Simple job with great management - Task Associate Ulta Beauty Employee Review

good benefits for full time employees from what I hear. hourly pay if commission goal isn't met which is nice for those building clientele

this could just be the case for my store, especially because it's a very high volume store, but as a stylist I don't feel valued at all. I expected this to some degree coming to a huge corporate salon, but the biggest issue is that they try to pretend they care about you. but at the end of the day, if you're not meeting the sales they want/growing quickly enough, they don't care about you as a stylist. if you don't already have an established clientele, business is highly unreliable as there is no late cancellation/no show policy. many services are underpriced in my opinion, making it hard to meet their sales goals as an entry level part-time stylist unless fully booked every day. all they care about is getting as many clients in and out and quickly and possible and they hire more stylists than there are chairs, making every day inconsistent and chaotic. the relative stability of hourly pay is commission threshold isn't met seems enticing for stylists still building a clientele, but the hourly pay is wildly inconsistent between stylists, even those of the same tier. as a stylist of over 3 years who moved and is starting over with no clientele, I make over $2 less per hour than a fellow stylist who just got her license a few months ago and started taking clients for the first time last week. you're better off working at a place like Great Clips or Hair Cuttery because at least they're honest about what they are.

You’ll make some money to pay your bills and meet some really good people at the store level. They’re the ones actually keeping things afloat.

The “culture” gets talked about like it’s a competitive advantage. In reality, it feels more like a group project where everyone nods and claps in meetings and then goes back to doing their own thing. Yawn... You hear a lot of buzzwords and company jargon at Ulta. Also, there’s a lot of emphasis on alignment, but it seems to depend on the day, the meeting, or who you talked to last. You’ll get very comfortable hearing the same message three different ways and watching it play out a fourth. Most of the time you just tell people what they want to hear. The tomfoolery is amazing... The transition from Loss Prevention to Asset Protection (🤩) is probably the best example of this. Same work, same challenges, just a new title and a few extra buzzwords the Directors and VP's throw around so they feel cool at industry events. There’s also a strong focus on optics. Things tend to look good on paper and in conversations, but the day-to-day reality can feel very different. In the field, we're expected to figure it out, make it work, and keep things moving, even when direction isn’t always clear. If you enjoy a little ambiguity, gossiping, shifting priorities, and learning to read between the lines, you’ll do just fine at Ulta!