From Store Manager to Senior Retail Recruitment Consultant: Meet Sophie Burden
Seven years in retail. Five years in recruitment. From running stores to helping some of the UK’s best-known retailers find their next leaders.
Finding a good Store Manager isn’t just about finding someone with the right job title.
It’s about finding someone who can deliver results, lead a team, understand the customer and make a real difference to the business.
And that’s where knowing retail matters.
Sophie Burden knows what it takes to run a store because she’s done it herself.
She spent seven years at Build-A-Bear Workshop, working her way from part-time Sales Assistant to Store Manager, leading teams of up to 30 people and managing a multimillion-pound retail operation.
In 2021, she joined Zachary Daniels, bringing that experience into recruitment.
Five years later, she’s a Senior Recruitment Consultant in our Retail Operations team, following her promotion in summer 2026.
Today, she works with high street, premium and luxury retailers across the UK and Ireland, helping them recruit Store Managers and retail leadership talent.
She’s recruited people, managed budgets, developed teams and been responsible for delivering results.
So when a retailer talks to Sophie about the kind of Store Manager they need, she understands exactly what’s behind that conversation.
Seven years learning what makes retail work
Sophie’s retail career started at 17, when she joined Build-A-Bear Workshop while studying at college.
What began as a part-time job turned into a seven-year career.
She progressed through Supervisor and Assistant Manager roles before becoming a Store Manager, taking responsibility for everything from sales and stock to recruitment, training and team performance.
And Build-A-Bear was certainly an interesting place to learn about people.
One minute, Sophie could be helping organise a birthday party for 40 excited children. The next, she might be supporting someone creating a bear in memory of a loved one.
Two completely different customers, needing two completely different experiences.
It taught her how important it is to understand the person in front of you.
But behind the customer experience was a serious retail operation.
Sophie was managing budgets, driving sales, developing people and making decisions that directly affected store performance.
She knows what it’s like when targets aren’t being met, when a team needs developing or when you’re trying to deliver a great customer experience while managing everything else happening behind the scenes.
And that experience has never left her.
Why having worked in retail makes a difference
Two Store Managers can have almost identical CVs and be completely different in practice.
One might be brilliant at driving commercial performance. Another might be exceptional at developing people. Some thrive in fast-paced, high-volume stores, while others are better suited to premium environments where customer relationships are everything.
The trick is knowing which one your business actually needs.
And that takes more than looking at where someone has worked.
As Sophie puts it:
I know what a good manager looks like. I know what a good Sales Assistant looks like, what a good Assistant Manager looks like, because I’ve been at all those levels as well.
She’s worked with the same KPIs retailers measure every day.
Conversion. Average transaction value. Units per transaction. Labour costs. Stock performance.
But knowing the numbers is one thing. Knowing what to do when they’re going in the wrong direction is another.
If conversion drops, what does a good Store Manager do?
If the team isn’t performing, how do they turn it around?
If sales are behind target, what action do they take?
These are conversations Sophie can have with candidates because she’s faced those challenges herself.
And after five years recruiting across high street, premium and luxury retail, she understands that what works for one retailer won’t necessarily work for another.
Recruiting a Store Manager? Here’s what Sophie wants to know.
When a client briefs Sophie on a Store Manager vacancy, she wants to understand more than the job description.
There are five questions she’d always want to explore.
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What does success actually look like?
What are the commercial expectations, and what will this person need to deliver beyond hitting their sales targets?
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What kind of team are they walking into?
Is it an established, high-performing team, or does it need someone who can develop people, improve performance or lead change?
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What makes your retail environment different?
The customer, store format, pace and expectations all matter. A great manager in one business isn’t automatically the right fit for another.
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What sort of leader will succeed?
Do you need someone who’s hands-on, commercially driven, brilliant at developing people or experienced in turning around performance?
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Why would a great candidate want to join?
The best Store Managers aren’t always looking for another job. What makes this opportunity worth considering?
The answers shape who Sophie approaches, how she assesses candidates and how she represents the opportunity in the market.
Because the aim isn’t just to find someone who can do the job.
It’s to find someone who can do it well in your business.
Recruitment wasn’t part of the plan
After seven years at Build-A-Bear, Sophie was ready to explore what else she could do.
She uploaded her CV and was contacted by a Zachary Daniels consultant about a Store Manager role in Liverpool.
That job wasn’t quite right, but the conversation led somewhere unexpected.
Recruitment.
It wasn’t something Sophie had considered, despite having spent years interviewing, hiring and developing people within her own teams.
As she remembers:
I had no idea what it was. I’m going to be honest, I had absolutely no idea.
After meeting the team at ZD, she decided to give it a go.
In 2021, she swapped running a retail store for building a recruitment career.
And it was a big change.
She’d gone from managing a team and knowing her business inside out to learning an entirely new job.
Suddenly, she was responsible for building client relationships, sourcing candidates, developing business and managing recruitment processes.
There was plenty to learn.
But she wasn’t starting from scratch.
Understanding people, working to targets, building relationships, managing pressure and making commercial decisions were all things she’d been doing for years.
She just needed to learn how to apply them in a different way.
From Store Manager to Senior Recruitment Consultant
Five years on, Sophie has built a successful career in retail recruitment.
In summer 2026, she was promoted to Senior Recruitment Consultant, recognising her progression and contribution to the Retail Operations team.
Today, she combines the practical knowledge she gained at Build-A-Bear with five years of experience recruiting for retailers across the UK.
She understands what hiring managers need because she’s been one herself.
She understands why candidates can be nervous about changing jobs because she’s made that decision herself.
And she knows how important it is to get the right person into the right business.
It’s also a great example of how a career in retail can open doors people might not have considered.
Could your retail experience take you into recruitment?
Store management teaches you a huge amount about people and business.
Recruiting employees. Developing teams. Managing performance. Building relationships. Solving problems. Working to targets.
They’re all skills that transfer into recruitment.
Of course, there’s plenty more to learn. Business development, candidate sourcing and managing recruitment processes are different from running a store.
But a strong retail background can give you a real head start.
Sophie’s not the only person at Zachary Daniels who’s made that move.
Across our Retail Operations team, we’ve got people who’ve worked in fashion, footwear, supermarkets and specialist retail before building careers in recruitment.
They know the industry, understand the challenges and have developed the recruitment expertise to go alongside it.
For someone who loves retail but is ready for a different challenge, it’s a career path worth considering.
We know retail because we’ve worked in it
At Zachary Daniels, we recruit across the retail and consumer industry, from store level through to senior leadership.
And one of the things that makes our Retail Operations team different is the experience our consultants bring.
Many have spent years working in stores themselves.
They’ve managed teams, recruited people, worked to budgets, delivered against targets and dealt with the realities of running a retail business.
Does that automatically make someone a great recruiter?
Of course not.
But combine that experience with years of specialist recruitment knowledge, and it makes for some pretty valuable conversations.
When you’re briefing us on a vacancy, we understand what you’re asking for and, importantly, why it matters.
We know that a job title doesn’t tell the whole story.
And we know that getting the right people into your business can make an enormous difference.
For Sophie, that understanding started at 17, working part-time at Build-A-Bear.
Today, she’s using it as a Senior Recruitment Consultant, helping retailers find the people who will lead their teams and deliver results.
She’s still working in the industry she knows.
Just from a different side of it.
Looking for your next Retail leader?
Whether you’re recruiting a Store Manager, Assistant Store Manager, Area Manager or Regional Manager, Sophie and the Zachary Daniels Retail Operations team would be happy to help.
And if you’re currently working in retail and wondering whether your experience could lead to a career in recruitment, we’d be equally happy to have that conversation.
Get in touch with Sophie and the team at Zachary Daniels
FAQ
Why choose a specialist retail recruitment agency?
Retail recruitment is about more than finding candidates with the right experience on paper. A specialist agency understands the commercial pressures, leadership challenges and different operating environments across retail, helping businesses find people who are right for their specific needs.
Does Zachary Daniels recruit Store Managers and Area Managers?
Yes. Zachary Daniels recruits across Retail Operations, including Assistant Store Managers, Store Managers, Area Managers, Regional Managers and wider retail leadership roles across the UK.
Does it matter if your retail recruiter has worked in retail?
It’s not essential, but first-hand experience can make a difference. Sophie Burden spent seven years in retail, progressing to Store Manager, before joining Zachary Daniels in 2021. She now combines that experience with five years in specialist retail recruitment.
Can a Store Manager move into recruitment without experience?
Yes. Retail management develops skills that transfer well into recruitment, including communication, relationship building, commercial awareness, people development and resilience. Sophie joined Zachary Daniels without previous agency recruitment experience and was promoted to Senior Recruitment Consultant in summer 2026.
What should retailers look for when recruiting a Store Manager?
Look beyond the job title. Commercial performance, leadership ability, people development, customer experience and the type of retail environment someone has worked in can all help determine whether they’re right for your business.
Does Zachary Daniels recruit across luxury and premium retail?
Yes. Our Retail Operations team works with retailers across high street, premium, luxury and specialist retail, recruiting store and field leadership talent across the UK.
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