Retail loss prevention can build the foundation for a great career. Emerging as a profession stocked with quality individuals and diverse opportunities. Today’s loss prevention professional is expected to be multi-dimensional, open-minded, global-thinking, enterprising and intelligent. There is a lot to offer those with ambition, energy and intelligence.
The landscape of the profession is undergoing a significant transformation as the evolution of the retail industry moves forward at a tremendous pace. The face of retail has changed, and all of the different aspects of the business—including loss prevention, have had to change with it. There are mountains of new challenges and landslides of opportunities for those with the right motivations and skill sets.
As we continue to build the foundation and the future of the loss prevention industry, what we then have to determine is—how do we bring the best possible talent into the profession? How do we guide those ambitious individuals just beginning their careers to look at loss prevention as a professional option? This week’s LP Magazine Instant Poll asked, What is the most important step that the LP industry can take to encourage more interest among young people who are looking for a career?
All of our options showed support from our poll respondents, and all provide strong and legitimate opportunities to encourage more interest in retail loss prevention as a career path. Traditionally, our career path of choice has not been a field that will typically draw the interests of many as a primary prospect for professional opportunity. However, those that have discovered loss prevention have learned that the profession has much to offer, and is much more complex—and rewarding than we may have originally perceived.
While our choices may have reflected each option as an area of continuing opportunity to draw talent, greater emphasis on loss prevention as part of college curriculum garnered almost half of the responses. There was a general perception that significant opportunity exists by emphasizing the career path in the college classroom, engaging college students by introducing loss prevention as a real and legitimate aspect of the retail environment.
Such opportunities can be incorporated in many different ways and associated with different academic options, whether LP stands alone as a major, or serves as a course that is part of a related path such as a business program or other field.
Exploring all of the different options that are available to identify, recruit, and secure the best possible talent into the industry should be part of our management model. By the same respect, as leaders in our departments and our companies we must take an active role in the process rather than simply looking for academia to accomplish our objectives for us. As the profession continues to grow and increase in complexity and responsibility, creative leaders will find a way to find the best.