the duties of your next store clerk hire and help you write your job description for store clerks.
- How common is it for a line to be at your cash register(s)?
- To make sales, how involved must clerks be in explaining product features, benefits, origins, etc.?
- What type of experience should customers have upon entering your store?
- What type of experience should customers have when interacting with your clerks?
- How often will clerks be re-stocking your store shelves?
- What special operations are related to re-stocking (folding clothes, for example)?
- What other specialized tasks will your store clerks need to complete?
Now that you’ve answered the question “what do store clerks do” for your store, you can write a job description that gets interest from qualified candidates and results in a great hire.
[Related: The Ultimate Job Description Checklist]
2. Grocery Clerk Job Description
Your grocery clerk job description should explain the duties of a grocery clerk at your store and the grocery clerk skills required for the job, but it should also explain why candidates should choose your job over a similar role.
When explaining store worker duties for your business, you should devote more of your job description to the tasks and requirements that make working for your store different from working at other stores. For instance, if your store is small, clerks may be expected to operate the store by themselves. For other grocery stores, the duties of store clerks will be more focused on working well with a team.
Once you have covered required skills, your grocery job description should demonstrate your value as an employer to clerk candidates. Your job description will accomplish this by giving candidates insight into how you stand out from competitors in terms of benefits, pay and perks. You should also explain your company’s philosophy when it comes to food, as well as any products you carry that make you a specialized store.
3. Supermarket Clerk Job Description
While similar to a grocery clerk job description, the job description for supermarket clerks should take the differences between a supermarket and a smaller grocery store into account.
Supermarket clerks will typically experience a far higher volume of customers than clerks working at independent grocery stores. This means that great candidates for your supermarket clerk positions have extensive experience serving a high volume of customers and are used to the pressure that comes with it.
Supermarkets are often chains and have templates for job descriptions, but you should try to be as creative as possible while meeting corporate requirements for messaging and use of standardized company materials.
4. Grocery Stock Clerk Job Description
Stock clerks must be highly detail-oriented and efficient people and your job description should ask for these qualities in your applicants.
Stock clerks are responsible for ensuring that your store’s products and produce are always there in the right place for your customers and that these products are arranged neatly.
Stock clerk positions are more physically demanding than other grocery store clerk positions, so be sure that you know the maximum weight that your stock clerks will have to lift and set this as a requirement in your stock clerk job description.
[Related: How To Seal the Deal With a Quality Candidate]
5. Grocery Assistant Job Description
Grocery assistants need to be team players and focused on supporting the needs of other clerks working in your grocery store.
Grocery assistants often assist with the bagging of groceries, collecting misplaced carts and baskets and other tasks that are crucial for supporting the other clerks working in your grocery store.
Grocery assistant jobs are not experience-intensive, but you still need to attract reliable and responsible people with your grocery assistant job description. To accomplish this, stress the importance of teamwork, anticipating the needs of clerks and supporting those needs.
6. Grocery Checker Job Description
For grocery checker positions, speed, efficiency and professionalism are vital to success.
Along with proficiency at efficiently serving customers in the checkout line, one of the main grocery store cashier duties is providing customers with a pleasant checkout experience. People won’t be returning to your store if they have an “off” experience with your grocery store checkers, so be sure to ask for a positive attitude in your grocery clerk job description and be sure to seek out positive individuals when screening candidates.
The responsibilities of a cashier at a grocery store can also involve general store clerk duties, like restocking, so, if this is the case at your store, be sure to include all duties that your checkers will be expected to complete in the course of their work.
