jewelry consultant

operations associate

customer experience associate

operations manager

customer experience manager

Brilliant Earth

Brilliant Earth suffers from a problematic disconnect between upper management (corporate) and local showroom teams.
While the local team is typically great, upper management frequently makes decisions that negatively impact local teams, and rarely communicate with local showrooms to understand their needs. In addition, Managers have next to no more power than the average jewelry consultant, and cannot offer escalated customers needed solutions to issues with emotionally charged, expensive items.
Upper management has also previously caused significant damage to showroom morale and turnover due to disrespecting employees applying for promotions, and bringing in outside hires instead of promoting tenured, experienced employees.
One thing is clear working within a showroom: Upper Management and Corporate does not care about how you help your showroom or team. They care about your numbers, and numbers alone. It does not matter if you take on extra work to keep the showroom running smoothly logistically or support your team with technical issues to minimize escalations. If you do not sell according to their (sometimes unreasonable) numbers, you are considered dead weight.
Among upper management, and sometimes in local showrooms, it is one giant blame game. People do not want to take accountability for anything, they will always try to blame someone else. Often times, this means those at the lowest levels are blamed for results that are caused by mismanagement or situations out of the local showroom's control.

Recently, the company's quality support of their local teams has declined significantly. The training period has been cut in half, the training team has been trimmed down and is largely replaced by powerpoints being read off word by word. In addition, many of the every-day task you use in the showroom are not taught in training. Simultaneously, the company has a shaky sales ethics. While there is a sales ethics team and they enforce blatant sales ethics violations, there are alot of grey areas that are never touched upon, which leads to confusing situations about what sales belong to who, especially when employees are able to contact and attempt to claim customers coming in for appointments in person.

I could say more, but these are some of the biggest glaring issues.

All that being said, often the local teams are very supportive of one another and do their best to help you succeed despite upper management's lack of capability. They work with you, and often train you themselves to cover the company's declining training program.

Pros:
-Compensation
-Your co-workers will be amazing and who you will be leaning on the most
- insurance is amazing 
- they do have a nursing room if need one (at least in my location) 
- the clients are so happy to see you!  (Most of them)

Cons:
- PTO, sick day, days off is inflexible and not conducive to work life balance
- training and support from management is lacking and could be more detailed 
- client issue with product is consistent and solutions for them can take a long period of time
- work life balance is difficult to achieve 
- the retail team often treated as a second thought compare to the corporate team 
- most at the showroom will be needed replacement or repairs ( think facilities) only be frantically fixed or reported during corporate visits.
- will be managed down to the minute
- feedback will be a requested from you with limited change
- you will have large goals 
- coworkers you start working with will not be there by the end of your first year (turnover is high)

Conclusion:
There is a lot of things to learn at this job.  You will have many opportunities to learn about the jewelry industry.Different types of software, including CRM, AI tools and internal software.  You we'll have the opportunity to meet some of the most talented and supportive people in your career.   

This job will pay you well comparatively to the rest of the industry. At the hourly rate, not technically bonus or commission.  Your benefits insurance wise is exceptional.

Entering this job, you should understand that there are many large goals for you to reach when it comes to sales and client feedbacks.  It is a great way to enter the jewelry industry.  

The treatment of employees at Brilliant Earth and the abhorrent communication between HQ/Upper Management and the satellite locations are the reason for Brilliant Earth’s internal dysfunction. They seem to know about their extremely high turnover rate which is why they spend money on recruiting websites. There are so many red flags. I was hired after 2 managers and employees had quit. I went throuh 4 different managers in the course of 10 months. 

There was a silent “keep your head down“ culture. Employees needed to lay low and not complain. HR was known for cutting employees on a whim. BE Headquarters micromanaged, overworked, and pushed their employees to their breaking point with no rewards. BE wants to cut their costs and never pay new employees more than they need, which included paying low salaries to kids fresh out of college instead of giving current employees raises. 

By treating employees as disposable, the company seems to favor having a high turnover rate and spending more money bringing new people on, instead of cultivating and investing in the ones they have.

They talk about easy it is to get the bonuses since they aren't commission based but the goals are so unattainable that you never really make them. Management is basically non-existent when it comes to training and support - they throw you in there and say "good luck" but get on you about the performances but still offer nothing. The communication between showrooms, management and other groups within the company is awful and so disorganized. You have to wait hours maybe even days to hear back from somebody else even when it comes to an urgent matter.

We do the best that we can do given the circumstances, but they take advantage of you and promise a raise or promotion but keep moving the finish line further and further back. Anything they can do to not pay their employees adequately and fairly, they'll do it. For the people who have been there for years, they show no loyalty. The company is a mess and so disorganized and the products are cheaply made and break all the time. Causing angry customers that come in to yell at us but when we ask for help, we’re told to deal with it ourselves because they came into the showroom first. Even if they’re very highly escalated. Customer service is basically nonexistent. There are sometimes where the company goes above and beyond for a customer but generally, they are very high value one and thats the only reason. The only people they treat well is very high upper management, the little guys don’t matter to them.

If you value your mental health and sanity, DO NOT WORK HERE!!!!! 

Overworked and underpaid employees who are worked to the bone and then treated as disposable

Consistent feedback from unhappy employees about working conditions and toxic behavior go unheard and change is nonexistent

PTO policy leaves little to be desired, PTO approvals being ignored and then denied at the very last minute when requested weeks in advance

HR is notoriously corrupt and untrustworthy. They are not there to protect employees but to protect the bosses and to help the company to skirt employee issues.

 BE is more concerned with sticking to their expansion plan and doing damage control with review sites and their public persona than they are with any actual process improvement

When giving honest feedback to management about these challenges, be prepared to be gaslit and and blamed for not being able to manage the unmanageable any better

Flexibility is a one way street at BE. In addition to expecting employees to change their entire schedule permanently to accommodate a sudden bout of turnover ( sudden bouts of turnover are constant here ), they are SO inflexible with approving even a day or 2 of pto weeks in advance when employees properly request it.

This same one way street in flexibility applies to the entire customer experience, as they are constantly messing up the customer's timelines with qa issues and delays, yet won't even allow a return 1 day past the 30 day return window, even after the customer has had am absolutely horrible experience

Cutting costs is clearly a much higher priority than being the least bit customer centric

Favoritism is a huge part of "growth" for this company. Several employees shared they are afraid to report inappropriate behaviors because historically the HR team and upper management try to brush it aside. Absurd turnover rate throughout the company - entire showrooms have quit at the same time. The recruitment team does an excellent job bringing in diverse prospects to build a diverse  team and giving a chance to employees that want to get their foot in the door in the jewelry world - this should be acknowledged and praised. But they take advantage of this with no commission structure and unfeasible targets for any pay outside of promised hourly, something you do not see in this industry especially considering the high volume of sales. The bright personalities and camaraderie shown in the showroom is the true highlight of working here, but do not get in bad standing with upper management. They take things personal and will be swift to target you instead of properly investigating complaints. For experienced luxury sales people, avoid this company at all costs unless desperate. 

I truly love my job here and my immediate team in the showroom is absolutely amazing. I've never felt more supported amongst colleagues and with my manager. There are some communication issues to iron out between other departments and the upper management -- I feel that a lot of the negative reviews Brilliant Earth gets concerning their customer service and the lengthy time it takes to get back to people can be tied to the fact that our internal system is so difficult to operate and there's not a lot of communication between the front-facing staff and those that work behind the scenes. Almost every team is based in California and having to maneuver around the time zone differences can be especially trying when you're the person talking to the customers. Aside from that, the company culture is great and they're very dedicated to their mission of sustainability, which I love. The benefits package is one of the best I've ever had. The hours are a little long, and you will have to work weekends, but I personally don't mind that as much.

Working at Brilliant Earth initially seemed promising due to their mission of offering innovative, sustainable, and ethical products. The compensation is competitive, and sales goals are attainable, with an emphasis on collaboration. However, there is a significant disconnect between the company’s stated values and the actual culture. Sales ethics prevent employees from receiving proper credit for their work, affecting performance and bonuses. The company often bypasses qualified, tenured employees in favor of those they can pay less. Work-life balance is poor, with limited time off, especially during holidays. While some managers offer support, overall, the culture makes it difficult to maintain a healthy work-life balance. The team and manager were the main positives, but ultimately, the lack of balance led me to seek new opportunities. If you value work-life balance, consider the trade-offs before joining Brilliant Earth.

Brilliant Earth has no trouble welcoming you to the job. Their problem is maintaining a relationship with you. Sure, they'll have your weekly one-to-ones, but nothing has changed despite those meetings. I'm constantly bombarded with a goal that was hard to obtain simply because I was given lower sales. I was expected to reach a certain weekly goal but was given low sales constantly. I felt like I was constantly placed in a position to fail. It was even harder because we were physically understaffed and I had to wear many hats when I couldn't even maintain the hat I was hired for. I would be confronted about being low in my sales, but the higher-ups in the San Francisco location would continuously place me in roles that covered the areas that lacked staff. It was a frustrating cycle. The job culture was decent because I had a good amount of support from my coworkers.

RUN now and fast! Truly one of the worst work environments to be in. Managers talk down to their employees and treat them like high school students. Reps are left doing all of the work while managers are in “meetings” for most of the day. They do not care about your mental health. You are overworked and underpaid. Burnt out and left to do so many unnecessary tasks. The management change has left employees leaving. It’s just so sad. Everyone is burnt out and tired. Then they blame you for having low morale. Read the room! It’s the management and being under paid for selling thousands and thousands of dollars. It’s laughable how things are handled here.
Treat your employees like people. The culture is beyond toxic. We're also supposed to lie to customers if their ring has to be resized outside of policy? We can't let them know it's a whole new ring so if you have any sentimental value to it, the company doesn't care. Doesn't care about customers or employees. Sad.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Jewelry consultant 8 salaries reported	$22.75 per hour
Operations associate 5 salaries reported	$49,600 per year
Customer experience associate 2 salaries reported	$20.50 per hour
Operations manager 3 salaries reported	$73,333 per year
Customer experience manager 3 salaries reported	$72,500 per year

Working at Brilliant Earth: Company Overview and Reviews

Brilliant Earth

Brilliant Earth Ratings

Popular jobs at Brilliant Earth

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected