Let your brand’s personality shine in the job description.
If you’re not yet a well-known brand and you’re trying to attract the best talent, you must stand out to potential applicants with a wealth of job opportunities at their fingertips. One way to do this is by crafting a job description that showcases what’s unique and especially exciting about your company. Whether you explain how you’re disrupting an industry or share examples of recent media coverage, your job description has to be memorable for applicants who are scrolling through endless job options.
Call their Educators and Past Co-workers.
Previous work ethic, attendance, common sense, loyalty to brand, care for customers, haircutting knowledge, aesthetics knowledge and massage skills will all show through at their original school of licensure. Co-workers will also have an intimate understanding of the potential employee’s character and performance.
Ask them to perform a classic treatment on you.
Spas aren’t just stores…they are energetic. Your employee’s will be touching your guests. They will be educating and then suggesting home care. Their confidence should shine through as should their empathetic approach to why the guest has come in for professional analysis, after care training and establishing a ritual both at home as well as at the spa.
Predictive algorithms and Artificial Intelligence(?)
While these programs and systems were very popular because of the time saved by management and the black and white scores valued as conclusions, they don’t produce the accuracy that they promise. A wave of start-ups has emerged as “expert systems” mining the Internet for social assessment of Facebook or Twitter posts. While for very large companies these programs can narrow the pool of possible applicants, there is nothing like that first impression and face to face conversation.
Stars at tests and interviews are not always stars.
Applicants can make a great first impression, but it may be fluff. Consider a trial period of 90 days. Employ a contract to each new hire to clearly set expectations, company policies and, if applicable, quotas, employee meetings and required continual training. Entice with bonus programs, pay out for specific training and days paid for vacation, sick time, pregnancy leave, etc. As well, state terms for written warnings and termination procedures.
How many things can one owner do at the same time?
Seriously, can you honestly eyeball every resume, profile, check and re-check cutting detail? Does someone just color? Can they do the necessary chemistry to color correct? The list literally goes on and on. As a beauty student, I literally got Loreal on the phone and asked how they fill, strip, and generally fix color disasters. Similarly, I razor cut as if I were working on a sculpture. I checked my lines, but one of the founding Tigi (Toni and Guy), Anthony Mascolo showed me—he lifted my long, curly hair, and said, “It doesn’t matter what you do with this…Its good up and good down.” He then added, how to do a perfect one cut layering with long hair. If you do the basic geometry and take the hair type and texture into consideration, a one cut can actually give you perfect long layers.
Education!
OK—they all demand it and then when you require it…they aren’t interested…? What page of this novel are we not on? Do you offer levels of mastery within each department? What does it take to lift your base classic fee price? What are all of these want-to -be first chair applicants doing to warrant the various ranges of service fees? I became licensed in sundry modalities to be able to train, test and teach. I created systems, steps and protocols to ensure consistency. Literally, your team needs to understand the fundamentals, and have the confidence to do a range of services with mastery.
How do you know you have the ideal team player?
At some point, you just know the right atypical interview questions. It becomes second nature to meet, greet, ask questions; and then ultimately, figure out what every individual in your family really wants? Do they need childcare, do they want to get a degree? Do they want to live on an island? What do they want?!
Finally, leadership is from the front.
If you can’t do everyone’s job better than they can, you might want to go on an extended vacation. Seriously, you need to get on your hands and knees and look at you floor, grout, electrical fixtures. Every leader, owner, department head must understand the brand and live the mantra. When an owner is also a leader, as Warren Bemis wrote famously, “Your team will have your back. They are owners with you. You care about everyone. Like Richard Branson has so over the top created and cared. Every team member, no matter how complicated your matrix, will understand and embrace your leadership because they will be watching your every move.
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