I interviewed for the manager position of a Sephora inside a JCPenney store. Not until I reached out to contacts who were currently working for Sephora (isolated stores), did I learn that Sephora and Sephora inside JCP (SiJCP) were basically 2 different worlds. The actual Sephora supervisors I interviewed with were nothing but wonderful! Each of I had the pleasure of speaking with and / or meeting, was great, very professional, easy to speak to, provided alot of information, and such. I had 3 interviews prior to meeting any JCP upper management. Much to my suprise, the subsequent personal interviews I was offered with JCP were soooo disappointing. The first one, a face to face with a district manager, was pretty low key. The next (last for me, and 5th in the series) was a panel interview, which was awkward. They finished by leading me to the Sephora boutique inside their store and expected me to show my skills. Mind you, I've been in retail management for 25 years, and had the pleasure of working for retailers who had a much more admirable reputation than JCP! The panel interviewers seemed shocked to learn that I had never worked in the beauty or cosmetic industry; from there the 5th and final interview just went downhill. You'd think that, by the end of my 4th successful interview, somebody surely would have noticed on my resume that I didn't have that seemingly "required" experience! I pretty much knew then that I wouldn't be offered the job, and had something else in the works anyhow, so it was their loss, not mine. But no one even had the decency to contact me to say so. They continued to hang the bait over me in emails, and phonecalls which claimed that they hadn't made a decision yet. Ironically, it then took JCP almost 8 weeks before contacting me with the "thank you for applying" speech (Mind you, I originally learned of the position opening when contacted by a Sephora recruiter.) So, bottom line, it doesn't matter how much managerial or retail experience you can offer if you haven't worked for Lancome or Lauder or MAC, don't bother wasting your time for weeks, months, of deceivingly positive interviews. Those JCP execs (frumpy old things who clearly need alot of advise about their own make up applications, Ahem...) won't feel you are qualified to run their little 1 million dollar instore Sephora. Opt instead for applying to a free-standing or "mall store" Sephora, where you'll feel like an asset and be rewarded for your accomplishments and ability to run a 4+ million dollar store!