Network more. Just be yourself. Show up at the right place at the right time.
We’ve all heard the same thing, over and over. How helpful has it been? If you’re still trying to land that first role, and you’re reading this right now…
We asked NYC-based Erin Moronell, a Talent Management Specialist at Catalyst Brands, to answer the questions people breaking into fashion are too afraid to ask.
Erin Moronell has five years of experience working across Talent Acquisition, Human Resources, and Talent Management within the fashion, beauty and lifestyle industries. She currently manages the Internship Program at Catalyst Brands and guest lectures at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she supports students in securing internships and full-time jobs. Formerly, she worked as a Fashion Recruiter at Fourth Floor, one of the largest fashion recruitment agencies in the USA. She also runs Fashion Forward Careers here on Substack.
Catalyst Brands is the holding company uniting Aéropostale, Brooks Brothers, Eddie Bauer, Lucky Brand, Nautica, and JCPenney under one umbrella.
Q: When you receive hundreds of applications for one role, what actually makes someone stand out in the first 30 seconds?
Truthfully? Relevant experience.
If I’m looking for a Marketing Coordinator, I’m automatically scanning candidates for the job titles: “Marketing Coordinator”, “Marketing Assistant”, “Marketing Intern”, or something similar. Then, checking if they come from a company similar to mine.
People are lazy, and training is expensive. Hiring managers don’t want to teach you your role, they want to hire someone who already has the skills for it and can hit the ground running. The more similar your current role is to the position you’re applying for, the better!
My advice would be to tailor your resume for keywords that match the job description, when possible. For example, if you’re applying for a Marketing role, and you have social media experience, you should shift your title to something adjacent, such as “Social Media Marketing Intern” or “Marketing Intern - Social Media”, versus just a Social Media Intern.
Always try to work in buzzwords used in the job description.
Q: What's the most common piece of career advice repeated in fashion that you disagree with?
This one’s for designers: I hear a lot of people tell them that the only way to break in is to create their own aesthetics, to be very bold and different, and to only showcase their personal creativity in their portfolios.
This may have been true back when design was all about creativity. It may still be true if you want to be the next Jonathan Anderson or Phoebe Philo. But the unfortunate reality is that most brands don’t operate like this anymore. Companies need to make money, meaning they need wearable, easy-to-produce garments that follow current trends and resonate with their customer. To get an Assistant Designer role at brands like J.Crew, Ralph Lauren, or any of the brands at my current company, you need a portfolio with CADs (computer aided designs) that look similar to clothes they would sell in their stores.
While it can be valuable to include your personal creativity, it’s just as important to showcase your ability to make what other brands are creating too.
Q: How much weight do you realistically give to a CV versus a portfolio, and what mistakes do strong candidates still make with both?
It really depends on the job. For Design roles, CV and portfolio definitely have equal weight, and a lot of design candidates neglect their portfolio.
I also see a lot of portfolios that are filled with pictures of garments they created by hand or school projects. This isn’t necessarily bad, but if you want to work for the types of brands listed in my answer to question #2, you need CADs. Include CAD work from your classes, and if you haven’t done any for school, create some on your own.
This is the #1 thing that hiring managers want to see in a portfolio, because most of what you’ll be doing in corporate design is CADing.
The same goes for writing and other creative roles; you want to show work samples that align with the tone and overall vibe of the company you’re applying to. Your portfolio should be able to show companies what kind of work you could produce for them, if they hired you.
For just about any other job in the fashion industry, CV is going to matter a lot more. No matter which type of position you are applying to, you want to tailor your experience to match the vibe of the brand. An application isn’t one-size-fits-all!
Q: What are the most common red flags you see from junior or early-stage career candidates?
Lack of polish and professionalism.
I see a lot of resumes with typos, sloppy formatting, and emails that feel rushed or unprofessional. In corporate fashion, email is your job, even if you’re in a creative role like Design.
How you write shows me how you think, how you stay organized, and how you work. No matter what your job is, it’s imperative that you know how to send a professional email.
This is also important with interview scheduling; if a recruiter asks for your availability, give several options for the week. I’ve had candidates try to schedule over multiple emails, suggesting just one time slot at a time. Not only is this frustrating, but also displays a lack of efficiency, which is a critical skill in a fast-paced industry like fashion.
Q: It's not a secret that fashion has a reputation for being nepotistic. From your perspective, where does access matter most, and when can talent genuinely outweigh connections?
In fashion, connections almost always outweigh talent unfortunately. This is a very close-knit and trust-based industry; people prefer to hire someone they’ve already worked with who they know they can rely on.
That’s why the connections you make at work, or in school, are the most important.
Always strive to be collaborative, hard-working, reliable, and dependable at work. Fashion is a small industry and people talk. I’ve seen it happen where a client will look at a resume, see that a candidate has worked at another brand, and call their friend at that company to ask about the candidate. Be really careful not to burn bridges with a company, because there’s a good chance people at other companies will hear about it and blacklist you too. I’ve seen it happen.
The importance of connections does not mean talent means nothing.
I’ve seen referrals get beaten out by a better candidate many times. I feel like this is especially true with creative roles: the better portfolio/experience will almost always win. But connections usually get on top of the resume pile, are interviewed first, and are sometimes hired before another candidate is even seen. Having a strong connection at a company will get you ahead almost every time.
The best candidates have both: if you have talent AND you have connections, you will be pretty much unstoppable!
Q: How much does having a recognizable brand name on a resume actually matter compared to transferable skills?
It matters a lot, especially if you work for a similar brand or competitor to the company you’re applying for.
Working for a luxury brand adds a lot of clout to your resume – a lot more than it probably should. Those brands are known for being really selective with hiring, so if you show that you’ve worked for one of them, it makes people think, “Well if LVMH hired them, then they must be good!”
However, there are instances where this won’t work for you. If you’re applying for a job at Ross Stores or Burlington, they won’t care that you worked for LVMH. Like I said before: people want to hire people who are doing the same job already.
This means luxury wants to see people out of luxury. Off-price wants to see people out of off-price. I’ve had smaller brands reject candidates coming from large, well-known brands because they were worried the scrappy work environment would be too drastic of a change from their current comfortable corporate setting.
Companies want to see that you’ve worked in a similar environment, with similar products to theirs, for similar customers they have. Even if you’re super adaptable, they know they wouldn’t have to spend as much time teaching you and that’s attractive to them.
Q: Once someone does get hired, what behaviors in their first six months signal to you that they'll succeed long term?
When you first start a new job, especially at entry-level, no one is going to expect you to know everything.
What we expect is for you to take notes, ask a lot of good questions, and demonstrate interest in learning the job. Be teachable and take constructive feedback.
It’s okay to ask for more help after only seeing a process once or twice, but be able to show that you are learning and making progress. The faster you learn and are able to take on tasks independently, the better.
Q: If you could give early-career fashion candidates one piece of honest advice that doesn't sugarcoat the truth, what would it be?
Your internship experience is going to outweigh your classroom experience every time.
Not to say that school isn’t important, but only on-the-job experience is going to teach you what to do if a sample goes missing, how to keep a client happy, or how to navigate office politics. Nowadays, it’s not enough to have a degree from a good fashion program, you have to have hands-on experience or it’s going to be very difficult to get hired.
Additionally, the internships you choose can define your entire career. Try to have at least two of them, if you can, and with companies that you’d be interested in working for post-graduation. If you graduate with two internships from off-price or mass-market retailers, the chances of landing a job at a luxury brand are pretty slim. If your internships were both in Marketing, it’s going to be more difficult to get a job in Merchandising. I’ll say it one more time: people want to hire people who have done the same job already.
Don’t be afraid to take an internship or a temp role after graduation if you’re not having much luck with fulltime! They can often turn full-time, and if not, they’ll still add weight to your resume.
Erin runs Fashion Forward Careers, a publication dedicated to revealing the hiring secrets of the fashion industry from the inside, out. Subscribe to her for insider knowledge on recruitment, job searching, networking, career guidance and more.
Brianna Price is a brand writer and cultural commentator wielding words in London. If you enjoyed this piece, you can follow her for more cultural deep-dives on fashion.
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