A Dream Job You Can't Just Dream to Get

A Dream Job You Can’t Just Dream to Get

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Take Lisha Odney’s position for example. She’s what Target calls an Art Buyer. However, it’s not the kind of Art she buys that you hang on your wall, it’s the art you create in a catalog. She’s the one who does the casting calls, budgets, and finds the photographer and location for Target’s photo shoots. There are only a few in her position and "it wasn’t easy to get there," Lisha says. She graduated from the University of Minnesota about 6 years ago with a degree in Retail Merchandising. She started right away with Target as a Sr. Business Analyst which isn’t where most people start out. "They hire merchandise coordinators by the hundreds and that’s where everyone starts out, except me. I knew I was better than that," says Lisha with her hard work to prove she could start off higher in the company she did just that as a Senior Business Analyst. After just one year in that position she was promoted to an Art Buyer. "I didn’t just apply for the position, it doesn’t work that way. I had to prove I could be in the position and put my name in their ear over and over, so when the position opened up they thought of me. It’s not a position they post externally or even internally," says Mrs. Odney. Moving up in Target Corp is all about proving you can do the work and going after it yourself because it doesn’t just fall in your lap.
So what does she actually do on a day-to-day basis? The most important and time consuming part is making the budget for the photo shoots. She has to figure out if they can go to Los Angeles or even New York City for the shoot or if they only have enough in the budget to do it locally. Most of the shoots Lisha told me are actually done locally. They will, however, go to New York or L.A. to find talent aka models. Like the models below. Once they found talent from either city they will keep them in their own database so when future shoots come up they don’t have to continue to go out to other agencies to find models they will just contact the ones they have used in previous shoots. Sometimes they will work with product only and no models although it’s harder to get them to pose just right.


Take these next photos for example of work by Lisha with patio furniture.
Being an Art Buyer may sound like a dream come true, but it consists of a lot of traveling and meeting important deadlines on a daily basis. Plus it’s a position you have to prove you can do. This job may sound fabulous especially to a Minnesotan, but can you make a dream come true?


Interview. Lisha Odney. February 24, 2011.

By: Nia Johnson There are hundreds of positions at Target Corporation located right here in Minneapolis and the majority of them you probably never knew existed. A Dream Job You Can’t Just Dream to Get 2 | P a g e