Zara reviews

1) Extreme lack of empathy during the pandemic Zara HR: a) mandated everyone to be back at the office on Jul-2020 when only 10% of Manhattan offices were open b) people who were afraid of contracting covid were asked to take time-off. c) whenever someone at the office would test positive for covid, all exposed coworkers were asked to take days off and not given the ability to work from home d) mandated everyone last minute to take 10 days of PTO during the lockdown in April 2020, wasting people's ability to plan vacations later that year e) didn’t allow anyone to work remotely from a different state arguing legal ramifications (which are non-existent as most companies gave this flexibility); they didn’t even make exceptions for people with family members dying or seriously ill because of covid f) didn’t even offer the ability for people to take unpaid leave to be with family members; people asking for that were told that they would be fired in case of absences longer than available time off 2) Very rare career advancement opportunities. The promotion policy is literally (heard this many times by multiple senior people so I am not exaggerating) “you have to be doing the new job for 1 year to get promoted”, during which year obviously Zara is taking advantage of saving money and not giving you anything in exchange for the extra-work/stress. Saw many people taking even responsibility over other countries such as Canada and Mexico (in addition to their regular US jobs), without seeing a penny extra in their pockets. 3) HR will always try to negotiate your salary down to a point that is very disrespectful and only at the end of months of interviews. I saw many people getting a job offer after months of interviews. The fixed salary offered would be lower than what people put as their minimum in the application, compensating that by a variable sales bonus that no one is able to influence directly. People would realize they were making less money than expected only after receiving the first paychecks and realizing the company didn’t reach the sales target. Also saw coworkers going through months of interviews to go to parallel positions, only to learn at the end of the process that they would get a cut in their salaries 4) Crazy long hours, infinite workload and constant chaos. Zara takes pride on their ability to be fast-to-market and take that excuse to create a culture where you are expected to be working 9-7pm (very few people leave before that time) and checking emails after/before work hours. Also they think that fast-to-market means you can’t plan ahead and everything has to be done last minute whenever a high-level executive decides that something that has been sitting for months in his desk has to be done today, triggering a chaotic last minute process. Expect to be constantly interrupted and be taken to on-going meetings, even if you are currently in another meeting.