Once upon a time, a happy salon owner realised she needs to employ a new staff member because her business is growing and she didn’t want to have to turn clients away.

The very next day, a pretty young girl straight from college walked into her salon and offered her an attractive resume.  The salon owner was uber-excited.  After all, a potential new employee had just walked into her salon, which means she’d been saved the dreary job of writing up a job description, placing a paid advertisement, taking job applications and interviewing multiple applicants.

It must have been a ‘sign’ that this was the right person to hire.

So, the happy salon owner offered the girl with the resume a job, starting on Monday.  She excitedly began to book clients in with her new team member, positive that because she had a diploma, she was more than capable of doing a great job.

The new girl arrived at the salon on the Monday – right on the dot of starting time.  Her first client was already waiting in the reception.  After checking her mobile phone for those last-minute Facebook posts (well, no-one said she couldn’t), she took her first client into the treatment room and delivered the treatment – a facial.

What a disaster.

The new employee had no idea about where to find things and she’d never worked with that particular product range before.  On top of that, she chatted all the way through the facial, talking about her boyfriend and the fight that they had at the pub over the weekend.

The client was decidedly unhappy, but paid for her service, vowing she’d never return for a repeat performance.

The day continued on in much the same fashion.  A waxing client got a burn, the brow client was really unhappy with her ‘new’ brow shape, the lash tint client had stinging eyes, and the pedicure client left with the worst polish job she’d ever had.

At the end of the day, the new employee picked up her bag and headed out the door on the dot of finishing time, leaving wax on the floors, dirty towels in the corner and tint stains on the sheets.

This went on day after day until the clients began to either not return, or ring and complain.

And bit by bit, the salon owner began to feel more and more stressed. After all, this wasn’t at all what she wanted or needed.

Does any of this story sound familiar to you?  I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it did.  In fact, most of my coaching clients have had a similar story to tell at some time, and the sad part is, that this is one type of stress they didn’t need to subject themselves to.

So, what could they have done differently?

They could have followed a tried and tested recruitment process that would have gone a very long way toward ensuring that when they hired a new employee, it would have been someone who would have been an asset rather than a liability.

Naturally, each step has its own process, but here’s what I recommend to my clients when recruiting for their salons or spas.

How to Hire Well for your Salon or Spa

Step 1. Write up a comprehensive Job Description.  This ensures that not only does the new employee understand exactly what her role and responsibilities will be, but that you as the business owner understands it as well.

Step 2. Advertise your position outlining required experience and expertise.  Be clear about the ‘must-have’ as opposed to the ‘would-like-to-have’ so that prospective employees understand clearly what the job requires of them.  Be precise about what you want and need so that you end up with only the right people to interview.

Step 3. Conduct 10 min pre-interviews over the phone to weed out those who don’t meet the ‘must-have’ criteria.  This is an important step if you don’t want to waste a great deal of time on useless interviews.

Step 4. Have all prospective employees fill in a custom job application form so that you can access the right information about the applicant.  Forget the resumes that you are handed as, in nearly every instance, they’re a work of fantasy. Prospective employees who simply attach their resume to your job application should be immediately eliminated from the recruitment process.

Step 5. Ring several past employers for a verbal reference; the more the better.  Written references are often not worth the paper they’re written on.  I’ve found a simple question asked and answered will often tell you what you need to know – ‘Would you re-hire this person in your business?’.

Step 6.  Those who pass the reference check should be given a substantial skills test to determine whether they are as good as they say they are.  Remember, you are choosing someone to work on your very valuable clients.

Step 7. Offer a written contract outlining your requirements and your offer, that includes a probationary period of employment.  You don’t want to be stuck with someone who simply does not meet the needs of your business or the expectations of your clients.

Step 8. Sit down and discuss your salon policies and procedures with your new employee.  Make sure she fully understands the job and what happens if her performance is not up to your requirements. Don’t simply hand over the salon manual and ask her to read it sometime – it’s not likely to happen if you do.

Step 9.  Spend the time required to train your new team member on how your salon provides treatments to the clients.  You must deliver consistency in all things and by all team members if client retention is high on your priority list.

And there you have it.  A brief overview of how to have a happy ending to the recruitment story in your salon.  If you want to bypass the steps involved, you will pay the penalty and gain the unneeded stress it will bring.

Your clients are the most important part of your business.  Their money is what pays your bills and leaves some over for you, therefore anyone who is hired to look after them must be selected with great care and trained continuously to provide the very best treatments and customer service at all times.

Unless you’re a sole-trader and have no employees, chances are the biggest stressor you’ll have in your salon or spa comes from managing and motivating your own team members.

After all, your team is responsible for providing and up-selling services, selling products, re-booking clients, and delivering outstanding customer service. All of which form the cornerstone of a strong and viable salon business.

When reviewing Key Performance Indicators for my clients, it’s always blatantly obvious which figures belong to the business owner and which belong to team members. I normally see a huge difference in productivity, with service and retails sales being substantially higher per client in the owner’s column.

Why does this occur, and even more importantly, what can you do about it?

Well, the absolute truth is that most employees will never care about your business the way you do. To expect them to is totally unrealistic. After all, why should they take home your worries when, in their minds, they are simply employed to provide services and sell some retail?

It is your business, and therefore the responsibility to ensure it’s success falls squarely onto your shoulders.

Having a great team can go a long way towards having a much more successful and stress-free salon. But having a motivated and productive team doesn’t happen by accident. It’s a process and one that anyone can learn if they’re prepared to do the work and persevere.

Personally, I believe having a first class team around you can make the difference between enjoying your work and ending up with burn-out.

Below are the 6 key steps you need to follow to build the perfect team.

Step #1: Hire Slowly and Carefully

You’ve heard it before, but it’s worth repeating again. You can teach skills, but you can’t teach attitude.

Here’s what I recommend you look for in a prospective team member:

1. Must-have skills – these are the skills that your new employee must bring with her to the position. Make sure you understand what the difference is between a ‘must-have’ skill as opposed to a ‘would-like-to-have’ skill because they have very different priorities in your selection process.

2. Look for a positive, can-do attitude. You want team members to be supportive to other members of your team including you; willing to go the extra mile for your clients; keen to attend training and learn new skills or update existing ones; and motivated to achieve personal and professional goals.

3. Great references from past employers. These are often the people who’ve experienced the ‘real’ person behind the interview facade. Make sure to speak to more than one past employer to get a fair overview of the person. You don’t want to be influenced by a simple personality clash your prospect may have experienced with a previous employer.

4. Would-like-to-have skills. Sometimes it’s a plus when a new employee can bring skills to your business that you can learn or benefit from, but remember these are a bonus and not a requisite to do the job.

Step #2: Provide Initial Training

No matter how fantastic and well-trained your new employee may be, they need to be trained in how your salon delivers services, sells product and provides customer service. On top of that, they need to understand your unique salon policies and procedures so they become a productive team member as quickly as possible.

I often see salon owners make the BIG mistake of simply hiring and then immediately setting their new employee to work with clients. Whether she has the highest level of education or decades of industry experience, every new employee needs sufficient training in how your salon operates.

Without this, you stand the real risk of being inconsistent in the services you provide and this can eventually lead to client loss.

Get structured, have everything in writing, and take the time to guide your new employee through your training material. The time you invest in this process is invaluable and will save you heartache and stress in the future.

Step #3: Set Performance Goals

“People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going.” — Earl Nightingale

If a team member is under-performing, then I will bet cents to dollars that the team member doesn’t have any performance goals in place.

The truth is that most people (you and me included) only achieve average performance unless we have goals to drive us to a higher level. Your team members are exactly the same.

Setting goals isn’t that difficult, but there are a few rules to follow that will help you to set good goals; ones that are more likely to be reached.

1. Be SPECIFIC. If you want your team member to reach $60 dollars per client in services by the end of the month, tell her that. The same goes for her retail sales, re-bookings, new clients or anything else that you want her to achieve.

2. Make your goals MEASURABLE. If you can’t measure it, you can’t monitor it. Never simply say “you need to improve your …..’. Make sure both you and the team member can measure their progress toward their goal. Measure results daily for the best outcome.

3. Ensure your goals are ACTIONABLE. For instance, if you expect your team members to sell a certain volume of retail product, but you don’t keep enough in stock, then they have no chance of making the goal a reality. Same for service goals. If there are zero clients walking through your doors, then team members can’t pull service dollars out of thin air. Make sure you’re doing your bit to allow them to reach the goals you set.

4. Be REALISTIC. Take into consideration where your team member is right now in her performance. Expecting your biggest under-performer to suddenly match your top performer in 1 month is unrealistic in most instances. Set realistic goals for each team member if you want them to keep moving forward. Small successful steps are going to work much better than 1 large, but unrealistic goal.

5. Set the TIME-FRAME. Are you setting daily, weekly or monthly goals? If you want your team member to reach her goals, then she must know when you want that to happen by. If her re-booking is only 15% but you want her to reach 30%, be sure to tell her when you expect her to achieve this. Will it be a fortnight, a month or 3 months? Put an end-date on every goal.

Step #4: Motivate, Motivate, Motivate

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.” Zig Ziglar.

One of my favourite quotes. This is perhaps where the most perseverance on your part will need to be applied. Taking your team members to a motivational meeting now and then and expecting that motivation to last, is a pipe-dream.

We all need to be kept motivated so we keep moving forward, and when it comes to team members, that responsibility falls on the shoulders of management.

Not all people are motivated by the same thing, and while performance bonuses are always welcome, sometimes they are not enough to truly motivate a team member to a higher level of performance.

Dr. Gary Chapman, who initially authored The 5 Love Languages, went on to expand his thoughts on how to use these same concepts in the workplace to increase the feelings of appreciation in team members. He states that all people will relate to at least 1 of these 5 ways to show your appreciation, and in turn, this will increase a team member’s motivation to improve their performance.

Thus, the 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace were born. They are:
1. Words of Affirmation – uses words to affirm people
2. Acts of Service – actions speak louder than words
3. Receiving Gifts – people like things to feel appreciated
4. Quality Time – giving someone undivided attention
5. Physical Touch – appropriate touch (pats on the back)

The secret to using these motivators is to find which ones apply to each individual team member, and then using them regularly (the more the better).

One way to identify who will respond best to each motivator is to look at how each team member behaves currently. People tend to give out the type of appreciation that they also like to receive, so watch your team members carefully to identify their motivating behaviours and then implement them into your motivation strategies.

If you like this concept, there is a book available on the subject called The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace by Dr. Gary Chapman.

Step #5: Review Performance Regularly

Performance reviews are generally few and far between in most salons and spas, and that’s a great pity because it deprives your team members of the opportunity to find out how they are travelling as part of your team.

Performance reviews aren’t simply about delivering bad news or negative feedback. They can also be very useful for letting a team member know how happy you are with various aspects of their work, and if something is in need of a little improvement, you can also discuss this as well.

Giving feedback on performance that’s not quite up to scratch can actually be a very positive experience if you know how to make it that. By offering guidance, support and sometimes additional training to a team member, you can help them to break through the average performance barrier that’s holding them back and become a much more valuable team member.

Most people like to know how they are performing, and if possible, perform a little better when possible, and this is why developing good performance reviews can enhance your team’s performance.

Step #6: Provide Ongoing Training

One of the reasons that salons lose valuable employees is that there is a lack of ongoing professional development offered.

There’s no doubt that the beauty industry is moving ahead in leaps and bounds, and although not every new modality is right for your salon, it’s important to keep up to date with suitable new technology. And of course, this means keeping your team members skills up to date also.

But it’s not just new technology that deserves skills training. Existing treatments, retail sales and customer service training is something that should be provided regularly. It’s good to refresh treatment techniques, learn from each other and set new goals.

I recommend you create a Team Training Calendar for a 12 month period, and get some feedback from your team on what kind of training they’d like to receive. Build your calendar around a blend of topics and find guest educators (suppliers and manufacturers fit the bill here nicely) to deliver when possible.

Even senior team members can deliver training in areas where they specialise.

Selecting and nurturing great people is what will deliver your perfect team to you. Don’t simply hire in haste and hope for the best. Don’t believe that it’s up to your team to keep themselves motivated and educated.

You are the Team Leader and as usual, all good things filter down from the top.

One of the biggest problems that many industries face, including the beauty industry, is employee turnover.

When you consider the cost of advertising, recruiting, training, and development of a new employee, you can certainly see why minimising employee replacement is a great idea.

To avoid this additional expense in your salon, you need to recruit using proven strategies to help you select the right person the first time around.

While you may not be able to prevent employees from leaving altogether, by following some very straightforward steps, you can minimise employee loss, and retain your employees for much longer periods of time.

Let’s look at some of the key factors that will help you to achieve that.

The Salon Recruitment Process

Without a doubt, this is the most important part of getting and keeping great employees.

A major mistake made by many is the lack of sufficient research done on an applicant before hiring. This lack of research often leads to a bad hire, which in turn then leads to the recruitment process starting over again.

Let’s start at the beginning.

#1. The Job Description

Lots of employers don’t bother to create a Job Description.

They assume that they know what they want without having to think things through or write anything down. This is a mistake.

The fact is that the Job Description is not just about what you know or want, it’s also a valuable document for the applicant so that they know exactly what they are signing up for when they take a job in your salon.

When a new employee finds out that the job is not what they expected it to be, then it won’t be long until they are job hunting once again, leaving you with yet another position to recruit for.

Also, the Job Description is an important document that you can refer back to if there’s ever a dispute about what the job entails.

If you’ve written your expectations and offer clearly and concisely in a Job Description, there’ll never be any confusion later on.

#2. The Job Advertisement

The Job Advertisement needs to be crystal clear about qualifications, knowledge, and skills that your applicant must have.

It’s pointless getting dozens of unsuitable applicants for the position, which is what will happen if you’re not completely clear about these minimum requirements.

It also provides an opportunity for you to showcase what your salon has to offer a successful applicant.

When you do this, it may help a prospective applicant make the choice to apply for your position over another one.

#3. The Phone Interview

A well prepared short phone interview will save you from inadvertently inviting an unsuitable applicant in for an interview. This pre-interview process will save you hours of valuable time.

Prepare for your phone interviews by creating a list of questions based on your knowledge of what’s required of the applicant.

Not only will you confirm that the applicant meets all the must-have requirements, but you can also check on other essentials such as their proximity to the salon, transport options, work-time restrictions, and anything else you believe might hinder them from doing the job on offer.

A few short minutes on the phone with all your applicants will ensure only the qualified few make it through to a face to face interview.

#4. The Job Application

A resume is not a worthy substitute for a completed Job Application.

Resumes can so easily deceive prospective employers with what they don’t include.

This is why you should always use an in-depth Job Application form – one that will give you as much information as possible on which to base your hiring decision.

Make sure that your Job Application is designed to address the specific requirements of your salon and the job offered.

For instance, in the beauty industry, you would normally need to know the following, at the very minimum:
 that the applicant is fully qualified
 that the applicant has the legal right to work in Australia
 how many hours per week the applicant requires to earn sufficient money to live on
 how much hands–on experience the applicant has within the industry
 how recent her industry experience is
 if the applicant has any postgraduate qualifications showing additional skills
 if the applicant is willing to attend on and off the job training
 where, and for how long, the applicant has been employed in previous positions
 when the applicant is not available to work (holidays, evenings, weekends)
 if the applicant is engaged in any recreational activities that will interfere with her job
 if the applicant has any previous injuries that would prevent her from doing the job on offer

There are lots of important points to consider when designing your application form, so if you don’t have a comprehensive one already, make the time to create one.

#5. The Job Interview

As most salon owners don’t have any formal qualifications in Human Resources, there’s a good chance that they don’t get enough quality information from their applicants during the interview process.

In fact, one of the major problems is that the person doing the interview often does most of the talking, when of course it should be the other way around.

During an interview, you should use the completed Job Application form provided by the applicant, to supply you with topics for discussion.

By getting the applicant to open up and do most of the talking, you’ll gain a much better insight into their suitability.

During the Job Interview is not the right time to be ‘selling’ your salon to the applicant, so avoid the temptation to do this.

Instead, use the time to gather as much information as you can about your applicant so that you’re sure to make the right hiring decision.

#6. Reference Checks

Employers who don’t bother with this step, often regret it.

Past employers can be a wealth of information about your applicant – even if they say nothing at all.

I’ve always found that past employers who don’t want to give a reference of any kind, do so because they don’t want to say something negative, and possibly get themselves into trouble.

When this happened to me (and it did many times), I simply asked, “Would you re-employ this person in your salon?” I usually got the answer I expected.

#7. The Second Interview

After you’ve completed your initial round of interviews and reference checks, and selected a smaller number of suitable candidates for the job, it’s worthwhile asking them back for a second, more relaxed interview.

Usually, the applicant will have lost some nervousness by the second interview, and if left to speak without undue interruptions, will reveal a lot more about themselves (sometimes not intentionally).

The second interview can also be a good time to ask a manager to sit in, providing you with the benefit of valuable input from someone else who knows the needs of your salon.

#8. Skills Assessment

Sometimes applicants look fantastic on paper and interview well but are hopelessly incapable when it comes to hands-on skills.

But you won’t find this out until you’ve given them a comprehensive skills assessment.

Don’t be put off by the fact that you have to pay the applicant for their time because, in the big picture, this is really a very small investment to ensure you don’t end up employing the wrong person.

When you think about the amount of money you may lose through unhappy clients who leave your salon for greener pastures, you will realise that it wasn’t worth the money you thought you were saving at the time.

Sometimes, even after placing the best advertisement and interviewing many candidates, you still won’t have found the right person for the job. Don’t be tempted to hire the “best of a bad bunch”.

This is a mistake that will bring regrets in most cases.

#9. Attitude Check

It’s far better to hire someone who has real potential with regard to their skills but also possesses a terrific attitude toward the things that matter to you as a salon owner.

Someone who loves being around other people looks for the good in others before the bad, sees potential instead of problems, loves working in a team environment, and can always find a genuine smile.

Your clients will love this person, and forgive them some imperfections.

Always keep in mind that additional skills can be taught or upgraded, but attitude seldom changes.

“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”
~ Winston S. Churchill