The reality is, if you are an associate specialist and below, you won't have any time to appreciate working in this environment. Instead, every morning you go into the office with 100-200 emails, each thats a crisis from an angry client, face increasing amount of work (again, if you are associate specialist and below, you are doing all the heavy lifting) for absolutely no reward and no opportunity for a promotion, unless your bosses/senior specialists (who are all 50 or 60) leaves (which is never). Expect to work from 9-7/8pm every day and weekends as a junior person, all with a smile on your face. You think, easy! Everyone pays their dues. That's how I thought, until you keep on getting passed over for a promotion and yet they give you more and more work.
The turnover is extremely high at the junior levels because senior management and senior specialists in the expert departments do not recognize nor reward junior employees. They expect their junior people to do all the paperwork, heavy lifting, deal with clients they don't want to deal with (aka, not the money makers, rather the walk ins) with no promotion or increase in salary and being treated like crap while working like a slave.
My advice is to make as many connections as you can while there, be the friendliest face to all the clients (because most of the senior experts are not), get to know more people in the company so that when you leave you can use these resources later. That's what I did, and most of the clients are reaching out to me to stay in touch even though I left. Be smart and know that this job at Sotheby's most likely won't last forever!
As a junior person, you have nothing to gain at this company. If you want exposure to art, go to an art fair or museum. You'd learn more there than working with "art" at an auction house.
If you want to feel important to people on the outside or think this will be a great brand on your resume, then do it but expect no reward and no opportunity to move up.
Other advice:
Do not trust HR
If you are not good at politics, forget about coming here. This place runs on politics, not art. Dealing with 100-200 angry emails from clients each morning wasn't the most challenging, it was all the smoke and mirrors that go on in each department.
Do not have high expectations of any junior level role. You are just another random person filling in to do all the grunt work. Senior management's mentally is just to keep churning in/out junior employees. They are not interested in retaining talent.
Do not mention Christie's because everyone at Sotheby's knows Christie's is killing it in market share and they'll instantly start making up all sorts of excuses for why Sotheby's is actually better (it's a waste of your time to listen to all their excuses). What's really funny and sad at the same time is that Sotheby's will have these company wide gatherings where they will say how Christie's suck, it's like a sad little pep rally.
