Lengthy. The interview process is somewhat bizarre, as a design professional, the recruiter is usually someone with little or no design experience that works in customer relations. Once you get through the initial few calls, you’re given an assignment which you have a week to complete.

I started interviewing with RH at the end of October 2024 for various design related roles. The initial calls or Zooms were conducted by Associate Gallery Leaders that generally didn’t have any interior design or much furniture experience - rather retail ex Sports Authority, Gap, Zara etc. The call seemed to follow a formula of them introducing themselves and asking a few questions about the candidate. Some calls were engaging and others felt like they were going through the motions of part of their job description. After two months, submitting a week long design assignment, paying out of pocket to fly and travel for an in person interview, spending the Christmas holidays to relearn Autocad (Revit was not accepted), six interviews later, a VP whom I hadn’t spoken to throughout the two month process, deemed I wasn’t excited enough about answering the same questions over and over again and reviewing my “assignment” for the second time over Zoom to a very austere RH white panel backdrop. I should add, I have over eighteen years of being a designer and have held similar design management tiles twice - earlier in my design career. I found the entire process very inefficient and disrespectful of my time. I feel at the end, they decided my age was a factor as I seemed to check all their other boxes. Or perhaps it was because I asked how a restaurant patron is converted into a design client. The answer was to give them samples to take home with them. As an experiment, I went to five different RH locations in cognito and was not once asked any questions nor offered samples. It appears to me, the new RH Gallery business model isn’t efficient - and probably isn’t a good fit for an experienced designer with an entrepreneurial spirit.