Twenty-four year old Renee Fisher works for Sears in charge of determining the marketability of merchandise in Sears stores across the country and of ordering merchandise worth millions of dollars. Since joining Sears after graduating with a degree in international business, she has been promoted

David Cross works for Sears also. After graduating from Northwestern in 1993 he attended a Sears training program and worked a year as a Sears sales manager. He now works at Sears' National Headquarters, training Sears' associates and managers.

At Sears, Fisher and Cross are challenged, happy, and optimistic. Hundreds of young African-American collegians like Fisher and Cross are willing to win as retail professionals. But few of them wake up one day in high school and say, "I want to be a buyer. I want to go into retailing." Instead, most of them are like Don Williams, Diversity Manager for Lowe's Home Improvement Stores, who had no idea that retailing offered him employment opportunities until Lowe's made him an offer he could not refuse. After accepting Lowe's offer, Don Williams never looked back.

Williams worked in retail as a collegian at Greensboro College in North Carolina. While working as a sales associate, he never considered that retailing is more complex, challenging, and exciting than what sales associates encounter. One thing he knew was that he did not want to be a sales associate his entire life.

Now he has a hand in trying to convince African-American collegians to look beyond the sales job they held in high school or in college and see that retailing "has endless opportunities for them."

Like Williams, Fisher and Cross, hundreds of African-American students each year discover that retailing is fast-paced, opportunity filled, exciting, and challenging. In retail a young person can move fast, have tremendous responsibility, build a career, have fun, and, oh! by the way, earn money.

Retailing employs almost twenty percent of all non-farm employment in the U.S., with one in five Americans working in retail (more jobs than the entire manufacturing sector). More than a million retail establishments account for $2.5 trillion each year in the economy. Projected growth of retail employment is 300 percent greater than that of manufacturing. By 2005, more than fifteen percent of all new jobs created will be in retailing.

Retailing is in the middle of significant growth. That growth spells opportunity. In every state, and in every type of retail store (department store, discount store, specialty store), retailers are aggressively hiring young, talented African-American collegians.

Wal-Mart will open more than a hundred new stores next year and hire thousands of new management trainees who in three to five years can be managing a Wal-Mart store making $65,000 a year plus bonus, managing 125 people, and powering a $50 million business as part of a $100 billion international company.

Starting salaries can double within two years. Chief executive officers are as young as forty. New graduates may control millions of dollars and right out of college manage many people. Few fields allow the speed of advancement and rewards that retailing does.

Retailing has been the starting ground for many with the American dream. Entrepreneurial visionaries have opened one store and found themselves, a decade later, with 10 stores, 15 stores, or 100 stores. Never forget that Sears started as a single store. J.C. Penney's, Toy's R Us, PETsMART, Sherwin Williams, Macy's, Bloomingdales, and Lowe's, each started as single stores. Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world, started as a single store four decades ago.

Compensation differs by category and store. Industry figures show that store managers can earn $100,000 plus bonus in the big chains; specialty store managers, $25,000 to $50,000; managers of multiple specialty stores, with only a few years out of college, $50,000 and up; buyers, $35,000 to $90,000; vice presidents, $100,000 and up; and management trainees in large chains, $26,000.

Retail careers available to college graduates are not in sales. Primary career opportunities in retailing are in buying and store management. Other opportunities exist in specialty areas, areas accessible only through special talents and training, or experiences in the industry.

The world of opportunity blossoms once you get your foot in the retail door - advertising, real estate, legal, security, buying, visual merchandising, designing, negotiating, managing, technology, training, human resources. Anything that you might want to do in business is found in retailing.

According to Bob Wery, Director of College Relations for Sears Roebuck and Company, "Many students do not realize the breadth of careers in retailing. At Sears we understand that the diversity of our associates is critically important, enabling us to maintain a workforce that meets the needs of our customers and the communities in which we work and live. For that reason, we are committed to recruiting the best students from all cultures to be our future executives."

Cross echoes this: "There is unlimited opportunity in retailing. Any position you seek in any other industry can be found in retailing."

The life of a buyer focuses on numbers and risk. Every Monday sales results for your store's merchandise come in for the previous week. If, compared to last year's, sales are up, you celebrate. If sales are down from your projected goal, you innovate, devising new ways to sell merchandise.

Day to day, week to week, decisions must be made to maximize profits for the company. When you are not managing multimillion dollars of merchandise, you are trying to guess what styles, colors, and fashions your consumer will want in six months. You are selecting, meetings, visiting, and negotiating with vendors and manufacturers to get your best deals.

You routinely make six-figure decisions, risking millions of dollars, hoping that the customer likes what you have chosen. You spot the trends that everyone will be talking about next year. You visit stores to see first hand how customers are reacting. You speak to store and department managers across the country to determine what is happening and to solve problems.

You are the store manager. You manage 120 part-time and full time people: 17 year-old sales associates and veterans of 25 years. Everyday thousands of customers walk through your store. There are personnel problems, legal issues, advertising, community relations, security, and credit, all demanding your attention. The profitability of your store depends on what you do. The livelihood of 120 people depends on what you do and how you do it. If you are good, there are bigger stores and higher-level executive positions awaiting you. And everything - every aspect - starts again tomorrow.

Retailing both reflects and determines culture. In the U.S. we live in a consumer society. Consumer goods are the focus of our labor, our economy, and our collective lifestyle. Consumer goods have made the U.S. the envy of the world.

Because of consumer goods, the retailing industry demands equal opportunity employers. Retailing is the most unifying and common force for the youth of our society. The unifying force of people wanting to look better, feel better, and have better lives drives retailing. This force causes retailers to hire managers and leaders who reflect the diversity of the country. It creates grand opportunities for African Americans in retailing.

Tracy Mullin, President of the National Retail Federation, says "African-Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities will find prime opportunities for career development and advancement in this dynamic industry as retailers recognize the need for that diversity to be reflected on the retail selling floor and in upper management."

Retailers are interested in collegians from all backgrounds and with any degrees. Although a degree in marketing and retail management is very useful, many retailers are looking for collegians with degrees in liberal arts. Recruiters want serious, career-minded people who are energetic, who take initiative, who lead, who communicate well, who relate to people well, and who work well in a fast paced environment. Being computer literate is also very useful.

The road to the top in retailing is as different as it is in other industries. Most large retailers have executive programs that last anywhere from 12 weeks to a year. Some programs focus on on-the-job training alone, and some combine on-the-job training and classroom work. Careers are either vertical (management or buying) or zigzag (some experience in both management and buying).

After that what happens to you, according to Cross, "depends on how hard you drive yourself" and how "open you are to the opportunities that you never imagined could exist in a single company crossing your path." After working in retail for three years he sees opportunities he never imagined. And as Sears does, most major retailers have support systems to guide and help young managers and executives develop and build career plans.

For raw opportunity, retailing has everything. The jobs and careers are there, in retailing. The rewards are outstanding. Williams suggest that all African-American collegians "Take hard looks at retailing."

RICHARD FEINBERG, Ph.D. is director of the Retail Institute at Purdue University.