How to hire hair stylists for your salon in 5 steps

You’re busy, right?  You need to constantly balance priorities for how you spend your time between work, family, clients, staff, training and operations…it can sometimes feel overwhelming!  We know how you feel and that is why we put together this list:

How to Hire Stylists in 5 STEPS…

Step 1) Create a Hiring Profile:
This is important if you want to consistently attract the right stylists for your salon.  The amount of time and effort you put into your hiring profile will demonstrate the value you put in your salon’s brand and the attention you place in hiring stylists that fit your salon culture.  Be descriptive in the position that is available, include images, video, links to social media and your website.  Describe your ideal candidate and share the salon’s philosophy, clientele, location, health insurance benefits, training opportunities and growth opportunities.  Make sure your profile includes clear instructions on your contact preferences and guide job seekers on how to approach you.

Include a video in your hiring profile, read more about that on this post ‘Top 5 Reasons to Use Video When Hiring Hair Stylists

Step 2) Be Consistent:
Hiring hair stylists is similar to building a brand for your clients and consistency matters.  Don’t forget about Marketing 101, “out of sight out of mind”…if you are not consistent with your hiring approach, then it may be harder to gain momentum later.  Consider talent recruitment as something that becomes a quarterly part of your salon’s normal operations.  Even if you are not hiring immediately, it is important that you are making your salon brand known to the future stylists that can have a large influence on the success and growth of your business.  Here are some ideas that you can do every few months: attend beauty school career fairs, register for competitions, attend trade shows, post on job boards, use social media strategically, develop a talent recruitment reward system for current stylists.  We’ve talked to some salons that manage multiple locations and they are recruiting 12 months out of the year; basically making it a full time job!

Step 3) Be Patient:
Depending on your type of salon business, hiring stylists does not always happen immediately.  The chances of your opportunity matching exactly with the perfect candidate at the same time it matches their availability can be tricky and sometimes may involve forces outside of your control.  Whether candidates are still in beauty school, already working at another salon or are living out of state, patience is a virtue when it comes to finding that next superstar.  Some stylists we talked to mentioned that the hiring process can take up to 1 – 3 months from when their resume was submitted to when they were offered a position.  Set realistic expectations and try to avoid bundling all your recruitment efforts only during the time you are hiring…your strategy should be about ‘awareness’ for your salon brand and location too.

Step 4) Stay Connected:
Even if you are not hiring, keep the contact information for those hair stylists that have submitted resumes.  Staying connected in this way will make it much easier to get results when you need to fill positions along with your other recruiting efforts.

Step 5) Know your Attribution Model:
What is an attribution model?  This is basically a flowchart that helps breakdown all the touch-points or engagements you have with job seekers before they submit their resume and get hired.

Also known as a ‘Conversion Funnel’, this is a visual representation of the process a person normally goes through before taking an ‘action’, like submitting a resume to your salon for an employment opportunity.

Awareness – Job seekers need to become aware of the opportunity.  This is the largest part of the funnel because you want to cast a wide net to the right audience and build the awareness of your salon’s brand and career opportunity.  The funnel continues to get smaller as potential candidates determine if there is a match that interests them.  This is why your ‘Hiring Profile’ is essential because your ultimate goal here is to build ‘interest’ for candidates to move further into the funnel.  Does your salon offer advanced training?  That would drive interest for those that want to take learning seriously and develop their careers.  Websites like SalonApprentice.com make it easy to find models for training classes.

Interest – Once you have the attention of a hair stylist looking for a job, you want them to become interested in your opportunity.  The stylist may want to take a look at your website, social media or understand training and growth opportunities as well as what product lines you support.  Now that they are interested, chances are they will be comparing your salon against other opportunities that caught their attention.  In either case, they may decide to take an action, like submitting their resume or physically visiting the salon.  This is where video really helps promote your brand, read more about the ‘Top 5 Reasons to Use Video When Hiring Hair Stylists

Action – Your ultimate goal is to encourage job seekers to engage with you on some level about taking next steps for seeking employment.  An action can be: emailing you, submitting a resume through a job board, visiting your salon or physically dropping off their resume, etc.  Over time you may see patterns of your hiring process that can be easily repeated as part of your new 5 Step Approach.

Carry on and prosper!

Beauty Career, Employer, Hiring, Salon