It has been maybe less than 2 weeks since I started working at my new place and I have some new feelings about the position.
As someone who has been hired as an Interior Stylist, I don't feel like I am being treated as an Interior Stylist. There is just way too much emphasis on Sales that the job no longer feels like it is the role I had applied for or the role it was marketed as.
When I first applied for this job, I had this expectation that my role would be more focused on Interior Styling than Sales because it's literally the job title and also the fact that there are Sales Associate positions within the company. I figured sales would still be a requirement for sure, but that it would be more of a hint of it, wherein I would assist the Sales Team to a certain extent when it comes to styling and recommending more furniture to them, and when it comes to actually following up with the clients to attempt to close the deal, the Sales Team will be the ones who do the texting and calling to convince the clients.
I feel like the sales associate should be the ones who vets through the clients and determine if they require an Interior Stylist to be part of the shopping process. If they are only here to get maybe a sofa and a bed, then the sales associate will just deal with them, but if they are here to get a bunch of furniture to redo their entire room or their entire home, then the stylist will be brought in to aid the clients and recommend the best furniture and color combination for that space.
Right now, the company has a bunch of sales associate, one senior stylist and 2 newbie stylist, one of the newbies stylist being me. The senior stylist isn't really doing any sales because he is doing more of the creative stuff, like furniture space planning proposal and managing the showroom floor's overall styling, and I thought I will be under him, doing those stuff as well, but instead, I am with the sales team doing sales stuff, so I am greeting customers and walking them through the showroom, giving them prices for the furniture they are looking at and that's it, it's just pure sales.
At the beginning, I tried asking the customers which rooms they were planning to buy the furniture for, what theme they were planning to do for their space, questions I would usually ask as an Interior Designer to new homeowners, thinking that will be my way to sell more than a single furniture, but unfortunately, a lot of the clients replies will always be...
"We are planning to get a sofa for the living room."
"We are planning to get an arm chair to match our current sofa."
"We want a Study Table for my kid's bedroom"
... it's almost always single item purchases and I honestly have no idea what my role as a Stylist is in these scenarios, half the time, when I approach a walk in customer, they will just say...
... and most of the time, when they say that, they really mean it, and usually customers like these don't like to be bothered because they are just window shopping, I do that sometimes and when I don't have any intention to buy anything, the last thing I want is the staff just hovering behind me because it just feels like I am being pressured to buy something I either don't want to or cannot afford to.
These are problems the sales staff should be dealing with, I feel like as a Stylist, we should be seated at the back and only be approached if the customer request for a Stylist or if the Sales Associate feel like a stylist is needed. Or we should be getting leads from the Marketing Team when a client request for a stylist.
I am not being hired as an Interior Stylist, right now, I feel like I am being hired as a glorified Sales Associate, not just because of how similar my jobscope is to the Sales Team at the moment, but also because one of my colleague actually asked my boss out of curiosity...
"What is Tim's role? Is he a designer or is he doing sales?"
.... and my boss's response to that was that I was doing Sale, which was a huge bummer to me.
Currently, I am still under probation, and the probation will last for 3 months, I am hoping that this 3 months period is being used to familiarize the new guys with the furniture brands and products, that's why we are doing what the Sales team is doing, and that after the probations period is over, I will be able to start doing actual styling work.
I would like to stay in this company for as long as I can because the pay is stable, the working schedule is actually pretty good and the people in the company are not bad, but if the scope is still so sales orientated 3 months later, and I start feeling even more inadequate than I am now, then I will probably might have to start looking for a real Interior Stylist position in an Interior Design firm.
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