For many who grew up equating career success as going up corporate ladders, its equivalent for passionate beauty enthusiasts is to fight tooth and nail (literally, or not) to land their dream positions at the country’s leading beauty conglomerates. And while it truly is a challenge worth taking on, once the job is snagged, what comes next?
Lui Castañeda is running late. She’s postponed the meeting once before, but it’s budget season, and she’s running all over the place. The process of juggling numbers requires some hair-pulling – sometimes literally –and the exercising of unused muscles. Fortunately, as PR and Influencer Lead of Unilever’s Beauty & Wellbeing arm in Southeast Asia, she has the hair products to fix that situation.
“This job has been 10 years in the making,” says Castañeda, who shuffled around various public relations agencies for a decade before joining the multinational conglomerate. “But when I look back, this has been my dream. So even when I get stressed or challenges happen, I am still thankful.”
Castañeda joined Unilever over a year ago, landing a job that, to paraphrase a famous film, a million other beauty girls wanted. And now that she’s living out not just her long-time ambition but that of many other women, how is it faring on the reality side?
The Yellow Brick Road
Working for a massive beauty company after graduation was always Castañeda’s plan. “I wanted to join LVMH or any other beauty or fashion-related company,” she recalls. But as a trans woman, she saw that opportunities for LGBTQIA++ members were limited in the late-aughts, at least in the corporate side of the beauty and fashion world.
“We were pigeonholed into the creative aspect,” observes Castañeda, who admits she never saw herself as a creator and wanted to dive into a more business role. Ever resourceful, she found another way in: by doing PR for many of the beauty brands she wanted to join. But as her range of clients grew from beauty to food, her original aim never changed. Years later, valuable connections told her that Unilever had undergone a corporate restructuring and was looking for new talent.
“They wanted to create roles that were future-fit for beauty, and one of those was to have a dedicated influencer and PR lead,” she explains. “I went to the interview and didn’t even follow up! But you know how when everything falls into place, it happens so fast? My application process took a month. These things usually take around three.”
Numerous films and shows have already uncovered the sweat behind the swank of the beauty and fashion industry.
But while Castañeda’s foray into the beauty industry was the destination, for Chio Cebrero, it was a stepping stone.
Cebrero’s first job out of college was at L’Oreal, where he was promoted from Management Trainer to Junior Product Manager for Kiehl’s in a little over a year. Signing with the world’s largest cosmetics company was a fortuitous decision. At university, he joined L’Oréal Brandstorm, an innovation competition where his team reached the national level. He also participated in L’Oréal REVEAL, an online business game where he ended up National Champion.
“I decided to join L’Oréal because of the employer brand that they have built with me – from my exposure to Brandstorm and REVEAL – as well as the company’s alignment with my eventual aspiration to pursue a marketing career,” he says. The Management Trainee program was L’Oreal’s primary draw: “I knew it would expose me to different functions (mainly sales), which back then, I deemed critical to succeed, having come from a non-business background.”
But while the work was certainly illuminating, Cebrero resigned soon after his assignment to a luxury retail brand, collecting 16 months of experience from L’Oreal. He left to pursue a career in FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods), which he believed aligned more with his long-term career goals.
Living the Dream?
Numerous films and shows have already uncovered the sweat behind the swank of the beauty and fashion industry, but Cebrero confesses there is still a glamor element in the industry.
“I remember the salon training and make-up training very vividly. Especially when I handled Kiehl’s. It was one glamorous press launch after another,” Cebrero explains. According to him, L’Oreal espouses a ‘metier’ philosophy in its team and encourages employees to live and breathe the brands they represent. So yes, he believes, there is at least some residual sheen of glamor on the surface of working for the beauty industry.
But, of course, there is much to unpack beneath the glossy hair and the shimmery highlighters, too. Cebrero recalls carrying boxes of samples from end to end of Mall of Asia and dusting off dirty shelves of shampoo products.
You can’t help but up your presentation and self-representation when surrounded by beauty.
“It’s really not glamorous,” agrees Castañeda. “But it’s like any other job where you have triggers and glimmers. Triggers are the not-so-pleasant things you have to deal with, but the glimmers are the aspects that make you stay.”
It’s through these more “unsavory” moments that the magic happens though. Ironically, Cebrero likens the work to construction workers. “You see the beautiful facade and interiors, but to be able to build that facade and the interiors – countless hours were spent building everything from the ground up,” he shares.
Krhizzy Pasigan, director of Corporate Affairs and Engagement at L’Oréal Philippines, explains that you can’t help but up your presentation and self-representation when surrounded by beauty – which may contribute to that glitzy reputation. However, since she handles the company’s social impact programs and visits the more vulnerable sectors of society, she would be hard-pressed to describe it as glamorous.
“I think it’s more purposeful than glamorous,” Pasigan muses. “With programs like our Beauty for a Better Life, a free hairdressing training platform, we are showing that beauty can be a force for good.”
Work Behind Beauty
Samples and skincare know-how are a given, but Issa Pareja, who requested anonymity, was surprised by how much math was involved in the beauty industry. Pareja, who works in Luxasia Philippines, says that apart from the obvious marketing tasks, like advertising, PR, and events, computations are required to make sense of the tasks: “Marketing girls are smart girls, too!”
Castañeda agrees. “Everything is data-driven! There’s no more guesswork since we have all these platforms that help us compute what are the actual trends. It’s not just us saying, oh these are the things we see. It’s not just about the followers, but the value of those followers,” she adds.
Despite being large global companies, L’Oreal and Unilever also work almost like a startup – which has its own pros and cons.
Do you have to be beautiful to work in the beauty industry? In today’s more inclusive and diverse definitions, this question has become obsolete.
Before signing up for Unilever, Castañeda thought she was jumping into an already running, perfectly greased machine, a fresh cog in an old system. “But the reality is, whatever size your business, there are changes in how you work on a daily level…and you have to figure out how to get things done as you go along.” It was an even tougher challenge for her since her role was entirely new. She adds, “I had to make sure to integrate the role and myself that I find relevance and add value to the whole system.”
Pasigan says something similar. L’Oreal has a philosophy called “freedom within a team” wherein protocols are set by the head office, but local teams are encouraged to own and build their projects. “Like a startup, it tries a lot of practices from global counterparts, and it promotes agility,” she explains.
Castañeda also adds that Unilever’s restructuring, which was done to streamline the system, also prompted something called a “healthy stretch.” It stems from the belief that a lean team allows you to be more hands-on and learn about various aspects of the job.
Living Up to the Brand
Do you have to be beautiful to work in the beauty industry? In today’s more inclusive and diverse definitions, this question has become obsolete. However, Pareja admits there is pressure to live up to the Luxasia brand.
“Working in the largest luxury beauty retail distributor in the Asia Pacific bears the pressure to be the best-in-class, especially when you’re exposed to how the other regions execute their marketing activations,” she says. “The upside to this pressure is the constant learning that Luxasia cultivates between markets to help each brand work towards success.”
Castañeda, for her part, says she carries the responsibility of opening opportunities for trans women also. “Trans women are very marginalized in terms of career opportunities. It’s much more limited. [So] I feel like being part of Unilever, and representing, is a strong stance of what trans women can do in the corporate setting” she says.
The Big Payoff
“You don’t always get free beauty products!” Pareja jokes.
While Pareja isn’t coy about admitting that samples, testing new products before they’re introduced to the market, and having an insider scoop are indeed terrific job perks. But her role has also taught her to balance creativity and logic and practice collaboration. “It takes a village to build a brand. There’s a lot of technical knowledge needed to survive and thrive in this industry and most people don’t see it on a surface level.”
Pasigan, who used to work in the transport industry, says that her attention to detail has gone up. In a workplace where one sees people unafraid to wear quirky hairstyles or flaunt personal styles, she appreciates the emphasis on self-expression.
The amount of learning that the beauty industry will teach you is invaluable. You’ll learn consumer dynamics, leadership skills, and management principles that are unique to beauty.
In hindsight, Cebrero says he left L’Oreal prematurely. “The amount of learning that the beauty industry will teach you is invaluable. You’ll learn consumer dynamics, leadership skills, and management principles that are unique to beauty.” The fast-paced, highly competitive haircare market showed him invaluable marketing principles that he still uses today.
“I had the opportunity to work with wonderful mentors, in a company culture that was uniquely French: direct and straight to the point. It doesn’t hurt that I also learned so much about personal care – my personal skin care regimen is rooted in the same principles I learned to be able to sell my brand a decade ago,” he adds.
According to Castañeda, there is so much opportunity for training. Unilever doesn’t hesitate to help their employees upskill. She admits that one of the biggest perks she loves about her job is the opportunity to travel and meet and learn from her contemporaries. As with any other multinational company, there’s also the prospect of being expatriated to another market.
It’s difficult to pin down the reason behind the beauty industry’s magnetism. Like the bright halogen lights of the beauty aisle, there’s just something about it. But now we know that it could just be that unparalleled learning experience – which is definitely a beautiful thing.