Career Resources

The Luxury Recruitment Process Is Different

The luxury industry recruits differently from most sectors. It values heritage and cultural fluency not just as professional qualifications but as indicators of character. It prioritises the long-term alignment of a person with a maison’s values over short-term skill-matching. It moves at its own pace — sometimes with deliberateness, sometimes with urgency — and rewards candidates who understand these rhythms and navigate them with composure.

What follows is general counsel on the luxury recruitment process.

Portfolio Presentation

For creative roles — design, visual merchandising, art direction, product development — your portfolio is your primary professional document. It must exhibit the following:

• Curation over volume. Select eight to twelve pieces that represent your highest-level work. A portfolio of thirty mediocre pieces communicates worse judgment than one of eight exceptional ones.
• Context and process. Include, where possible, brief annotations that explain the brief, your approach, and the outcome. Luxury employers value thoughtful process as much as polished result.
• Digital and physical. Many senior creative interviews in luxury still involve presentation of physical work. A beautifully bound lookbook, presented in person, communicates something a PDF cannot. Invest in the physical.

Interview Protocols

The interview process at a heritage maison typically involves multiple rounds and a variety of formats: an initial conversation with an HR representative, followed by panel interviews with creative or commercial leadership, and often a presentation or case study exercise. Senior searches occasionally include conversations with Group-level executives.

Arrive having done the work:

• Know the brand’s history, not just its current collection.
• Understand the competitive context — the other maisons in its category, its positioning relative to them.
• Have a considered opinion on where the brand is going, and be prepared to share it when asked.
• Know your own work well enough to discuss it in detail, under pressure, without referring to notes.

The Unwritten Rules

There are things the luxury recruitment process assumes you know, even if no one has told you:

• Dress for the brand you are interviewing at, not for interviews in general. Research the brand’s aesthetic and dress with considered attention to it.
• Loyalty is respected. A career of short tenures demands clear explanation. The best candidates in luxury have often spent years at each house.
• Discretion is valued. What happens inside a maison stays inside a maison. Your respect for this norm will be assessed from your first conversation.
• Relationships matter more than applications. The most consequential moves in luxury careers are almost never sourced from a cold application. Cultivate your network with genuine generosity over time.

These are not obstacles. They are the preconditions for being taken seriously in this world. Cerulean is here to help you meet them on their own terms.