are you going to be a regular employee or are you a contract worker? The difference is with a regular employee, you are paid by the company and they take out taxes. With a contract worker, they pay you a set fee or $ per hour and you are responsible for your taxes. Some people love being a contract worker because they write most of their expenses off on their taxes. (there is a lot more to the difference, this is just an example)
I would rather be a regular employee. You can still write off your expenses that aren't paid by the company such as milage, but they pay your taxes and you usually have a few benefits like 401K.
Then you get into part-time and full-time. Contract jobs are the easiest to get and they can get your foot in the door. Part-time jobs are harder to get, but once you have experience, they can be found. Full-time jobs are the hardest to come by because they are usually filled by part-time people. Alot depends on where you live too. If there are a lot of stores in your area, jobs are usually listed in the paper and you just call and apply. If there aren't a lot of stores in your area, they can be harder to find. You can sometimes just ask a person you see working in a store who they work for and are they hiring. Once you are a full time employee, its really a pretty small pool of workers and most of them know each other and will refer each other when there are openings. I am not sure if these were the type of questions you had, but my DH was a grocery store manager for about 20 years and I merchandised for him at the time.