I’d leave it on…I worked at Wal-Mart for a year back in school and then in retail banking for the rest of university, and I found that when I was asked situational questions in interview, you can almost always find something from your retail experience to use as an example. It’s better than nothing I think, and there are a lot of transferable skills which can help you at any job.
what kind of experience did you have? if you learned a lot about the retail business (distribution, sales trends, etc.), that could potentially be valuable to an equity research job. if you were just a cashier, well, that probably isn’t that useful. the MD of the institutional sales desk of the firm i work at started in retail. she went to a fourth tier state school and couldnt get a better job, so she went into retail and rose up through the ranks at her company, became a retail buyer and developed a lot of insight into the retail business. when she made a career jump to finance, she started at the bottom but worked her way up and eventually leveraged her experience into a coverage analyst job in the retail sector. she now makes A LOT OF MONEY. basically, sell whatever you have to the best of your ability. good luck.
Hey any work on resume is shows that u r passionate for whatever you do…that the way I pitch my role with a retails store in australia. previously after my under grad I worked as a assistant research analyst…when i started studying for my MBA because of my Visa Constraints in Australia I was not allowed to work full time so has to go for some out of the track jobs. But I have put that experience on my resume aswell because it helps me to show the employer that I can work hard and shows my multi task abilities because I was doing it with my Uni. cheers.