L'Oréal Reviews in Paris, France Area

Pros

Involving, passionate environment, great brands, motivated people, ambitious, real opportunities, you can make things happen & make a difference

Cons

challenging, little structured feedback or recommendations / mentoring, need to be self-decoder to succeed

Advice to Senior Management

More walk the talk is necessary

Pros

The buildings and offices are nice and comfortable. You can create a good network. You can improve your skills in a very stressful context

Cons

Working times are absurd even for an intern. You have to hardly look to get some useful information. People are not ready to help you.

Advice to Senior Management

The management should take some time to work more closely with their employees to better understand their needs and decisions.

Pros

Autonomy, freedom to design our job and develop innovative projects, stimulating exposure, real and strong company culture, wonderfull products to work on, many opportunities to grow.

Cons

Internal political games and power fights, old habits, agility to change, inexistent project management, poor management competencies, listenning and transparency, The hierarchy opinion only prevails.

Advice to Senior Management

Be more brave and don't be fooled! More transparency, 360° and honest feedbacks to keep the talented one. Take really into account the feedbacks and inputs from the teams. Put in place a real participative way of managing people.

Pros

- Reputation : known and recognized worldwide for its expertise
- In-depth knowledge of marketing strategy
- Opportunities to evolve within the company and abroad
- Sense of detail, perfectionism

Cons

- Individualistic environment
- Competition among employees
- Strong hierarchy

Advice to Senior Management

Be more human and manage people in a more relaxed manner

Pros

A good calling card on your resume. You get a discount on products.

Cons

You're squeezed like a lemon.

Advice to Senior Management

Good luck.

Pros

Opportunities to work in different subsidiaries and headquarters
Well known brand names
Reasonable salary
Nice to have on the resume

Cons

Long working hour and hard to balance work and life
Poor supporting departments ( ex. IT )
People are very aggressive in certain divisions

Advice to Senior Management

Give more power to young managers
Be open to employees from non-French speaking countries. It's very obvious that employees who don't speak French has less chance to get promoted
Learn English. It's funny to see a French senior manager cannot give an English presentation.

Pros

Good pay, good products for free, very young, good looking and "cool" employees, good to have that company name on your resume

Cons

No worklife balance,
L'Oreal recruits people from high education background in prestigious universities, the elite, but asks them to act like sheeps,
interns do not get hired even if they work crazy hours for months,
very authoritarian environment, you cannot criticize management
Very competitive environment

Advice to Senior Management

treat nicely and fairly your employees, use more meritocracy, balance your life, show more respect to people in general (business partners, colleagues, customers...)

Pros

Good salary, products for free
Leadership and responsabilites on projects
Overall, you learn a lot and companies will value you when you will look for a job if you have L'Oréal on your resume.

Cons

People at L'Oréal need to fit a certain mold :show-off, tell the boss he is great even if you think the opposite, laugh to jokes that are not funny and use the same expressions as everyone just like sheep, try to look just like every other employee in the company. If you do not fit that mold and if you express critical thinking towards that mold, beware : you will be pointed out as... weird.
You are told during your internship that if you have an excellent evaluation in the end, you will get hired. That is a big fat lie to squeeze the juice out of you at a low price (interns are paid much less than employees of course). The people who get hired at L'Oréal are not the best but the ones who perfectly fit the mold described in the 1st paragraph. And they say they are all about diversity...
Instead of hiring, L'Oréal relies on (cheap) interns. They are asked to take important responsabilities and commit fully to their job, but are not informed of major decisions (that they need to know to do their job correctly).

Advice to Senior Management

You won't get anything good out of your employees if they don't have the power to criticize.
Be honest with your interns from the start : they choose to come to L'Oréal because you promise to hire them if they deliver excellent work. If you can't keep that promise (and know you won't), I don't know what to say about your ethics.

Pros

In general, the opportunities at L'Oreal are there for the taking, but (a) you need to have very thick skin along the way, and (b) ready to work the long hours.
There is a good amount of freedom to try new things for such a large company.
The internal training programme is robust.

Cons

Probably need to be French to make it higher.
Few women in top posts.
The style of management is very 'authoritarian' and control-oriented.
Goals and objectives are infrequently written and rarely clear-- making year end interviews a systematic surprise.
Work efficiency is hampered by bad time management and poor IT.

Advice to Senior Management

The diversity of senior management is a real issue. This needs to be considered for the long term health of the company.

Pros

- good to have on resume
- fast learning, very dynamic working style
- sexy product categories
- good looking people
- free products

Cons

- political (who don't?), hierachy
- too much emotional, lack of rational sometimes
- unfaire competition by some employees
- everything marketing plan changes, everyday...
- meeting culture, not always leading to conclusions or decisions
- doing luxury brands like mass brands

Advice to Senior Management

Offer true value to consumers; treat nicely and fairly employees