management trainee

delivery driver

warehouse associate

warehouse/driver

sales trainee

Consolidated Electrical Distributors, Inc (CED)

A typical day for me is coming in at 7:30am and leaving by 4:30-5pm. I wear jeans and a company t-shirt/polo, or a button down shirt, etc. I believe it does make us more relatable to our customers to not have a super strict dress code. 

I have learned a ton at CED about the industrial and electrical fields. The manager of my store is awesome and really cares about having good, motivated employees. The manager also doesn't shy away from investing in employees and providing ample training opportunities. 

The culture is awesome at my location, but that will also vary depending on the people's personality you work with. I rated it as 5 stars for my particular location. 

I think the hardest part of working at CED is keeping track of paperwork and keeping up with the fast pace. If a customer is down, you sometimes have to drop everything and take care of them, then go back to what you were doing. This can be a bit difficult, and sometimes things get dropped. Thankfully, the manager and outside sales guys do a good job at reminding you. 

Another difficult aspect of CED, at least my location, is the lack of clearly defined roles. It sometimes leads to stepping on toes from people trying to do the same job twice, other times it leads to a gap in what needs to get done. This isn't the fault of the people doing the job; rather, the manager sort of relies on telling people general guidelines and doesn't address the gaps in responsibility very well, at times. There are also sometimes conflicting answers when you ask questions about roles and responsibilities. 

The only area I rate as below 5 stars is "Job Security/Advancement". Job Security is fine, but because of the fairly flat system of roles (as in, there is only one "boss" per location, everyone else are equals with different responsibilities), there is limited opportunity for advancement within a particular location. There is a special management training track, but it requires moving approximately once a year, oftentimes to a different state, 2-3 times total. If your personal circumstances make this unworkable, you are essentially locked in to one of the lower positions, though you could shuffle around within a particular location doing purchasing, warehouse, inside sales, or outside sales, etc. 

The work/life balance is quite workable. Obviously, you are expected to work 40 hours a week, whether paid salary or hourly. Salaried workers seem to get more leeway, obviously, but the flip side is that they get no overtime on the times where they do have to go above and beyond. Occasionally, the salaried outside sales guys need to visit a customer or deliver parts late into the evening. This seems to balance out. Employees take turns being "on call" since we do have an "after-hours/emergency" line. If someone has something come up, like being out of town or something, fellow employees are good about switching weeks to help each other out. Occasionally, there will be out of town trainings. These tend to be the entire work week. The company pays all reasonable expenses on the trip. This may be a downside for people with a family (especially with kids), but if that is the case, the company also has a CED University option that has online training from many manufacturers.

Overall, I think working for CED is one of the greatest decisions one can make. The company is truly great, it seems like managers up the chain actually take an active interest in employees at every level. The pay will not set the world on fire, but it is fair, the benefits are good, and the profit sharing is a major plus.

I will start by saying it is a very fun easy going work environment because no one has respect for any of the "managers" in the profit center. I should also note that every location will be different because they are all run very independently.

In OKC you either have to have a college degree to move up in the company or be bad at your job but not break any laws. If you show any signs at being great in the position you are in you have no hope of getting a promotion. Equal opportunity is not a real thing and keeping quiet will keep you hired.

The hours are straight forward and very consistent. Show up sometime around the hour your are expected and leave when the work is done unless someone else is willing to stay later and do it for you, then you can leave when you want. No consequences or rewards for punctuality failures or over achievements.

There is no pay scale so the money you can make depends all on how good you can "convince" the boss in your work abilities and also how good you can keep your mouth shut about how much you make. As long as the store makes money there is a bonus given each year that the manager takes the majority of then solely decides how much to give you. That being said, you will work next to people making over $200,000 on one side and people with 2 jobs doing their best to get by on the other side. Oh but they do buy you lunch sometimes.

The insurance and benefits are far from anything fancy. High deductible health insurance that is decently priced until you add children or family and it is based out of a different state just to make it that much more confusing. 

I started with CED in 1981 with a 1 -1/2 year old Service Center. CED was then and still is today a privately held corporation. The Service Center then only serviced 30 profit centers. Each year this company grew by acquisition which added to the number of profit centers serviced by the Nashville Service Center. I was hired as an AP Clerk, then transitioned to AR Clerk, Accounting Clerk, Staff Accountant, then Data Control Supervisor for up to 200 profit and cost centers within the Eastern U.S. Services provided included all accounts payable operations, payments to vendors, vendor payment inquiries, accounts receivable processing, customer statement production and distribution, monthly financial reporting, development of AP Seminar and Training, Customer Service to the profit and cost centers.

The Company embraced the value of each employee and shared a percent of the company's profit with employees. This was a great incentive and motivational tool for all management to encourage each employee to add value, set goals, meet goals, perform well and be rewarded. This employee appreciation tool resulted in employee longevity.

Company allowed me the freedom to explore my skills and strengths and contact Vendors on a National Level to negotiate national expense vendor accounts and purchase vendor accounts for terms and discounts on behalf of the Corporation.

Overall, the direct management needs immense improvement. There is no inclusivity and I was insanely targeted due to personal life implications that affected work things. There was threats of being fired on numerous occasions and eventually put onto a "performance plan". The hardest part of this job, is that if you don't click with the management right off the bat, you wont succeed. It is very touch and go, and insanely family oriented. Favoritism plays a massive role in the job description that they do not include. I have learned, that working with friends and family, comes with its massive cons. Favoritism being a massive one of them. The workplace culture and the co-workers I worked directly with were amazing, nothing poor to say about them whatsoever. Honestly my issue lied with the inexperienced management system. If you want to be paid poorly and denied a raise though working and doing all of your direct duties as an employee, belittled, talked down to, and downright treated like a child. Then apply, but its unsure if you'll get the job unless you know somebody who knows somebody. Its a "friend of a friend" type environment. The last thing I would like to mention, is they will hand you a portion of your profit share and hold the rest over your head and tell you that you can have it IF you meet certain often unobtainable or already obtained guidelines. It's not worth it. Go elsewhere. 

At CED, a typical day at work entailed all aspects of new, semi-annual, and annual enrollment, answering phones to assist employees and their families with making changes in benefits, helping with medical claim issues, helping employees transition from all-paper enrollment to electronic-only enrollment procedures, assisting employees with changes in their employment status (termination, etc.), COBRA, and ARRA implementation.
I learned many aspects of Human Resources, including, keeping up with current laws, how to communicate and work with outside vendors, how to organize benefit enrollments, FMLA, and generate important reports.
I had one manager in my department. He was very laid-back and hands-off. Being a self-starter and independent was crucial in this position.
I worked closely with only two other co-workers in our busy department. We all handled different aspects of benefits and human resources but cross-trained each other for the purpose of back-up (vacation time, etc.)
The hardest part of the job was making the decision to not relocate to Texas with the company.
The most enjoyable part of the job was that it was never a slow day and I always felt like I was helping people.

Was thrilled when I was hired by CED because they provide an excellent opportunity to learn how to run a company and potentially fill that role in 2-1/2 to 3 years. 
Relocation is demanded at least twice within the program. The buy-in is crucial as a trainee to progress in the program so if you don't think you can learn to love electrical products then it might not be for you. There's homework that is quite tedious at times and feels like a pain to do after work. 
You go on business trips every 2-3 months in the first 1-1/2 years of the program, but not as often once you're in outside sales. Compensation is probably the worst part. Even coming straight out of college I feel the salary isn't worth the time put in. Their benefits are second to none but if you aren't putting in overtime your net pay comes out to about $16/hour. Even once when I worked 41 hours overtime the hourly net pay was only $17.60/hour. 
Company culture is great and I've loved everyone I worked with. Many of my coworkers would say we don't work here because we like our jobs, we do it to make a lot of money. The sad part is you'll be making the same as you did in the warehouse from the start to when you're in inside sales. Outside sales you get a slight increase but you don't get paid overtime or commission.

The usual work schedule was basically pulling ticket orders for delivery or will-call orders, unloading trucks with a forklift and then receiving them after checking to make sure before signing the truck drivers paper, then after inspecting everything is visibly undamaged then continue to check in item with packing slip for correct amount that is shipped. cutting wire or marine cables with wire counting machine, unloading trucks with forklift, picking up yellow copies of p.o. numbers to make sure when checking in items received that way to know if item is for stock or special order for customer. Management was great. Hardest part of job when it was when multiple tickets for delivery and will call aren't pulled and wire cuts were needed for customers waiting for orders and then trucks pulling up to the loading dock area at the same time some days like that and then some not so much
the employees i worked with were awesome a little sense of humor with some but some days a little too much play where work was not done.
but paid holidays and birthdays paid off was great

I'm a current 11-year employee. Every CED location (more than 700 nationwide) has their own management, their own P&L statement, and is run autonomously as an individual business, under the corporate umbrella. Each location has their own market focus and way of selling into that market. You can start out as a truck driver or warehouse employee and if you work hard and learn the products including the application of those products you can become a counter salesman, an inside salesman, a project manager, a quotations manager, an outside salesman, etc. If you just want a "j o b" you can do that, but if you want a career you can make that at CED. Corporate is great, they mostly leave the locations alone but provide great benefits and surprise bonuses. Location managers are often young people that corporate recruiters get right out of college, run them through a few years of management training and then gives them a location to run. You're going to get some good ones and some bad ones, hence the variety of ratings on this site. Don't let a poor manager get in your way of making a career in electrical distribution, I've been in it for 30 years and the industry seriously needs good people.

Learned a lot working at this job, that I do not want to work in this industry. The work here is okay, but a lot of negativity between employees/mangers, passive aggressiveness, and office politics causes the work place to miserable more than not. With long work days (12 hours on avg) and strenuous work, the extra stress makes it  nearly unbearable to work here. This is made evident when new employees realize after a few months of working there how the work place really is and they end up leaving shortly after. Don't count on advancing at this branch or even getting a raise either, management will keep promising you and stretching the date when they will do so. Oh and if you work hard and put in extra time, count on it to be taking advantage of and doing other peoples work because everyone else is doing just above bare minimum to stay employed. There is a laundry list of does and don'ts that go on there and shady dealings, just walk around after your interview and see for yourself.

The training program was challenging, but I enjoyed delving into various positions within the Profit Center to better understand the business from top to bottom. I learned how to better manage my time and to prioritize tasks so that I could be more efficient. In any given day I would perform up to 5 different positional tasks and this gave me a sense of accomplishment knowing I could handle the variety, but a stronger more diligent focus would have been more effective in hindsight. The workplace environment left something to be desired as there was little direction given and communication between departments was lacking at times. The hardest part of the job was overcoming the unnecessary obstacles of communication barriers and playing the "blame game" when something when wrong. It made me realize how better to manage a business and common traps to avoid in the workplace. The most enjoyable part of the job was the autonomy and being able to set my own goals and accomplish them on my terms. This job opened my mind to the pitfalls and possibilities of a modern workplace environment.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Management trainee 89 salaries reported	$60,878 per year
Delivery driver 48 salaries reported	$19.95 per hour
Warehouse associate 61 salaries reported	$20.16 per hour
Warehouse/driver 50 salaries reported	$19.32 per hour
Sales trainee 28 salaries reported	$54,698 per year

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